Marketing bounty, with its 200K DOT monthly budget, is at the service of a select group of beneficiaries, intensifying the unfair concentration of power and funds in a way that undermines the ecosystem's long-term health and interests. The bounty should be closed and the control over the funds should return to the continuous supervision of OpenGov. I am personally grateful to W3F for taking this step, and fully support the slosure of the bounty. A resounding aye.

All existing bounties have fallen short in providing the transparency and expertise necessary for a truly decentralized approach, highlighting the need to develop a bounty system that is openly accessible for scrutiny by everyone. Governance mechanisms must evolve beyond their current state to the next level, incorporating reputation building and sound decision-making processes that leverage historical data. The marketing bounty, in particular, should be mission-driven and involve the necessary expertise to achieve outstanding outcomes from the selected team. To ensure fairness and reduce bias, arms-length processes should be incorporated until the final tally is reached, helping to limit curator influence and maintain an un-corrupted system. The focus of curation should also shift towards selecting high-potential projects, fostering strong team development, and driving successful results that ultimately conserve resources and generate greater value for the entire ecosystem.

I think it's very positive to see the W3F taking the lead on these kinds of issues. I believe it helps us see a clearer direction for the ecosystem.
On the substance of the matter, I think it's right to close the Bounty marketing and stop it operating as it has been. The latest reports that have been leaked from the community show that there are expenses that are not accurately reflected when looking at the results.
A profound change is needed in all of this.

The marketing bounty’s numbers scream for a reset. Shutting it down now is necessary to prevent further inefficient use of treasury funds and to restore true accountability through OpenGov.

Glad to see leadership from w3f.

I think it's high time to look at the overall bounty structure in Polkadot, what was initially planned as a quick and easy way to get experts and ecosystem agents together to take act quickly has devolved into classic bureaucratic swamp where beneficiaries are more interested in extracting money from the treasury than doing actual work.

Marketing Bounty was the biggest offender as it had the highest budget, but I hope a complete overhaul of bounty structure is in the works for the rest of the bounties as well. I think the time is ripe to give RPCs and OpenGov "funding months" (months dedicated to funding certain areas with open calls for teams to provide services under specific criteria) to increase transparency and accountability of treasury spending. I'd prefer that the bounties remain under a much lowered budget (and orders of magnitude less work for the curators, obviously still compensating them for the work) to handle reasonable funds.