Skip to content

Instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

@paradox-tt

paradox-tt/kusama2026topup.md

Last active August 17, 2026 06:33
Show Gist options

  • Select an option

    Learn more about clone URLs
  • Save paradox-tt/61d47533f8d652c5ee380047e8ed00ac to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.

Select an option

Learn more about clone URLs
Save paradox-tt/61d47533f8d652c5ee380047e8ed00ac to your computer and use it in GitHub Desktop.
Download ZIP
Kusama System Collator Bounty Top-up -2026
Raw
kusama2026topup.md

Proposal to Fund System Parachain Collators (Kusama)

Table of Contents

1.0 Introduction

Kusama’s system parachains provide shared infrastructure that other applications and users implicitly rely on. To keep these chains healthy, the network depends on collators that are sufficiently decentralized, consistently available, and properly resourced—because poor collation performance directly translates into slower block times and degraded UX.

This proposal requests funding for the period July 2026 through January 2027, using the lower-cost model introduced in March 2026. Funding remains limited to 30 invulnerable community collators across Kusama system chains, together with the infrastructure and administrative support required to operate, monitor, reconcile, and audit the programme.

This top-up is being requested earlier than originally anticipated because the market value of KSM has changed materially since the previous proposal. As programme costs are denominated in USD while the bounty is funded in KSM, the lower exchange rate has caused the available KSM balance to be consumed more quickly than projected. The operational scope and number of funded collators have not increased; this request reflects the exchange-rate impact on the existing funding model.

The proposal does not include payments for permissionless collators, staking rewards, or tool development.

2.0 Previous Referenda

Initiatives supporting Kusama system chain collators have been ongoing since early 2023 and have been essential to maintaining the network’s stability, security, and decentralization.

3.0 Budget

Conversion rate used: $2.932 per 1 KSM

The bounty requires an earlier-than-expected top-up because KSM's market rate has declined since the previous proposal. Since the programme's recurring obligations are calculated in USD but paid from a KSM-denominated balance, the change in exchange rate reduced the duration of funding available from the previous top-up.

This budget covers seven months, from July 2026 through January 2027, and follows the recurring model introduced in March 2026:

  • 30 funded community invulnerable collators × $250/month
  • 3 curators × $250/month = $750/month
  • Local infrastructure and hosting = $425/month
  • No payments to permissionless collators
  • No staking rewards
  • No tool-development budget
  • No coordinator fee within this Kusama budget, as coordinator compensation is covered under the corresponding Polkadot proposal

3.1 Payment Period and Summary

The monthly budget for July 2026 through January 2027 is:

Item Basis USD / month KSM / month (@ $2.932/KSM)
Collators 30 × $250 7,500.00 2,557.98
Curators 3 × $250 750.00 255.80
Local infrastructure and hosting fixed 425.00 144.95
Total recurring / month 8,675.00 2,958.73

Total for seven months (July 2026 through January 2027):

Period USD KSM (@ $2.932/KSM)
Recurring funding (7 months) 60,725.00 20,711.12
Tool development 0.00 0.00
Total ask 60,725.00 20,711.12

KSM values are rounded to two decimal places. The final on-chain request may require a small rounding adjustment depending on the denomination used when submitting the treasury proposal.

3.2 Collator Incentives

Funding is limited to invulnerable community collators based on the tiered categorization set out in Section 4.0, resulting in 30 funded collators across Kusama system chains.

Each funded collator receives $250 per month. This amount contributes toward:

  • a production host machine;
  • operator time;
  • monitoring and alerting;
  • software upgrades and routine maintenance; and
  • the provision and maintenance of a backup server.

Payments are made in accordance with the programme’s established reporting and reconciliation process. Where applicable, payments may be adjusted to account for onboarding, offboarding, prolonged downtime, or other material periods during which the expected service was not provided.

3.3 Local Virtual Machines

We host local archive RPC instances in virtual machines on the same network as the curator’s scraping VM to ensure fast, reliable access to historical chain data. This is especially important for the relay-chain archive node, which has significantly larger storage requirements than individual parachain nodes.

The monthly VM costs cover not only compute and storage, but also ongoing maintenance activities including software upgrades, maintaining backups, and ensuring the nodes remain available and fully synced.

Archive access is also required for governance and auditability: curators may need to query historical state to validate or respond to claims based on past data. Under this proposal, retrospective queries are limited to 3 months back.

Monthly cost (Kusama portion):

  • Parachain archive VMs: 5 × $50 = $250.00/month
  • Relay-chain archive VM: 1 × $150 = $150.00/month
  • Curator VM (50% share): $50 × 0.5 = $25.00/month

Total monthly infrastructure cost = $425.00

3.4 Administrative (Curators & Coordinator)

The Curators are responsible for producing the monthly payout report, reviewing results for discrepancies, communicating updates to the collation team, and handling incoming queries and follow-ups as they arise.

Curators are compensated at a fixed rate of:

  • $250 per curator per month
  • 3 curators = $750/month

System Parachain Collators are additionally supported by a coordinator who acts as the technical liaison between collators and curators. When discrepancies occur, the coordinator helps identify likely technical causes and flags any relevant chain events that could explain the outcome. The coordinator also supports operational coordination—such as onboarding new chains, managing required upgrades, organizing actions that must be performed in unison, and gathering logs or diagnostics for developers.

For this proposal, coordinator compensation is covered under the corresponding Polkadot proposal and is therefore not included in the Kusama budget.

4.0 Collator Set Categorization

With assistance from Parity and based on chain criticality and risk profile, the system chains are categorized into tiers with minimum recommended collator counts. This provides a defensible, reusable model for future system chains while controlling costs under current treasury conditions.

Key outcomes:

  • We fund invulnerable community collators only; permissionless collators are not funded.
  • The funded set remains 30 collators total on Kusama.

Tier model (minimums)

  • Tier-1 chains (AssetHub, People, BridgeHub): 8 community invulnerables funded per chain; developer invulnerables remain but are not funded under this proposal
  • Tier-2 chains (Coretime): 4 community invulnerables funded
  • Tier-3 chains (all other system chains, such as Encointer): 2 community invulnerables funded

Funded collators (Kusama)

Chain Tier Funded community invulnerables
AssetHub Tier-1 8
BridgeHub Tier-1 8
People Tier-1 8
Coretime Tier-2 4
Encointer Tier-3 2
Total 30

Budget Total

Period USD KSM (@ $2.932/KSM)
Recurring funding (7 months) 60,725.00 20,711.12
Grand Total 60,725.00 20,711.12

5.0 References

Sign up for free to join this conversation on GitHub. Already have an account? Sign in to comment