What is Bifrost Fellowship

Referencing the Polkadot Technical Fellowship,

Fellowship is a self-governing body of experts and developers of Polkadot, Kusama, and Parachain protocols. It operates on-chain through fellowship referenda and off-chain through the community discussion repository

The Bifrost Fellowship aims to foster the long-term development and growth of the Bifrost Protocol by considering its long-term roadmap from various perspectives. This might include discussions, research, and implementation from diverse standpoints. For instance:

• Efficient use of treasury, screening of effective supporting/integration schemes, strategic channelling of liquidity incentives, etc.
• Strategic vToken deployment plans to discover broader ecosystem integrations and development.
• How to increase brand awareness, organization, and planning of marketing and community activities.
• Discussion and research on new technology releases, how to combine with Bifrost and integration, etc.
• Guide the community to participate in OpenGov and improve the activity of governance.

The fellowship will include members with a diverse range of expertise and experience. This includes developers with technical skills, founders and builders of other DeFi and Web3 protocols, blockchain researchers, professional infrastructure and node operators, community and opinion leaders, ecosystem contributors, and partners.

These individuals will form various sub-fellowships, each divided according to their specific expertise, experience, and skill set. Each sub-fellowship will have its own mandate, role, and responsibilities, and will consist of expert members.

What is Bifrost Sub-fellowship

Each sub-fellowship will be responsible for its specific field and will be tasked to initiate proposals, manage its sub-fellowship, onboard members, and initiate discussions of proposals related to its expert field. For each sub-fellowship, a leader will be nominated who will represent the sub-fellowship to lead reviews and discussions. The Sub-fellowships will be detailed in the following context.

Treasury Fellowship

This is primarily composed of the Bifrost Foundation, with a clear focus on treasury-related proposals and strategic management of treasury funds.

Criteria of Applicants

The following are the basic requirements to apply for membership in the Treasury Fellowship.

• An understanding of the DeFi market sector, broader DeFi primitives, and their respective business models.
• Knowledge of Bifrost’s economics and business model.
• Track record in participation in treasury-related proposals and functions.
• A product-oriented mindset skilled in various Web3 products, capable of independently evaluating product quality and Product-Market Fit (PMF).

Exisiting Members

Find them in the Bifrost Discord channel: Treasury Fellowship

Tech Fellowship

It is mainly composed of developers and members with technical backgrounds. The Tech fellowship is focused on releasing updates related to Substrate and runtime, discussing the latest technological developments related to Polkadot, managing the fellowship and onboarding of members, and participating in the discussion of topics such as hackathons and proposals for product delivery and integration.

Criteria of Applicants

The following are the basic requirements to apply for membership in the Tech Fellowship (any 2 of the following are sufficient).

• Track-record in Rust development
• Familiarity with Bifrost Pallets and Polkadot tech.
• Familiarity with Bifrost and the ability to construct transaction-encoded data for various XCM, pallets, and method calls.
• The RP has been submitted to Bifrost multiple times and has been successfully merged.

Existing Members

Find them in the Bifrost Discord channel: Tech Fellowship

Strategy Fellowship

They mainly comprise business partners, product managers, advisers, protocol founders, and ecosystem contributors. Its objective is to develop and implement initiatives to drive growth and expansion across the ecosystem and beyond. The fellowship's main tasks are topics and proposals related to product roadmaps, the development and growth of the Bifrost protocol and its business expansion across ecosystems, and the Strategy fellowship's management and onboarding of its members.

Criteria of Applicants

The following are the basic requirements to apply for membership in the Strategy Fellowship (any 2 of the following are sufficient).

• Previous leadership roles and experience or similar responsibilities with DeFi protocols and Polkadot.
• Onchain track record demonstrating active participation in the governance of DeFi protocols. This includes discussions on functional product upgrades, growth, and business go-to-market initiatives and strategies.
• A deep understanding of the DeFi sector, market structure, and trends within the ecosystem and beyond.
• Familiarity with the operational logic of Bifrost Staking Liquidity Protocol (SLP), its vTokens, and a broader understanding of the various LST landscapes and ecosystems.

Existing Members

Find them in the Bifrost Discord channel: Strategy Fellowship

Community Fellowship

This group mainly comprises members involved in marketing operations, community leaders, and head ambassadors. It focuses on discussing community proposals, structuring events, and collaborating with other communities.

Criteria of Applicants

The following are the basic requirements to apply for membership in the Community Fellowship (any two of the following are sufficient).

• Track record in Bifrost, Polkadot, and broader Web3 Communities
• Experience in organizing community initiatives, such as online/offline events
• Ability to initiate discussions and build constructive proposals on other chains/dapps to broaden the use of vTokens and spread the Bifrost brand (reaching DAOs for Treasury diversification and more)
• Having solid educational or infographic/designer/video skills that could help to produce a series of content to explain DeFi narratives and the specificities of the Bifrost protocol.

Existing Members

Find them in the Discord channel: Community Fellowship

Infra Fellowship

They predominantly include infrastructure providers, node & validator operators, Validator Boost List (VBL) members, and technical operations and maintenance members. Members are primarily focused on discussing VBL application proposals and initiatives around optimizing existing Bifrost infra and validator/collators programs, managing the fellowship, and onboarding members in the Infra Fellowship.

Criteria of Applicants

The following are the basic requirements to apply for membership in the Infra Fellowship (any 2 of the following are sufficient).

• Familiar with Bifrost VET and VBL.
• Experience in server operation and maintenance.
• Existing Bifrost collator runner.

Existing Members

Find them in the Discord channel: Infra Fellowship

Application for Fellowship Membership

Anyone (including individuals or entities) interested in participating as a candidate in the Bifrost Fellowship program is encouraged to inform the community of their plans to run on the discussion forum by following the steps below:

• Phase 1: Self-introduction - At any time

  • Background of your motivation for Fellowship membership application.
  • Clarify which sub-fellowship you are applying to join.
  • As a member of a particular sub-fellowship, state how you will add value, help Bifrost grow, and identify the aspects Bifrost needs to improve.
  • What is your individual/entity background and experience, and why should the community and fellowship members vote for you? (Provide your governance experience with on-chain or off-chain proof.)

• Phase 2: Discussion and evaluation by community & Fellowship

  • During this phase, the corresponding sub-fellowship leader will comment and lead the evaluation and engagement process. This phase normally takes 7-14 days and includes time for the Fellowship to discuss internally and conclude. Following this, the Candidate can decide whether or not to post the formal proposal on-chain in the next phase.

• Phase 3: Initiate on-chain proposal-dynamic voting time

  • After considering the Fellowship’s suggestion in the previous phase, candidates can ask the Fellowship or can self-post their proposal on-chain, and initiate an on-chain referendum.

Fellowship Referenda

The fellowship's governance model has multiple tracks, each with its own approval and support parameters, where votes are weighted according to their ranks.

Members of the Fellowship can vote on any given proposal, and the aggregated vote of all members (weighted by their rank) constitutes the Fellowship's collective vote.

Most Bifrost Fellowship Referenda Origin are Runtime function extrinsic. Hence, most referenda are initiated by Strategy Fellowship and Tech Fellowship, and other fellowship members are led to vote on them.

The list of current and historic fellowship referenda can be viewed on Subsquare.

Rank Updates

Fellowship members can request an update on their ranks at any time, and each year, they can be updated by one rank.

1. Any fellowship member up to rank 4 can be promoted to the next rank through a fellowship referendum that can be voted by the members who are ranked two or higher. For instance, the fellowship referenda 64, which promotes a member from rank 1 to rank 2, can only be voted by members whose ranks are greater than or equal to 3.
2. Promotion of the Polkadot Fellowship members from rank 5 needs to be done through an OpenGov referendum. For more information, check the rank updates section on the fellowship dashboard.

Whitelisting

Polkadot OpenGov allows the Technical Fellowship to authorize an origin known as "Whitelisted-Caller" to execute with Root-level privileges for calls approved by the Fellowship (currently, only level-three fellows and above can vote for whitelist calls). Note that the fellowship cannot unanimously change the network parameters, conduct rescues, or move assets. The whitelisted proposals still have to go through the whole life cycle of an OpenGov referendum and can only be enacted when the referendum passes successfully.

The whitelisting process starts as a fellowship referendum with an embedded XCM call from the collectives system chain to the Polkadot relay chain. For instance, the Bifrost Fellowship referenda #14 was used to whitelist the Bifrost OpenGov referenda #14.

Sub-Fellowship Salary

The Salary structure will be announced in Q4 2024.