[Please vote NAY] Decidimos: payout rail for Potosí's lithium revenue on Polkadot Hub (190,000 USDT)
Please vote NAY on this referendum. The payment plan is wrong: it pays the full 190,000 USDT at once instead of per milestone. We will resubmit with payments tied to the milestones and link the new proposal here and in the forum thread. Thank you to everyone who gave feedback.
Summary
Heitaria Swiss AG requests 190,000 USDT over six months to build the payout rail for Decidimos on Polkadot Hub.
Decidimos is the app through which the department of Potosí, Bolivia decides how its share of the Uyuni lithium project is spent. The contract ring-fences 15% of the private partner’s profits for the department: about US$104 million a year, US$4.4 billion over the project’s 45 years, for around 860,000 residents. The decision side is built and in closed beta with the 53 indigenous communities of the TIOC Nor Lípez, in Spanish, Quechua and Aymara. The wallet runs on Polkadot mainnet and the first residents have paid a shop with it. What does not exist yet is the payout rail at scale.
Discussion: https://forum.polkadot.network/t/18650
What Polkadot gets
- Around 860,000 residents paid every month: about 10.3 million payouts a year by Heitaria.
- On top of that, the payments residents make themselves with that money: shops, transfers, cash-out. At three a month that is about 31 million more, so about 41 million transactions a year in total (model in post 9 of the thread).
- About US$104 million a year in USDT settled on Asset Hub at full scale.
- About 43,000 DOT bought by Heitaria to activate the residents’ wallets (0.05 DOT each, once), plus DOT for the payout fees every month.
- Children's savings partly in DOT: 30% of every minor's monthly share stays locked until their 18th birthday. Part of that locked amount is used to buy DOT, which is staked on Polkadot until the child turns 18. This makes Decidimos a long-term buyer and staker of DOT, not only a user of Asset Hub.
- Real users, not incentive farmers. The money exists because a factory produced lithium and a contract obliges the operator to pay the department.
What has already been done
- Signed memoranda (24 October 2026) with CUPCONL, the organisation of the 53 communities of the TIOC Nor Lípez, and with the community of Río Grande. Both make Decidimos the mandatory channel for all per-capita payments and all allocations of the community funds, from the first allocation onwards.
- Governance platform live in closed beta with 53 indigenous communities.
- Identity checked once against the national cédula, secret ballots, public audit trail.
- Our wallet, tested with the communities on testnet and now running on Polkadot Asset Hub mainnet. Manuals in English and Spanish: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1eRQli3dPzy_fXJbGgEJcYZMcAYr2pbJc?usp=sharing
- App live on the Apple App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6809736620. Android in Google Play testing. Testers welcome: schmidt@heitaria.ch
- First real USDT payments on Polkadot mainnet: two Decidimos users paid Mini Market Lithium in Río Grande (October 2026): https://assethub-polkadot.subscan.io/account/1xq6PespsBdhiXakyxCKMEfBYtFP6GaQxLgbG6X6ByxGuTC?tab=transfer
Videos from Río Grande
- The payment: a customer scans the shop’s QR code and pays in USDT: https://youtube.com/shorts/i6qPcBWznwk
- The shop receives it: https://youtube.com/shorts/Aw5ewRIo3Ec
- The balance: 7.00 USDT in the shop’s wallet: https://youtube.com/shorts/iG7jrXJhD3c
What this grant pays for
| # | Milestone | Months | USDT |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Payout engine on Polkadot Hub: batched USDT payouts driven by the assembly-ratified community rolls, no double payment, connected to Decidimos. Our wallet hardened for mainnet scale (see below), with fees paid in USDT. | 1–2 | 60,000 |
| 2 | Recovery for mainnet: 12 recovery words plus family helpers and a trusted contact, as described in the manual. Public audit trail: every payout recorded and checkable on a public page. | 3–4 | 35,000 |
| 3 | External security audit of the wallet and the payout contracts before payouts scale up. | 4–5 | 45,000 |
| 4 | Cash-out and merchant acceptance in Río Grande and Nor Lípez: agreements with exchanges, cooperatives and shops, so residents can spend or redeem near their community. | 3–6 | 25,000 |
| 5 | Mainnet pilot payout in Río Grande, open-source release, final report. | 6 | 25,000 |
| Total | 190,000 |
Wallet
We use our own wallet. It was first built for testing with the indigenous communities, and it now runs on Polkadot mainnet, where the first residents have paid a shop in Río Grande with it. The external audit covers it before payouts scale up.
The reason: payouts run for the 43–45-year life of the plant, and the sponsor needs the wallet to be maintained for that whole period. We can only promise that for software we build and maintain ourselves. The code is open source.
What this grant does not pay for
- Long-term maintenance. Heitaria maintains the payout engine and keeps the wallet working for the 43–45-year life of the plant, funded by the sponsor, not by the treasury. The code is open source, so it never depends on us alone.
- Fees. Heitaria pays the fees for the monthly payouts. Residents pay the fee for their own payments in USDT, deducted from their wallet, so no resident ever has to buy DOT. The treasury pays no fees.
- DOT for each account. Heitaria sends each new wallet 0.05 DOT to activate it on chain. For around 860,000 residents that is about 43,000 DOT, once, paid by Heitaria, not by the treasury.
- The governance platform. It is already built.
Reporting
After each milestone we post a public update in the forum thread covering what shipped, the contract addresses and what failed. From milestone 1 we publish the real fee per transaction, replacing the estimate in post 9. All code is open source, so the next extractive project inherits a rail rather than a debate.
Timing
The plant runs a pilot from year 3 and the main plant from year 6, so the volume figures above are the steady state. The Río Grande pilot payout happens inside the grant period.
Team
Heitaria Swiss AG, Rigistrasse 1, 6374 Buochs, Switzerland, trading since 2013.
Paul Schmidt (CEO), Willi Brose (co-founder).
Project sponsor: ACI Systems Alemania, with German export credit cover (Euler Hermes / UFK).
schmidt@heitaria.ch · +41 78 339 59 77
Comments (2)
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Requested
Voting Period
Decision Period
11 / 28 days
Confirmation Period
0 / 4 days
SUBMITTING ENTITY: Kebarah
ACCOUNT SIGNATURE: 1xuffkw8Kgbgrux493va49bhF5xwQAhsmrsCp8sWL7C1bQV
TARGET PROPOSAL: Polkadot OpenGov Referendum 1963
PROPOSAL TITLE: Decidimos: Payout Rail for Potosí's Lithium Revenue on Polkadot Hub
TARGET TRACK: Asset Hub Medium Spender (Track 12)
REQUESTED CAPITAL: 190,000 USDT
PREIMAGE HASH: 0xfd82c7c95ebbdc882e7ddc4b4cc4a816bf657e9c26d56fbf733bba0c4342bbe7
BENEFICIARY ADDRESS: 0x069c006286a0c1911fcc8644751eb3f5818a9c7201bbb063357ad88bb557cc11
PROPOSING ENTITY: Heitaria Swiss AG (Commercial Registry UID CHE-269.621.029, Buochs, Switzerland)
AUDIT POSTURE: Independent Fiduciary & Technical Governance Review
DEFINITIVE RECOMMENDATION: HARD NAY
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Referendum 1963 requests an immediate, single-tranche disbursement of 190,000 USDT from the Polkadot Asset Hub treasury to construct an off-chain revenue distribution rail for lithium mining dividends in the Department of Potosí, Bolivia. The proposal advertises an alleged 104,000,000 USD annual sovereign revenue settlement stream settling 10,000,000 transactions per year on Polkadot, while promising to onboard 860,000 regional residents by privately funding 0.05 DOT account-seeding allocations.
Following an exhaustive forensic audit encompassing on-chain preimage verification, corporate registry analysis, and sovereign statutory legal review, Kebarah Technical Security & Governance Risk Agency advises the Polkadot community, institutional delegates, and ecosystem multi-sigs to cast an uncompromised HARD NAY.
The proposal suffers from fatal structural defects across three foundational layers:
First, absolute statutory nullity under Bolivian constitutional law, as the proposing private entity holds zero legal concessions or mining agreements with the state monopoly Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos.
Second, an absence of programmatic on-chain escrow primitives within the dispatch preimage, transferring 100 percent of counterparty default risk onto the treasury immediately upon enactment.
Third, a corporate capitalization paradox wherein a firm capitalized at 100,000 CHF claims it will privately absorb an uncollateralized 43,000 DOT account-seeding expenditure equal to over 34 percent of its legal equity.
SECTION 1: STATUTORY AND JURISDICTIONAL LEGAL NULLITY
The central premise of the proposal—that Heitaria Swiss AG can construct and operate an automated dividend distribution mechanism for national lithium revenues—is a legal impossibility under the prevailing sovereign legal framework of the Plurinational State of Bolivia.
Under Article 369, Paragraph I of the Political Constitution of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, natural resources are the direct, indivisible, and imprescriptible property of the Bolivian people, administered exclusively by the state.
Under Bolivian Law Number 928, enacted on April 27, 2017, the state-owned enterprise Yacimientos de Litio Bolivianos (YLB) holds the absolute, non-delegable statutory monopoly over the entire productive chain of evaporitic resources in the Salar de Uyuni, spanning extraction, industrialization, and revenue commercialization. Private commercial entities cannot extract, disburse, or route sovereign evaporitic revenues without explicit bilateral treaties or supreme legislative decrees.
Corporate registry records from Canton Nidwalden, Switzerland, confirm that Heitaria Swiss AG is a private commercial firm registered with a generic corporate mandate covering asset management and software services. The entity holds zero sovereign concessions, zero operating titles, zero public-private partnership agreements, and zero formal memoranda of understanding with YLB, the Corporación Minera de Bolivia (COMIBOL), or the Bolivian Ministry of Hydrocarbons and Energies.
Because Heitaria Swiss AG possesses zero legal standing to intercept, route, or settle revenues derived from YLB state extraction, the marketed 104,000,000 USD annual settlement stream represents zero transactions in enforceable legal reality. The Polkadot treasury is being solicited to capitalize software for unauthorized revenue streams that cannot legally exist.
SECTION 2: TECHNICAL PREIMAGE ANATOMY AND ESCROW DEFICIT
A forensic inspection of the on-chain call data registered on Asset Hub at Block 22614979 resolves the exact technical architecture of preimage 0xfd82c7c95ebbdc882e7ddc4b4cc4a816bf657e9c26d56fbf733bba0c4342bbe7.
The extrinsic specifies a direct call to pallet_treasury::spend. The locatable asset parameter routes native Asset Hub Tether USDT via VersionedLocatableAsset::V4 targeting Location with PalletInstance 50 and GeneralIndex 1984. The disbursement parameter is hardcoded for exactly 190,000,000,000 units (190,000 USDT) directed to beneficiary account 0x069c006286a0c1911fcc8644751eb3f5818a9c7201bbb063357ad88bb557cc11.
The dispatch parameters execute an immediate, lump-sum transfer upon block enactment. The technical structure contains:
Once enacted, the 190,000 USDT transfers unconditionally into private off-chain custody. The Polkadot network possesses zero cryptographic or legal mechanisms to compel performance, verify off-chain progress, or recover capital upon corporate failure or regulatory prohibition. Predicating fiduciary legitimacy on future voluntary compliance violates the foundational blockchain principle of trust minimization.
SECTION 3: CORPORATE CAPITALIZATION AND SOLVENCY CONTRADICTION
The proposing entity exhibits an extreme financial leverage mismatch between its registered balance sheet and its proposed execution parameters.
Commercial Registry records (UID CHE-269.621.029) confirm that Heitaria Swiss AG operates with a total registered share capital of 100,000 CHF (approximately 115,000 USD). The requested 190,000 USDT treasury disbursement represents over 165 percent of the company's entire corporate capitalization. Disbursing public treasury capital exceeding the total corporate equity of a foreign intermediary without performance bonds or escrow guarantees represents an unacceptable exposure.
Furthermore, proposal documentation clarifies that Heitaria Swiss AG purports to privately absorb the cost of seeding 860,000 resident accounts with 0.05 DOT each, requiring 43,000 DOT out-of-pocket. At current macroeconomic valuations (0.93 to 1.01 USD per DOT), purchasing 43,000 DOT requires an outlay of 39,990 to 43,430 USD.
Committing over 40,000 USD in private liquid assets requires Heitaria Swiss AG to expend between 34.7 percent and 37.7 percent of its entire registered corporate equity on uncollateralized, fractional wallet seeding in a foreign jurisdiction where it holds zero extraction mandates. A corporate entity capitalized at 100,000 CHF cannot credibly commit over one-third of its balance sheet to seed unverified blockchain wallets for a sovereign mineral operation it has no legal right to administer. This unmasks the claim as either a severe solvency contradiction or an empty, unenforceable promotional promise.
SECTION 4: SYBIL-EXPOSED ACCOUNT SEEDING VULNERABILITY
The proposed mechanism to onboard 860,000 residents across Potosí creates a severe programmatic liquidity vulnerability.
Dispersing 0.05 DOT across batch-generated public keys without proof-of-personhood verification, decentralized identity (DID) credentials, or People Chain attestation (Fellowship RFC-0007) provides zero sybil resistance.
Because existential deposit requirements on Asset Hub require 0.01 DOT, dispersing 0.05 DOT leaves 0.04 DOT liquid per address. This provides zero economic friction against programmatic automated sweeping scripts. An off-chain actor can generate arbitrary keypairs, sweep the fractional DOT balances, and deplete capital while establishing zero authentic, retained human users. Seeding un-attested addresses constitutes a dilutive liquidity leak that subsidizes vanity registration metrics without generating network value.
SECTION 5: CAPITAL ARBITRAGE AND COUNTERPARTY RISK ANALYSIS
Referendum 1963 introduces two critical structural risk vectors that threaten treasury capital:
Stablecoin Margin Arbitrage and Foreign Exchange Risk Transfer:
The proposer routes an uncollateralized commercial enterprise through the Asset Hub Medium Spender track denominated in liquid USDT. This locks in stable fiat-equivalent corporate funding while transferring total macroeconomic foreign exchange and systemic execution risk entirely onto the public treasury during an acute market compression phase.
Absence of Cryptographic Recourse in Real-World Asset Claims:
The proposal solicits public funds against sovereign lithium revenues without verifiable legal concessions, cryptographic liens, on-chain escrow primitives, or enforceable sovereign indemnification.
SECTION 6: INSTITUTIONAL SEVERITY CLASSIFICATION & FINAL VERDICT
CRITICAL SEVERITY: Constitutional Statutory and Jurisdictional Nullity under Bolivian Constitution Article 369 and Law 928.
HIGH OPERATIONAL SEVERITY: Complete Absence of On-Chain Escrow Primitives and Unconditioned Lump-Sum Disbursement in Preimage 0xfd82...bbe7.
HIGH FINANCIAL SEVERITY: Proposer Capitalization Mismatch and Corporate Solvency Contradiction Exceeding 165 Percent of Registered Equity.
MEDIUM SEVERITY: Sybil-Exposed Account Seeding and Onboarding Liquidity Leak via 43,000 DOT Un-Attested Dispersion.
INFORMATIONAL: Stablecoin Allocation Arbitrage During Macroeconomic Native Token Compression.
FINAL RECOMMENDATION: HARD NAY
Referendum 1963 fails minimum standards of architectural soundness, legal feasibility, and fiduciary security. Approving an unconditioned lump-sum spend for an unauthorized intermediary would establish a disastrous precedent for Polkadot OpenGov.
Kebarah registers a definitive HARD NAY recommendation.