Short description

Retroactive compensation for IBP operators who ran self-hosted GitHub Actions CI and benchmark runners for the Polkadot Technical Fellowship between October 2025 and June 2026. Operators provided machines in good faith without a formal payment mechanism after the IBP bounty ran out of funds in February 2026. This proposal covers runner services only and pays operators directly through the Fellowship treasury.

Summary

Since October 2025, a group of IBP operators have been running self-hosted GitHub Actions CI runners for the Polkadot Technical Fellowship repository (polkadot-fellows/runtimes) in good faith, without a formal payment mechanism in place. These runners support the Fellowship's runtime development workflow - building runtimes, running tests, and generating on-chain weights via dedicated benchmark hardware.

The IBP top-up proposal (Referendum 1891), which would have retroactively covered these services, failed in June 2026. This proposal seeks to compensate operators directly through the Fellowship treasury for the period they provided services.

This proposal covers GitHub Actions CI and benchmark runners only. It does not cover RPC services, Bulletin Chain validators, or any other IBP services. Those are separate matters outside Fellowship remit.

Compensation Breakdown

Confirmed total to date: $22,656.73

This proposal addresses past services only. The Fellowship recognises the need for a sustainable, funded runner infrastructure going forward and is actively exploring options - including direct operator contracts, cloud-based dynamic runners, or a combination of both. A separate proposal covering future runner procurement will follow once options have been evaluated.