Rootstock Collective G-a-a-G - Feb 27 to Mar 12, 2026
Welcome back to your bi-weekly tour of the Rootstock Collective governance forum. This fortnight had a distinct theme running through almost everything: events, events, events, and the bigger question of whether the DAO has a coherent strategy for them. Throw in a shiny new platform release, a developer tooling grant, and a simmering conversation about what delegates should actually be doing, and you’ve got a packed two weeks. Let’s get into it.
Platform & Protocol Updates
RC V9.0 Release Note - March 2, 2026
https://gov.rootstockcollective.xyz/t/rc-v9-0-release-note/754
The Rootstock Collective dApp drops its latest version with three solid quality-of-life upgrades for users and builders. The USD Vault Sandbox now has a built-in Uniswap-powered swapper for USDRIF↔USDT0 conversions, alongside a cleaner weighted APY display and a full deposit/withdrawal history view. Builders also get a new Rewards History panel with CSV export. Perhaps most intriguingly, the team is experimenting with wallet-authenticated LIKEs on proposals-a lightweight engagement layer sitting alongside voting.
Sentiment: Quietly bullish. The dApp keeps getting more polished with every release, and the LIKE experiment is a clever, low-risk nudge toward broader community participation.
New Grant Proposals
[2603] RelayDevKit - March 12, 2026
https://gov.rootstockcollective.xyz/t/2603-relaydevkit/772
Developer collective Dapps over Apps is requesting $9,660 to build RelayDevKit, a one-command local development environment for RIF Relay integrations on Rootstock. The kit aims to eliminate the painful manual setup that currently slows wallet teams and dApp developers when testing relayed transactions. It bundles a local regtest node, automated contract deployment, a Relay Server boot sequence, deterministic end-to-end tests, and a GitHub Actions CI template into a single npm package. Five milestones are planned across seven weeks, wrapping up in late April, with a 30-day bugfix window included.
Sentiment: Fresh out of the gate. No community discussion yet, but it’s a tightly scoped, infrastructure-first proposal that addresses a real developer friction point.
[2603] Rootstock BTCFi Onboarding & Builder Activation - CryptoVendimIA 2026 - March 2 (active through March 11), 2026
Juani Podestá and Matt Santaolaya are asking for $12,500 to bring Rootstock to CryptoVendimIA 2026, a five-day tech conference in Mendoza, Argentina (March 25–29). This includes main-stage keynotes, a branded blockchain stage, hackathon tracks, and 500–800 wallet onboarding targets via Beexo. Delegates pushed back hard. Concerns came up around high CAC vs. ROI, self-reported KPIs, Beexo’s prior compliance history, and wallet-agnosticism. The team came back with a revised KPI table, on-chain verification commitments via Rootstock Explorer, and a detailed response to every point raised. The event is five days away from the time of writing, and a vote window is closing fast.
Sentiment: Constructively contentious. The proposal grew substantially more robust under delegate scrutiny, but the tight timeline and split opinions on event ROI leave this one on a knife’s edge.
[2603 Grant Proposal] Rootstock Buildathon Track and Sponsorship at IpĂŞ Village 2026 - Feb 26 (active through March 10), 2026
Delegate ChronoTrigger proposes $6,500 (later negotiated toward $9,000) for Rootstock to become a Tech Partner at Ipê Village 2026. This is a 25-day pop-up city and builder residency in Florianópolis, Brazil (April 6–May 1) with a 20-day buildathon at its core. The format is closer to a mini-incubator than a hackathon, with delegate Kaf_Anode also confirmed on the ground. DAOstar raised CAC concerns and the lack of a unified events strategy. Supporters like Tané, Ignas, and Axia countered that the 20-day depth and network-state movement connections make this structurally different from typical sponsorships. The conversation around budget breakdown and scope is still live heading into a vote.
Sentiment: Genuinely enthusiastic with caveats. Most delegates seem to want this to work, but the events-strategy-gap conversation is casting a long shadow.
Discussion Threads Worth Following
Idea/Sentiment Check: Rootstock Participation in TABConf8 Conference - Feb 23 (active through March 9, 2026)
Delegate Axia floated the idea of Rootstock showing up to TABConf 8 in Atlanta this October, citing the technical Bitcoin developer audience as a strong fit for ecosystem visibility and grant pipeline building. Community responses were broadly positive on the venue but quickly converged on one concern: before approving individual event proposals, the DAO needs a coherent annual events strategy built in coordination with Rootstock Labs. DAOstar offered to lead a sub-30-day working group to develop exactly that.
Sentiment: Strategically aligned, tactically unresolved. Everyone likes TABConf, nobody wants to keep approving events in a vacuum.
Additional Contributions from Delegates - A Discussion Thread - March 11, 2026
Axia stripped back delegate responses from the ongoing Recognized Delegate Compensation thread and synthesized them into a visual map of “High-Impact Contribution Lanes”-areas where delegates could add meaningful value beyond grant reviewing. Rather than spinning up a working group (which Axia notes tend to underperform without consistent context from Labs), the post challenges each delegate to identify one specific, low-lift action they can take right now to move the needle. It needs to be something concrete enough to describe on the forum and circulate to the right stakeholders.
Sentiment: Proactive and self-aware. A rare governance moment where the DAO is asking itself hard questions about its own leverage before someone else does.
Ongoing Threads With Activity This Fortnight
A handful of longer-running proposals kept moving in the background. The [2508] Infrastructure VenturesPath and [2602] TYKORA Prize Vaults grants both saw continued delegate engagement. The [2510] SSI Sandbox proposal picked up fresh discussion on March 8. And the Recognized Delegate Compensation thread-the engine behind several of this period’s governance conversations-crossed 20 replies and remains one of the forum’s most consequential ongoing debates.
Forum stats
The last two weeks represented a cooldown from the month before. -31% in DAU/MAU could be the result of the giant vacuum sucking in all the attention that is AI agents.
Nevertheless a slight uptick in Daily Engaged Users and New Contributors could mean this will change soon.
Top Posts this month:
The most referred topics, meaning the topics most viewed when coming from external sources were:
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Introducing Recognized Delegate Compensation
- 23 referrals -
[2603] Rootstock BTCFi Onboarding & Builder Activation - 19 referrals
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Additional Contributions from Delegates (A Discussion Thread) - 8 referrals