Community Pool Spend
Learn About the Community Pool
The community pool is a balance of AIOZ held by the distribution module and reachable only through a passed governance proposal. No individual or team can spend from it unilaterally, not the core dev team, not a validator, not the original proposer of a spend request.
It exists to fund work that benefits the network as a whole (grants, tooling, audits, community initiatives) without requiring a separate treasury multisig or a trusted signer who could theoretically move funds without a vote.
That tradeoff cuts both ways. It means no one can misuse the pool unilaterally, but it also means every spend, however small or uncontroversial, has to clear the same deposit period, quorum, and threshold as any other governance proposal. There's no lightweight path for routine or low-stakes spending.
How Is the Community Pool Funded?
A fixed cut of every block's rewards and transaction fees is routed into the pool automatically, at every block, before the remainder is distributed to validators and delegators. On AIOZ mainnet that cut is currently 2% (the community_tax parameter):
aiozd query distribution params{"community_tax": "0.020000000000000000", "base_proposer_reward": "0.000000000000000000", "bonus_proposer_reward": "0.000000000000000000", "withdraw_addr_enabled": true}No one sends a transaction to fund the pool. It grows on its own, block by block, for as long as the network is running.
How Can Funding for the Community Pool Change?
community_tax is a distribution module parameter, so raising or lowering the pool's funding rate takes a Parameter Change proposal targeting subspace: distribution, key: communitytax, the same governance process used for any other module parameter. Nothing about the pool's inflow can be changed by anything other than a passed proposal.
How Much Money Is in the Community Pool?
The balance is public and can be checked on any full node at any time:
aiozd query distribution community-poolAlways check the live balance before drafting a spend proposal. Asking for more than the pool currently holds is an easy way to lose credibility before the vote even opens.
How Can Funds From the Community Pool Be Spent?
A Community Pool Spend proposal specifies a recipient address and an amount, nothing more elaborate than that at the protocol level. If the proposal passes and clears quorum and threshold under On-Chain Proposal Process, the specified amount is transferred out of the pool to the recipient automatically at tally.
No further action from the proposer is required, and no further approval is needed from anyone else once the vote itself has passed.
Because the protocol only enforces "who" and "how much," everything about "why" and "under what conditions" has to live in the proposal's description instead. The gov module has no concept of milestones, escrow, or clawback, once a spend proposal passes, the funds move in full, immediately, with no on-chain mechanism to claw them back if the funded work doesn't happen.
How Should Funds From the Community Pool Be Spent?
There's no settled answer for AIOZ yet. No Community Pool Spend proposal has been submitted on mainnet, so nothing has forced the community to work out a shared standard in practice.
What's clear from the mechanics alone: because disbursement is automatic and irreversible once the proposal passes, a credible spend proposal should specify exactly what the funds are for, who is accountable for delivering it, and how the community can verify the work was done, the same diligence you'd expect from any grant, just executed on-chain instead of through a foundation.
Beyond that baseline, these are open questions rather than established norms:
- Whether funding should go to whoever asks first, or be reserved for initiatives that most need it and have no other way to get funded
- A single upfront transfer versus disbursal in stages tied to milestones, and who's responsible for confirming a milestone was actually met
- Whether the community should negotiate the size of an ask before it goes to a vote, or treat the requested amount as fixed
- Whether an ongoing commitment (a recurring grant, not a one-off) even belongs in this mechanism, or needs a different structure entirely
Expect answers to take shape only once real proposals start testing them, the same way it happened on other Cosmos chains.
How Are Funds Disbursed After a Community-Spend Proposal Is Passed?
Disbursement happens as part of tallying the vote. The same block that finalizes the proposal's PASSED status also executes the transfer. There is no separate claim or withdrawal step for the recipient.
Why Create a Proposal to Use Community Pool Funds?
Use this proposal type whenever work benefiting the network needs funding and there's no better-suited existing budget. Ecosystem grants, security audits, documentation or tooling efforts, and community programs are all typical candidates. Submitting the JSON payload is covered in Formatting a Proposal and Submitting a Proposal.