Bulletin Chain — Polkadot System Parachain Onboarding

# Bulletin Chain — Polkadot System Parachain Onboarding > This document covers **High-level staged plan** to deploy Bulletin as a Fellowship-maintained system parachain on Polkadot --- ## Background Bulletin Chain provides **content-addressed ephemeral storage** for the Polkadot ecosystem. Data is submitted via a `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` extrinsic but stored in the collator's off-chain database, not as part of the on-chain state. A check-proofs inherent extrinsic mechanism ensures collators retain the data for the configured retention period (configurable, currently 14 days). Retrieval is done over the Bitswap protocol. Bulletin is already live on **Westend** (paraId 2487) and **Paseo** (paraId 5118). Kusama deployment is not required. The target is **Polkadot mainnet**. ### Primary use cases - Ephemeral media storage for Proof-of-Ink / Proof-of-Personhood flows on People Chain - Hand-off Protocol (HOP) — off-chain data relay between users via collator data pools - General ecosystem storage — dotNS apps, referenda preimages, dApp assets, event-scoped content ### Why a dedicated system parachain - Bulletin provides a shared infrastructure service to the entire Polkadot ecosystem, not a product for a single project - No independent token — uses DOT - Governance via Fellowship + OpenGov, consistent with other system chains Bulletin is not a general-purpose storage marketplace. It is a focused primitive — content-addressed, time-bounded, authorization-gated — designed to serve Polkadot's own system chains and ecosystem needs as a short-term solution. The storage model may be extended or replaced in the future as the ecosystem's storage requirements evolve. ## Staged Plan ### Stage 0 — Empty Shell Runtime in Fellowship Repo (current) **Goal:** Establish Bulletin's presence in [`polkadot-fellows/runtimes`](https://github.com/polkadot-fellows/runtimes) with a minimal, auditable runtime that can be upgraded later. **What ships:** - A new directory: `system-parachains/bulletin/bulletin-polkadot/` - Empty-shell runtime — standard system parachain scaffolding (ParachainSystem, Aura, XcmpQueue, MessageQueue, etc.) **without** `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` - Consistent with existing system chain patterns (Cumulus-based, DOT as native token, `IsFellowshipVoice` for XCM queue control) - No storage functionality yet — this is intentional - **OpenGov referendum** — required to reserve a ParaId, register the parachain (genesis, code), and reserve a core (just one) **Why ship an empty shell first:** - The `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` is undergoing a security audit - Decouples the "add Bulletin to the Fellowship repo" question from the "is the storage pallet ready" question - Allows Fellowship reviewers to focus on the parachain scaffolding independently - Independent collators operated by ecosystem partners - The runtime will be upgraded via the normal Fellowship release process once the storage pallet audit is complete and the pallet is bumped to a stable release **Dependencies:** - [ ] PR to `polkadot-fellows/runtimes` (this [PR](https://github.com/bkontur/runtimes/pull/23)) - [ ] Fellowship review - [ ] ParaId reservation / Para registration on Polkadot (via OpenGov referendum) ### Stage 1 — Storage Pallet Activation **Goal:** Upgrade the Bulletin runtime with `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` + Bitswap node support, enabling actual data storage and retrieval on Polkadot mainnet. **Triggered by:** - Security audit completion for `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` - Pallet version bump and stable release in `polkadot-sdk` - Runtime upgrade via normal Fellowship release process + OpenGov whitelisted-caller referendum **What ships:** - `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` added to Bulletin runtime - Storage authorization configuration (initial: OpenGov root, PeopleChain root). Designed to be managed primarily through Proof-of-Personhood features on People Chain. Other authorization models (e.g. DOT deposits) are currently under design discussion. - (Questionable, part of the OpenGov calls) A very small storage allowance (1 MiB and 128 txs with 14 days expiration) for a couple of Fellowship members ([Branislav Kontur](https://collectives.subsquare.io/user/1HFq3DbX4tqanTLAx2CAToWnHXg6LRLMzSD4JzYCzCQpw5E/fellowship), [Francisco Aguirre](https://collectives.subsquare.io/user/129EYiTbv2J4LkYqRNssUfMuxNLYN8TW2LgfG1Gqyj8wCcs7/fellowship), [Karol Kokoszka](https://collectives.subsquare.io/user/1556APd4jcMDRod9SUxfTwGLasqFy3y3QFMGokkBwTdk2tev/fellowship)) for initial live testing after the runtime upgrade. - HRMP channels opened to People Chain (for upcoming PoP features) and Asset Hub (for DOT teleports) **Target:** Before Web3 Summit Berlin (June 18–19, 2026) ## RFC An RFC is not required for the initial deployment, as these are runtime-level changes. An RFC may become relevant for future stages introducing node-level protocol changes. ## Maintenance - Bulletin-specific pallets (`pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage`) currently live in [`paritytech/polkadot-bulletin-chain`](https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-bulletin-chain) (and will be migrated to `polkadot-sdk` as appropriate in the future) - All crates will be published to crates.io under the Parity umbrella, as with other Polkadot SDK crates. - Security auditing will be coordinated independently (audit for `pallet-bulletin-transaction-storage` is in progress) - Collator infrastructure funded as part of the [Proposal to Fund System Parachain Collators (Polkadot)](https://hackmd.io/@bkchr/B1Aflzuq-g) ## Credits Francisco Aguirre, Karol Kokoszka, Naren Mudigal, Rohit Sarpotdar, Anthony Kveder, Andrii Konstantinov, Adrian Catangiu, Serban Iorga, Bastian Köcher, Dmitry Markin, Alexander Vasile, Arkadiy Paronyan, plus everyone else who helped along the way — sorry if we missed anyone! ## References - Bulletin repository: https://github.com/paritytech/polkadot-bulletin-chain - Storage UI: https://paritytech.github.io/polkadot-bulletin-chain - Polkadot system chains overview: https://docs.polkadot.com/polkadot-protocol/architecture/system-chains/overview/ - Fellowship runtimes repo: https://github.com/polkadot-fellows/runtimes - Web3 Summit 2026 info: https://web3summit.com Looking forward to your feedback!