[BUG] pg deploy: service account unfunded — breaks 'prefunded' user promise

[ottovlotto]

Severity: P0
Reported by: DevEx Audit External
Source: DevEx Audit (External), 3 June 2026

Symptom

Deploying #1
Critical UX:
Fund the service account mnemonic via https://faucet.polkadot.io/?parachain=1500
(Account was apparently not funded, breaking user promise )
$pg deploy
Fix as top priority and make it transparent for the user. Ensure the delivery of prefunded accounts.
❌Mac OS X, ❌Linux

pg deploy fails because the service account wasn't funded. The auditor notes this breaks the user promise — Playground was supposed to provide prefunded accounts so deploy "just works".

Per audit screenshots: "Following the steps doesn't fix the issue" — i.e. even after visiting the faucet URL, deploy continues to fail. The bug is bigger than "wrong URL" — the funding mechanism itself isn't reliable.

Note on Bulletin Next: per user memory, Bulletin Next uses TransactionStorage.Authorizations for fees, not native PAS. If the CLI is asking users to fund with PAS, that's the wrong fix and the error path is misleading. Verify whether this is a PAS-funding issue or an Authorization grant issue.

Reproduction

DOT_DEPLOY_VERBOSE=1 DOT_MEMORY_TRACE=1 pg deploy 2> >(tee dot.log >&2)

with a freshly-attested signer. Observe the funding-related error and "Account not funded" / InvalidPayment outcome.

Recommended fix / next steps

• Ensure the service-account / funder bootstrap reliably prefunds new accounts for deploy.
• If the actual underlying issue is missing Bulletin Authorization (not PAS funding), update the CLI error to direct user to grant Authorization, not visit the faucet.
• Cross-ref user memory "Bulletin Next auth-quota model".
• Cross-ref playground-cli existing funder issues: [URGENT] Dedicated funder balance low — top up required #226 / [URGENT] Dedicated funder balance low — top up required #41 ("URGENT Dedicated funder balance low — top up required").

[ottovlotto]

Automated comment: related to #226 ([URGENT] Dedicated funder balance low) and #41 ([URGENT] Dedicated funder balance low). Audit's unfunded-service-account symptom matches the recurring funder-drained scenario tracked by those auto-filed URGENT issues.