Note: Just posting my initial thoughts on how I feel about this proposal. Subject to change here… don’t hold me to it
Hindsight was 20/20 at the time I’ll focus on the present and future, not the past.
I can’t imagine the dread that some of the PNI employees are facing knowing that they are receiving pay cuts and also aware their company does not have much runway. This obviously would destroy confidence and morale. Many of the employees I’ve had the pleasure to speak with. I can confidently say many of them are hard-working individuals who wish to see the success of Pocket. It is unfortunate to hear this is the fact that PNI employees must face.
I’m willing to support this proposal because, to be frank - I feel like we don’t have that many options. I want to see V1 ship, and fundamentally the folks who are building it are all at PNI. While PNI cannot go into the specifics of how this will be distributed, I truly hope a significant amount of this budget is put toward the development of V1.
More elaboration on the “we don’t have many more options below…”
Currently, all protocol and “gateway” development is driven by PNI. One can argue that this was (or still currently is) a must due to the typical chicken and egg problem. To me, that makes sense that it starts off with a single organization (who was also given a token distribution on genesis to do so) to lead these efforts up to a certain point, and that threshold has most likely been passed already.
My support for funding independent organizations that build on Pocket doesn’t stop here. Pocket has grown to multiple teams building on top of it (Poktscan, PoktFund, ThunderHead, SendNodes, etc) who still wants to see the success of Pocket the protocol, not necessarily the success of PNI. These teams did not have the lucrative blessing of large token distribution, token sales, etc. I think many of these organizations have different perspectives on how Pocket can thrive, but we all have the common goal of seeing the protocol succeed. Some, for example, feel that the PNI burn rate and headcount are far too high in this market, whereas some feel as if it’s justified.
If a lean, agile organization is able to execute at the same pace or even more efficiently than PNI, and have a smaller spending footprint, then we should be funding those organizations as well. This reduces the large reliance on PNI and gives the DAO voters a sense of choice on where the funds should be spent. Simply put, this is key to growing a healthy ecosystem of contributions. I think the largest roadblock is how we actually get there while remaining frictionless.
I would love to see this proposal be the catalyst or evolve into something that is inclusive to all other builders in the space as well. (I believe PIP-26 will have a play in this!!!). If PNI is getting 45m, then we need to start thinking about how we baseline that with other organizations developing in the space as well. There are simply just too many talented developers in this space outside of PNI, and I think this is a golden opportunity for these very builders to be motivated and incentivized through similar grants that PNI is receiving in this proposal. Imagine a world where these organizations who have chosen to stick around the Pocket space receive similar grants, i.e Sendnodes receives 15M, Poktscan receives 15M, etc, and what insane returns that could provide to the growth of the ecosystem.