I am back, it seems Michael has verified my claims for which I was banned - unfortunately I am still perma banned from the telegram but as this is being fast-tracked to a vote very soon (just as I said about $GROVE and the fork plans maybe trust me on this one this time) I think its best I share my thoughts. Anyone who knows me knows how much I loved POKT - key word there LOVED. Past tense. Whatever this is now is not the Pocket I fell in love with, it’s not the Pocket that had tremendous amounts of promise. It is not, if Mike has his way, the:
Censorship Resistance Decentralised RPC Base Layer
That we as a community aligned around - PNF did not formulate
its own vision and road map
Rather we - the DAO, the community, the people building on top of this once promising protocol, we aligned on these ideals together. I have the utmost respect for the work that @b3n, @Dermot, @JackALaing did for this protocol and I was thoroughly ashamed to see them booted out of their positions because Michael wants power again.
In this post I aim to give my insights where possible and try to prove without a doubt not only is this a terrible idea, not only the end of the protocol, but with a few correct moves - something Michael clearly doesn’t understand how to do or those around him either unfortunately. I believe we can take the reigns back and push this protocol back on the right direction. I will call for some drastic changes, I may not say the things you want to hear but they are in fact the things you need to hear, we all need to hear these truths and really deep them. This is either the start or the end of Pocket and we need to make sure we make the correct calls - as a community, not a dictatorship lead by a proven incompetent leader.
Lets start with the very first point:
What drew me to start protocol development - no to crypto in general was Pocket so when I say this I saw it with true sadness in my heart. Shipping Shannon has never been a priority for Grove - not at all. They may have said all the right things, put up a front as if it were but hear me out now. I now work for Polymer Labs a mature codebase - they also started by building out a native L1, then pivoted to a rollup using a customised OPStack “Hack” utilising both Cosmos-SDK, OPStack, DA Layers - I hope by now this is starting to sound familiar to anyone who has kept up with the Shannon Development journey. Its exactly what we did - what I was a part of. When I joined the protocol team initially as an outsider working under PNF then slowly transitioned over to Grove (still paid half by PNF) until finally being hired fully by Grove I knew nothing. I had just taught myself to code, sure I picked it up fast and found it easy which helped but I didn’t know what a codebase 2 years under development ought to look like. Having now seen a codebase that has been under development for the same amount of time, is in its 2nd or 3rd testnet and mainnet soon approaching - that ALSO followed the same pivot journey that we did I know now what company focused on shipping a protocol’s codebase SHOULD look like that far in. I don’t even know how long Shannon/V1 was in development for before I got involved - but I know it wasn’t a short amount of time.
It really pains me to say this as I consider @Olshansky a good friend, but friendships aside for now lets get down to the difficult conversation. The time pre-h5law (AKA The Dark Ages) → V1 (pre-pivot/native L1/building cool shit) → Pivot #1 (Rollup w/ Rollkit on Celestia) → Pivot #2 (Cosmos-SDK L1 w/ RollChains integration for Celestia DA added security); in my eyes this journey demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of shipping a product - it even gives incompetence vibes. So much wasted time, wasted research cycles, wasted hires and fires. If Grove really wanted to ship Shannon I can see a few key points where things SHOULD have been done differently.
- Fire everyone involved in the Dark Age period - they couldn’t deliver a thing and set everything back at least a year? (Correct me if the duration of the Dark Age period is wrong but the point sticks) - They were unable to deliver and to quote myself as it is truly the best thing about crypto (which I myself plagarised)
In crypto its not about who you are but what you can deliver
Simple as that if you cannot deliver you are worthless, nuff said. Its a shame, Its peoples livelyhoods you may say. If they wanted to sit around and not deliver, maybe read a cool paper and do some research go into academia, join a bigtech company. Crypto is different, maybe its why my generation (doxxing myself rn but I’m wait for it Gen Z) love it. Crypto should be free from the bureaucracy and bullshit you find everywhere else, instead it should focus on what started this entire industry - an anon fighting for ideals in a world that lacked them (big up Satoshiiii).
- Rewarding the inability to deliver resulted in guess what, more ineptitude with regards to delivering the fucking product. For real if you continue to reward the people making decisions, failure after failure what do you expect but wait for it… MORE FAILURE.
Again it pains me to say this, it really does because I love the guy personally - even his knee high socks he’s so nice and caring - but Olshansky, if under management that cared about delivering the product would’ve been either:
- Demoted to an IC (Individual Contributor) due to his lack of result producing abilities as a leader, or
- Fired and replaced for someone who can focus and deliver
I can’t stress how much I love this guy, I genuinely am having difficulty writing this but numerous times Olshansky himself would ask me “Who do you feel like you work for?”, each and every single time I would reply “I work for the protocol, not Grove, I want what is best for Pocket Network” I was very often the one to challenge the team in their decisions - I was seen as the “voice of the community on the protocol team” and I was proud of that. I wish I could have done more to avoid the mess we are in now. I was against the pivot, I was against Olshansky’s push towards the OPStack (thank fuck we avoided that mess), I enjoy shutting people down I can’t lie it was fun to point out why all the ideas were dumb - I said lets either keep with V1 or use Cosmos-SDK for IBC. We settled on Rollkit because it was shiny - but it wasn’t ready for us so good thing we kept the backup plan of just using Cosmos right? Or is this something the Lead Developer, Staff Engineer, Super Senior He Could Date Your Dying Grandma Engineer, Lord of the Protocol Team, Chief Naming Officer (don’t get me started on our tiffs calling it Poktroll - especially now that its not even a rollup 
) Big Man Oldshansky SHOULD HAVE THOUGHT ABOUT JUST A LITTLE. The idea was to pivot and ship ASAP, good intentions - yet another poor execution. It wasn’t ready for us, it set us back. If this was the only misstep it is absolutely forgivable without question. But if you look back through the timeline how many years, where Grove supposedly focused on protocol development, were wasted due to poor decisions, poor execution and just plain ignorance on how to ship a protocol.
The reason this statement doesn’t sound correct is because in reality Grove never was focussed on shipping the protocol, maybe they would have hired more than 5 people to work on it. Maybe they would’ve used the DAO rebate to fund it - not just one of the following:
- Line their pockets
- Recoup tokens paid out to initial investors (a refund of sorts)
- Fund their Gateway (probably the most likely as the majority of the developers at Grove work on the Gateway)
Its not nice to say but let’s be real, when you’re startup becomes so uptight that being blunt, slightly dismissive of others, or fucking straight up rude and mean to others is more important than shipping your forever SOON™️ protocol release things have gone terribly wrong. Just to be clear here I was the blunt, dismissive, rude and mean one. I admit it but I am of the opinion that if you are becoming corporate before you’ve launched your fucking product thats a sign of bad leadership at all levels. So lets dive into that, leadership.
o_rourke wants to take control of Pocket, he failed miserably before, thankfully PNF picked up his mess and carried us somewhere respectable - a long way to go but god damn those guys did amazing work through bear and bull they shined. Big ups b3n, Dermot, JackALaing and Adrienne on god these guys did a lot if you cannot see that you are delusional.
@Cryptocorn correct me if I am wrong but wasn’t it under o_rourke’s initial tokenomics that the protocol was able to be bleed dry by mercenaries. The 1000% or whatever inflation Pocket came out the gate swinging with does not give me any hope that this guy knows a think about tokenomics - in fact it proves he knows not a thing. Read a book or something, read the forums, get active in the community and you (o_rourke) might realise this community IS INCREDIBLY KNOWLEDGABLE ABOUT TOKENOMIC AND ECONOMIC THEORY IN GENERAL. We have big brains like Cryptocorn and @RawthiL and others I am sure I’m omitting. We DO NOT NEED SOMEONE WHO NEEDED TO SELL HIS OWN HOUSE TO SECURE FUNDING FOR GROVE IN CHARGE OF THE TOKENOMICS OF THIS PROTOCOL. That is literally the dumbest thing we could do. Lets dive into that:
- Start company → fuck up tokenomics → push it onto someone else (PNF) and pretend to focus on protocol development
- Lie to everyone and focus instead on building out the Portal Gateway → Secretly integrate with other protocols → Give minimal resources to the team that you say are your priority → Hide from community for years and lie to them until called out publicly and are no longer able to hide from the mess you’ve made
- Decide forcing PNF to step down by threatening a fork (which would be the end of Pocket hands down) → Also consider launching $GROVE → Take 2? Maybe the community will respect you this time around
- Scrap that because community didn’t like the lies and deceivery → Instead ask to be voted into full control → No more paying the protocol → Take more money from the protocol with no promise of any return → Should I even continue at this point
o_rourke I once thought you seemed calm but more and more you seem in way over your head. I would never trust you with any authority or leadership in this ecosystem, if anyone does they are blind as to the mess we are in. YOU ACTIVELY SPOKE WITH INVESTORS ABOUT FORKING POCKET WHY, WHY, WHY SHOULD ANYONE TRUST YOU?
Lets chat on this: Instead of paying Grove who has failed miserably to ship Shannon - but like every other company got lost in the AI sauce, was misguided time and time again and displayed a complete lack of competence. Maybe heres a crazy thought - lets further decentralise the protocol. Fire the entire protocol team, anyone who wishes to stay now must work for PNF - the beef between Olshansky and others at Grove with @poktblade needs to be squashed because I think he should be on the protocol team ffs its silly how you don’t like the guy on god.
Im deadly serious reinstate all of PNF immediately, transfer control of the protocol team to them - if that means smaller wages so be it. I can find talented devs to come on. People who care about the protocol are more likely to work for a little less - who knows if we chuck in forcing you to resign we might see a price boom as investors see us cutting dead weight o_rourke would you even consider that? I mean if you truly care about Pocket you must be able to see your influence on the protocol has been a net-negative undoubtedly, irrefutably.
I will stop here for now and continue later. But I’ll end for now on this - I love this fucking protocol, I was devastated to leave working on it. But holy fuck what a mess you have made big boy, now its time for the adults to come and clean it up - sorry if I hurt anyones feelings in this post (I am not) I am expecting another ban from @Jinx for once again speaking the truth (fr tho unban me Michael admitted to all I said you’re being childish). I hope I can convince some people to see the light and take the steps we should’ve taken years ago. Had this been, dare I say it, Web2 Michael would’ve been replaced the dev team cycled through for people that can ship a product and we would all be enjoying Shannon not just starting to discover the mess o_rourke has made in his diaper. If even a single person tries to say this is strawmanning grow up - read the text and you will see I have simply spoken the unadulterated truth, my way.
Look out for part 2