There were serious allegations raised by @ArtSabintsev on the ecosystem call yesterday and in what we understand was a private campaign of calls that took place over the last 24 hours.
We want to bring these allegations out into the open, address them as best we can, and give the community a chance to discuss recent developments.
When conversations happen behind closed doors or even in public forums, with intimations of secret knowledge and insight, it creates information asymmetry that makes good decision making impossible for all. And the distraction involved, as we seek to detangle valuable signal from insinuation and noise, is harmful.
This post will strive to start a process, but we invite you to join us at the community call today at 11am EST in the POKT Network discord server to hold us to account publicly, openly, and transparently. In line with our shared values.
Allegation of “mismanagement of funds”
We’ll start with this as it is probably the most serious of the allegations. @ArtSabintsev used this inflammatory term when suggesting that PNF were not spending responsibly and was too quick to bring in consultants to support our activities.
We publicly account for every line of spend, openly and transparently. We will always do so, and any element of that spend is open to your scrutiny and your challenge.
However, PNF is a team of 5, and we have a huge agenda that we are driving through. We are committed to avoiding bloat in the foundation. In addition to community contributions, that means contracting expert talent where needed to accelerate our progress.
We’re happy to discuss any concerns openly on the call.
Allegation of a “lack of technical leadership” in PNF
While we haven’t seen any material complaints about failings in our strategy, we absolutely want and need more technical leadership in PNF. It is something we are actively addressing. Especially as we continue to decentralise things like protocol development and move towards the credible neutrality that is required in an expanding Gatewayverse.
We understand that this process also involves a shift in locus of control over time, back towards the DAO, the community, and PNF as ecosystem stewards. This will inevitably cause friction among invested parties. That is natural and understandable and we will continue to do what we can to ease the process and provide confidence.
We hoped that Matteo was the answer when he joined the Foundation last June. We now have a much better idea of what we need (a senior technical leader) and what the protocol team needs (an awesome “get shit done” PM type, eg @shane !).
Trying to find one person to do both didn’t work out.
We are working with two recruitment firms and activating our networks to hire a new technical director to sit within PNF. Two interviews have taken place already.
We believe that the right technical hire for this role will want to become a Director, but if we meet an amazing technical leader who can tick all the boxes but doesn’t want to take a Director role, we can be flexible.
We could have done better communicating all of this, which we will learn from.
Allegation of a lack of transparency in Director changes
Art claimed he wasn’t aware of @b3n ’s appointment, the DAO observer appointment process, or PNF’s plan to bring in more talent (including Technical leadership) in parallel with the observer process.
There have been posts about all of this on the forum (November update, December update, the post about Ben directly two weeks ago, January update on board processes) and mentions on every community call since the end of November.
PNF also holds bi-weekly calls with Grove leadership to support protocol development and discuss ecosystem evolution etc.
We understand that it can be difficult for many of our stakeholders, who don’t enjoy bi-weekly calls with PNF, to stay abreast of all of the changes and workstreams in the DAO. If there are any other ways that we can highlight these, please continue to share this with us and we will work to do better.
For example, @Jinx made a very valid point about missing the Technical Leadership figure because the title of the post felt less relevant. We could have done more to call attention to this.
Allegation of a lack of community representation
In an open system like ours, where the DAO can directly force appointment/removal votes, observers can have a lot of influence. We expect the DAO-appointed board observer to have a big role in shaping PNF’s future, which is exactly what we want.
We presume that this is an unfortunate misinterpretation as the process clearly sets out that anyone can submit (provided that they aren’t a scammer essentially) and that the DAO will vote to approve their preferred choice. We doubt that anyone would suggest that PNF would ever rig the process.
Vague allegations of ineffective performance
It is (perhaps intentionally) difficult to address these since they are never fully articulated.
But we understand that @ArtSabintsev has suggested privately recently in 1:1 calls that he has concerns about PNF’s performance.
We strongly believe that private calls are not the right way to go about this and would like to invite @ArtSabintsev to bring any legitimate concerns into the open, to substantiate them, and give us a chance to address them openly and without politics.
Implied allegation of cronyism over the proposal of Ben as Director
@nelson stepping down as a Director left a gap that @b3n is well qualified to fill.
Our full rationale is in the forum post, but I’m sharing a couple of headlines here for ease.
And:
As you’ll see in that post, appointing Ben isn’t a zero sum exercise.
TL;DR
We are at an exciting point in the evolution of POKT Network.
Anything that helps us raise our game and accelerate towards that will always be welcome.
Anything that doesn’t, that isn’t shared in good faith, is a distraction that hurts our collective ambition and that should be called out as such and put an end to.
