I like both @ambimorph and @peacemonger and think they have made substantial contributions to the ecosystem. I see 2 main underlying problems that contribute to the conflict here.
- Political centralization - too much power and influence by a small group of people who shouldn’t be as relevant in a thriving and vibrant ecosystem. Too much Zooko influence, too much forum moderation hair-splitting, too much centralization in governance. Not enough decentralized, programmatic governance, too much backroom poltical dealing.
- Large grants that are designed to be liquidated and used as USD income by a small number of people. Grants which involve more and more people circulating native ZEC and not just working for USD income, balances, expenses should be preferred.
I don’t have much to suggest right now in the way of solutions. But, i think this squabble is just a downstream outgrowth of these deeper problems.
I could connect these problems to my experience with free2z. Our grant was a small number of people (ZCG) granting a small number of people (2Z Inc) a fairly large USD income (the transfer is in ZEC but it is reported as USD income). Free2Z started as a closed-source for-profit. The original idea was definitely “worth a try” and we still will have some energy to continue on and take new paths in 2025. In hindsight though, a better design would have been to do it as a fully open-source community project from the beginning that was meant for 100s or even 1000s of people to contribute to the building and marketing with a defined way to earn ZEC.
My experience has probably been similar in a lot of ways with David and Natasha. Hard-working experts doing the best they can under the circumstances. But, this small-group-gets-substantial-income grants design is suboptimal not just because it doesn’t necessarily deploy capital in the most efficient way, not only because it breeds political positioning and backroom conspiracy theories, not only because it is fundamentally centralized, but it also puts huge psychological pressure on the grant recipient and makes them public figures up for infinite criticism and second-guessing.
What’s the latest on the lockbox?