As always, I had a fantastic time at Polkadot Decoded; however, this was purely because I was surrounded by so many people who felt like family to me, not so much because of the event’s execution.
Forgive me if I demonstrate some inaccuracies or misunderstandings; I believe approximately €1.28m (see: Polkadot Decoded 2024 treasury spend tranche 1/2 | Polkassembly) was allocated towards the Decentered team led by Joern. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around this. While I believe it’s important to assume innocence until proven guilty, I am curious whether some form of thievery has occurred. I do believe that dishonest practices are taking place by Joern and/or his team to extract & essentially steal very large sums of money from the Polkadot community. I’m far from the only one concerned about this matter from what is being said across different ecosystem clusters & chats.
I think back to last year’s Decoded & the infamous concerns expressed by the community over funding both before and after the event. One specific instance I find interesting when recounting is when Madeline was approached by a member of ChaosDAO & asked why the community had to pay for food when ~$300k had been given to their team to cover food expenditures. The reasoning she gave was “because the community complained about spending,” implying that those expenditures were scrapped. I remember that after Decoded ended, Joern told the community that unspent funds would be returned pending a final spending report. Yet, more than a year later, I don’t recall a final spending report, let alone any funds being returned. In this case, I believe the community has a right to know 1) whom all intentionally lied regarding this matter and 2) what happened to the funds.
I am willing to amend this position, but only after an independent third-party auditor, approved by ChaosDAO (or another large collective of community members), thoroughly audits the event expenses. This includes investigating potential rate discrepancies among the vendors used and comparing their rates to those charged to past clients to ensure nothing was inflated beyond justification.
Even with approximately €1.28m in funding, there was no food or drinks (excluding those provided by ChaosDAO and food vouchers, which attendees had to pay money to receive). Event apparel was only available to those who bought a ticket (getting a free ticket for being an EthCC pass holder forfeited access to food vouchers and shirts). So, even though tens of thousands of euros were allocated for both of these areas, neither was free except for water. At least we had croissants last year, along with free soda & fruit. This year, just water. Keep in mind that last year, the deposits individuals paid to attend Decoded were refunded. This year, the costs people paid were kept by the Decentered team. I really don’t get one could execute things worse than the year before despite having the same budget & preserving more funds paid by attendees. Also, please remember that the Decentered team has received direct funding through the Decentralized Futures program.
Furthermore, and regardless of all previous statements, I believe Joern & his team have poorly executed events with large spends one time too many. The bottom line: I believe Joern should have nothing to do with Polkadot events, if not nothing to do with the ecosystem at all. I understand that this next statement isn’t the most constructive; however, the Decentered team isn’t that great at what they do. They’re capable but mediocre, and Polkadot needs to evolve beyond mediocracy.
While I also hold a stance that Joern & his team should essentially be blacklisted from the treasury until a third-party audit has been completed (as noted previously in this post), I believe that it’s more important to open up the possibility of hosting our flagship events by allowing multiple proposals to compete for the privilege. This will allow the community to choose which organizer(s) should host the ecosystem’s most important annual events while also allowing the community to compare costs & scrutinize proposals better through these comparisons.
For starters, I think everyone must vote “Nay” on the Decentered team’s request for Sub0 Pre-funding to ensure that another large pool of funds is already allocated towards this event. Otherwise, this will essentially eliminate the ability for competing proposals and heightened scrutiny through their comparisons.
