Skepticism Sundays - raising the standard of debate, argument and critique of ideas in the ecosystem

[rich]

@tomaka

It’s interesting because Shawn brings up only technical questions, while it’s not at all what came to my mind and I would have brought up mostly “philosophical”/“fundamental” questions such as:

If we’re going to cut, then lets cut deep. Some provocations:

• No one has any clear idea of what ‘Polkadot’ even is.

  • Is it the relay chain?
  • Is it the relay chains and the system chains?
  • Is it the relay chains, the system chains and the parachains?
  • Is it everything built on Substrate including solo-chains?
  • Is it every DOT holder?
  • Is it everything funded by DOT?
  • Is it Kusama?
  • Is it all of the contributors?
  • Is it the brand?™
    • Trademarks of Polkadot and Kusama are owned by W3F on behalf of ‘the community’.
    • When ‘the community’ suggested launching a new Kusama website, we were initially told we can’t - we can so lets put that to rest, we’ll just wait for the PR disaster that is a ‘cease and desist’ letter.
    • On further prodding with W3F lawyers on this topic (among others see below) it seems there could be support if ‘the community’ supported it.

• Why should we respect the opinions, design strategies and vision of anyone employed at Parity/W3F who have never actually been a part of the process that is on-chain governance systems?

• How can you possibly hope to design A Better Treasury System when you do not step inside the mechanisms you are designing and experience what it’s like to sustain work, a business or a project through funding?

• What is the legal status and liabilities of the treasuries, and of the DAOs built on and around Polkadot and Kusama and indeed DAOs such as KappaSigmaMu and The Fellowship?

@laurogripa

We did discuss in the past the possibility of becoming a sort of DAO and managing the funds with proposals and members voting, but we received a no-go from Parity/W3F regarding concerns with regulations. In order to be clear of any regulatory implications, it would basically require every member to be KYC’ed before letting them vote, which would be a pretty annoying and contradictory thing to do on a privacy-preserving pseudo-anonymous society.

• Why do we continually feel the need to kneel at the feet of the ‘bold visionaries’ who are cower at the sidelines of the systems they design or move their operations to some legal/tax haven letting ‘the community’ act as the true canaries in the coal mine?

• Why is there not some basic consideration regarding a duty of care of the sort you would expect with a truly public minded endeavour, especially given the lack of experience of most contributors?

• There is an ever increasing bureaucratic state - a box ticking culture that has zero understanding of the incentives and design systems required to cultivate the chaos that is essential for creative invention.

• Media output has to date has been myopic - thinly veiled attempts to market a token, through the theatre of independence and the hope of continued token holder benevolence when it comes to consistent funding.

• There is vanishingly little independent thinking, critique or challenge that is required for genuinely ‘public media’ that exists to hold the powerful to account, not bend down and shine their shoes.

• Polkadot is corporate. It is boring. It is everything it claims to critique, resist and subvert.

• “Web3” is a disaster as it is currently marketed and implemented - a slow moving car crash that will compound and accelerate all the worst aspects of the attention economy, adding direct financial incentives on top of social media creating increasing division, tribalism and a civil-society dumpster fire.

@tomaka

• Would you be sad if Polkadot suddenly disappeared tomorrow?

No, but I would be sad if all the talented people decided to go and work for Deloitte, Heathrow Airport and Sony as highly paid consultants.

• Is it really a good thing to build something unstoppable?

Much of Polkadot is unfixable - “distribution is destiny”, but the people, talent and ideas are fluid. In the end the only constant is change, its all just a story, it just depends what story we want to tell - what matters most, the mission or the marketcap?