Many people have spoken publicly about Jay, claiming to explain to us who he “really” is.
Sadly, I have had the opportunity to observe far too many times over the past few years that their opinions were almost always based on jealousy, speculation, and bad faith. They have in common a lack of knowledge of how a professional media outlet work. They also have in common the fact that they were unable to deliver even one tenth of what Jay brought to this ecosystem.
In my career, I had the opportunity to work for 15 years in the newsrooms of the largest European television groups, as well as in the film industry. And among all the people I worked with, Jay was by far the most sincere, respectful, and honest person. Not once did I ever have the slightest doubt about his integrity, nor about his total dedication to Polkadot.
I don’t understand, when seeing the workload Jay carried, how anyone can think he could have done all of that while being driven by a desire to steal common funds. For five years straight, without a single break, he sacrificed his family and social life to focus entirely on Polkadot and The Kus team. I saw it with my own eyes, on a daily basis for four years, and anyone had seen that his life was made up of travel and passionate work. How can someone call that a grifter? Who think all of that should be free? Because we live in the YouTube era, should all video content be only amateurish? Do you despise independent media to the point of thinking it shouldn’t be rewarded with a salary that matches the effort involved. Then should we also stop paying people who work on television? As far as I am concerned, I believe that Jay was massively underpaid during all these years.
Far from being a grifter, he is on the contrary a deeply generous person who founded projects like Wag Media, which allowed many other media outlets to get started and produce content in multiple languages.
At the beginning he was producing daily content alone, then we were four people, and after four years, we were more than twenty working relentlessly. I worked at The Kusamarian from the very first day, and at no point did I ever see the slightest irregularity. Jay was always more than upright, he was a pioneer of transparency in accounting. And he returned tens of thousands of dollars in surplus to the treasury without making any publicity about it, at a time when no one else but him did.
For years, he politely kept engaging in discussion with haters who were unable to tell the difference between the cost of running a company and the salary of an individual. People who talk loudly but have probably zero experience of running a business.
Jay always encouraged us to respond to these counterproductive agents only with kindness, politeness, and a pedagogical approach. He did this better than anyone else. For years, he endured harassment because he was also carried by all the people who loved him and valued his work. But everyone has a breaking point.
Sorry that you had to carry this fight alone Jay. I have never been comfortable speaking on social media.
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Le Compte de Monte-Crypto
Ex Chief Video Editor @ The Kusamarian 
