This topic is temporarily closed for at least 4 hours due to a large number of community flags.
My support goes to every community member who, over the years, has contributed in any way to keeping the name, the brand, and all the technical and non-technical aspects of Polkadot alive around the world.
To you at The Kus, and to everyone else, I offer my full solidarity and a heartfelt THANK YOU.
Iâve had a few opportunities to speak with Jay over the past two years a genuinely pleasant, approachable and knowledgeable person.
That said, there seems to be a fundamental error in judgment: people are quick to criticize those who genuinely tried to do something positive, while overlooking the many challenges that were faced and solved in the absence of any real, central leadership.
8 Likes
That's because you think Polkadot has to be a TV channel. The official polkadot account and its ambassadors are sufficient for ecosystem news.
1 Like
Human nature works like this: tell everyone that Iâm a scammer, and people will instead start convincing themselves that this person is not a scammer.
Of course, thereâs also the âgroup-huggingâ rhetoric among scammers themselves, which ends up persuading people who donât understand the situation to believe he isnât a scammer either.
The evidence is plain and concrete: turning statements that guests have already made into interview questions (statements that can be found with a simple search), producing simplistic videos with very low view counts, offering no substantive content, and then taking millions of dollars from the treasury. Do you really think such low-view, low-quality videos are worth that kind of money?
Look only at the basic facts. Donât fill in the gaps with imagination or fantasy.
4 Likes
For the past 3 years I have watched AAG on a weekly basis, Monday kusama time, thursday polkadot aag and sunday spacemonkies.
I want to show my support for the content that the Kus puts out:
who else has produced the same amount of high quality polkadot related content?(Other ecosystems are spending way more on what is in my opinion bullshit click bait content with no real value but then to steal your attention, this is not the case here, rather other way around here we have the kus producing indept high quality content with projects building around the polkadot ecosystem)
AAG has been the platform for community discourse around opengov proposal, where will teams now go and present there proposals, while interacting with the community? The kus is continuously over-delivering and makes sure that atleast I stay up to date with all things polkadot(via the weekly news, there is no other account that keeps a broad eye on the ecosystem like the way the kus produces its news summaries).
During my time in the Ecosystem I have interacted and talked to Jay a lot of times and i have 0 negative things to say about him or the commitment to the polkadot ecosystem that the Kus have.
I want to publicly show my support for the Kus and hope that AAG will remain in some form or another, as loosing AAG and not replacing it with something else would be a net loss for Polkadot.
~flipchan
3 Likes
The KUS was an amazing show â I personally loved everything they did, JAYâS work was excellent, but after looking at the numbers the show didnât hit the numbers I thought it had unfortunately. Now l watched AAG and looked at posts on X and I didnât like the tune of what was being implied. Polkadot DOT wonât fail because The KUS has been defunded and anyone who thinks that is the case hasnât got a clue, Parity are obviously trying to move things forward so letâs support that. Jay earned a lot for his good work â I wouldnât ruin the good reputation you have by implying things that are not true. Also the DOT community are like little brats. LET US GET BEHIND WHAT PARITY ARE DOING!
1 Like
What numbers did you look at?
I very much agree DOT wonât fail because Kus has been defunded. In the final KusNews episode I laid out a fact-based state of the DOT token going into 2026. Anyone holding DOT beyond this point should consider it.
I stand by what I said on AAG this week that the entire project rests on Parity from here and those who believe in Polkadot should support them.
1 Like
I donât mean the financial numbers more so the actual views of the content which was produced- I understand that price plays a big role in this.
I listened to the playlist Parity posted and like Gavin said a lot of people with little bags moan and want a say when they have nothing on the line.
This is not an attack on you I really like what you did - but Parity has decided to move on theyâve implemented the Hard Cap and I believe they are moving in the right direction!
You replying to posts on X saying you are looking for something more long term is not a good look - you got paid and had unlimited access to a lot of influential people, sometimes in business things go in different directions.
Please refrain from insinuations it doesnât look good!
1 Like
Not sure what youâre meaning on several counts here.
If you care about views:
Lifetime YouTube views: 42.7M
Lifetime X video Views: 55M
The Hard Cap is something I personally initiated and lobbied for. Here is the ref.
I have not said I am looking for something âmore long termâ and Iâm not arguing funding should continue. I donât know what insinuations you are referencing.
4 Likes
The decline of DOT is partly a direct consequence of decisions such as paying large amounts of the token to people like KUS. It is reasonable to assume that most of the DOT received has been sold, because no one works for free and expenses are not paid with ideals. This creates constant selling pressure on the token.
It is undeniable that KUS has done a good job in terms of production and video quality, but the issue is not content quality, it is the costâimpact ratio. Polkadot is clearly going through a crisis and needs to cut spending, not continue allocating disproportionate amounts of money to initiatives whose real impact on the ecosystem is practically nonexistent.
Any creator, including KUS, can continue uploading videos to YouTube and monetize them through views, just like everyone else. It is not reasonable for a network that has not been successful to pay huge sums to sustain creators who can perfectly earn a living on their own. The âecosystem promotionâ argument does not hold when the ecosystem, objectively, has not taken off.
One can acknowledge that good work was done and still state that the amount of money Polkadot paid is outrageous. It does not matter that part of it went into video production: if the end result is not adoption, growth, or ecosystem success, then the spending is not justified.
50 million YouTube views mean nothing if Polkadot continues to fail. Views do not sustain a network, do not generate real usage, and do not prevent the ecosystem from dying. If the ecosystem ultimately collapses, all that money will simply have been wasted, regardless of how well-produced the content was.
For all these reasons, we do not approve the return of funding to any media personality, because continuing down this path will only keep us trapped in a spiral of spending and the death of DOT.
2 Likes
The views over the life time arenât all that.
You replied to a comment about not leaving the eco with â I am looking for something more long termâ or something along those lines. ( I donât take screenshots )
Listen I really liked your work so donât take it personal Iâve praised you in this thread, I just didnât like your tone but emotions run high I understand.
Everything youâve done before your final AAG was excellent I just feel you let yourself down in that show and on X with some replyâs you made.
I am not attacking you, Iâll say it again the work you did was great 
1 Like
Exactly!
Sad to see this post became a DOT price discussion, as if one of the few relevant (personally) and minor uses of treasury money would move the price move in any way or form. I thought price discussion wasnât relevant in this forum.
Proof of Personhood canât come soon enough to mitigate anons derailing discussions.
Personally, the KUS has been one of the only consistently useful info sources for Polkadot users in recent years, more than many more official channels. Really sad to see it go; Iâm concerned itâll speed up the attention drop around Polkadot in the Web3 space. At least for me, it might be so. Hopeful the actual products mentioned win us over!
6 Likes
I was hoping with all the info and data provided Iâd get the opportunity to answer some serious questions. Otherwise, thanks for the positive comments. All the best!
4 Likes
Iâve worked in multiple ecosystems over the years, and Jayâs shows are the only blockchain-related media Iâve ever been able to watch.
4 Likes
Whatâs happening?
All videos at âThe Kusâ youtube channel is gone.
Twitter account locked.
1 Like
Hi. Yes, the videos have been taken down at the moment for liability reasons and unfortunately funding for the storage of the public repository of Kus Content was abruptly halted at the end of the year. Please reach out to Web3 Foundation for recovery of any archived content.
5 Likes
Was it taken down because of liability reasons or because of funding? If it is about funding, what does it cost to bring back the public archive?
Liability. I have on numerous occasions received legal advice that my position in the eco was a risk. I often joked that going to jail would make great content!
That risk calculation now looks a lot different, however. No idea why transfer of assets was not considered by W3F before funding of repository was shut off - seems like an oversight. Please reach out to them to arrange resolution.
1 Like