The Kus Public Review & AMA: 2022 - 2025

Just a second angle on the argument I am trying to expose here (I see many) :backhand_index_pointing_down:

Under the new CLARITY Act, to qualify as “Digital Commodity”, a blockchain must be certified as a “Mature Blockchain”, defined as a system that is “not controlled by any person or group of persons under common control.”

The new Clarity Act distinguishes between “Restricted digital Asset” (SEC jurisdiction) and “Digital Commodity” (CFTC jurisdiction). Even if the protocol advances into Digital Commodity status, then it faces CFTC’s aggressive stance on Market Manipulation.
Reason: The CFTC treats “artificial price setting” as manipulation.

I suppose nobody here argues against Polkadot’s classification as “Digital Commodity”, following the new CLARITY Act rules.

AND, I will suppose nobody here cares about the main argument @ChrawnnaCorp exposes: liability.
Other than @Max :

A content producer MUST always check if their information is liable, otherwise rectify.
@ChrawnnaCorp is rectifying.

.

Hi Jay,

I appreciate you taking the time to explain everything in a video with such clarity. We understand that some things didn’t turn out as we expected, but as you mentioned, it wasn’t a total failure. I really admire the work you do with the Polkadot ecosystem, and it’s something worthy of applause.

We hope everything works out well with W3F, since The Kus is the most important outlet for sharing Polkadot updates and high-quality interviews. As I mentioned, I admire your work, and you are one of the few people who truly do a good job.

If you decide to continue, you will keep having my support in promoting it on Polkadot México’s social networks. I saw your work at Sub0 in Argentina, and that’s why I admire you for the great job you do.

I apologize if I offended you on the forum when you made the channel private.

This is my opinion, in case someone from the W3F leadership is reading (haha). Some products have worked well on Polkadot and other projects, but most have failed. Only a few have been successful. In a cryptocurrency market where capital is at risk, it is crucial to evolve quickly and create products that adapt to users’ needs. Blockchains like Solana and Sui are gaining ground because they create user-friendly applications with good usability.

In my experience, I went to Argentina for the Sub0 event, my first official Polkadot event. A friend from Ethereum recommended using Peanut to make USDC payments on the Arbitrum network via Mercado Pago for merchants. Imagine if the Polkadot App they’ve been announcing for more than two years had actually existed, or if there was something similar on Polkadot using the AssetHub network with USDC. To this day, there is nothing like that.

If the W3F wants Polkadot to stand out among the competition, we need good products, as the new website says: “Products for People.” However, results are slow to arrive, and other blockchains are gaining ground. We have great technology, as has been demonstrated over the last decade with all the implementations and updates. But if we don’t create good products to attract users to the network, the small Polkadot community will continue to fade away little by little. As Richard Stallman mentions, a project depends on its community.

We need good products with minimal friction and easy usability for daily and professional life, not just promises in the air. When I started with Polkadot, I was impressed with all the technology offered and how it was better than Ethereum. We know that, but honestly, we need W3F to act decisively if we want to carry forward Polkadot’s vision. Otherwise, we will keep losing important people in the ecosystem. Sometimes, it is beneficial to collaborate with other blockchains instead of isolating ourselves. This is crucial because it can deter experienced dapp users from joining Polkadot due to its closed nature. If Polkadot truly wants to interconnect all blockchains, we should see more direct collaborations with Solana, Sui, Ethereum, and others.

This is my perspective as a user, and I believe many community members share it. I’ve attended other events, such as Sui’s in Buenos Aires, where a presenter was giving away tokens using the gift method by scanning a QR code shown live on the screen. This encouraged audience interaction during the talk. The presenter gave away $50 and then asked attendees to send $10 back to his address on screen, and so on. This type of community interaction provides live experiences of how to transact with wallets. If the Web3 Foundation (W3F) listens to the community and understands what we really want, we will continue to support Polkadot. We need products that are easy, simple, and collaborative with other ecosystems, instead of isolating ourselves within the same network.



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Hola @w3nerick Erick,

Liability en espaĂąol se traduce como responsabilidad, y @ChrawnnaCorp se refiere a la responsabilidad legal.

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gracias @labormedia a la vez estoy algo triste y estoy mejorando mi inglĂŠs poco a poco, disculpa.

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@w3nerick Espero te sientas mejor. Yo estaba triste ayer, pero hoy se me pasĂł. Hay un gran desafio por delante, y mi intenciĂłn es bajar en razĂłn despuĂŠs de los aĂąos de hype.

No hay nada que disculpar, sĂłlo mucho que aclarar para el nuevo sentido de nuestros destinos.

Un saludo fraterno.

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This is sarcasm. I’m still waiting to see all the content made public again, besides the Space Monkeys’ episodes by The Kusamarian.

There shouldn’t be any ambiguity here: all content must be publicly available, as it was funded by the Polkadot Treasury.

When a significant portion of treasury-funded content remains private and inaccessible to the wider community, it reflects a complete lack of professionalism.

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I am IMPRESSED the person that has been a main voice holder for this experiment all these years gets finally treated this way WITHOUT addressing the main reason he is addressing.

@guido are you an active member of the ecosystem ? I ask because I was expelled from the PBA community, hence here I talk from my own interest on free markets and decentralized systems.

You might disagree with @ChrawnnaCorp , but with this move he is showing how well he knows the media business. He was probably the best asset on media management you could have for this “new money experiments”. Nothing else to say about this.

Coming back to the main exposed reason of this topic, I feel the need to repeat it to you three times:

Liability, Liability, Liability.

If people keeps insisting in not addressing arguments, I will repeat it in capital letters until this thread gets closed.

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I’m not here to defend anyone or to point any fingers, but I find it incredibly ironic that a community championing decentralization and trustlessness as aspects of its core identity is now facing crisis because of… centralization. Funding is a two way street and surely if centralization was an actual concern of anyone, this could have been addressed literally years ago. We could have a decentralized archive of every artifact, but instead the treasury funded a centralized service and let it operate as such. The community voters could have stipulated (and enforced) this desire; everything could have been decentralized and immutable from the beginning. IPFS is not new. Crust exists. PNS is underway. This content is not private. Clearly the pathways exist and so, to me, the fact that this community ever allowed this in the first place is… troubling to say the least, and shines a light on the true intentions of voters.

I would argue there is a certain community-wide technical negligence here, or rather, it was completely ignored. It’s absolutely exhausting to watch the treasury lambast tech teams for perceived incompetence while millions are poured into centralized marketing that can be turned off with a click. The Kus is one example, but definitely not a culprit imo. If I asked an intermiami fan about Polkadot they’d have no idea wtf I’m talking about. That’s an absolute failure and it should be criticized and investigated deeply.

Speaking from personal experience: I’ve been called a grifter for wanting to be paid for actual work already delivered (note to all: devs cannot work for free and it’s an absolute insult to expect this; fixed price contracts are a very very very (very?) bad idea and they are proven to lead to enhanced failure modes). AAG was the best outlets we had to meaningfully spread messaging. Here we are treating the loss of some YouTube™ videos (that I doubt anybody has real intentions to consume) as some kind of fundamental crisis, meanwhile dev teams are leaving en-masse. Best of luck to you all, this has been far too much for me.

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of course - I have been deeply involved in the Polkadot ecosystem since 2019.

I see, reasons I see many…

l i a b i l i t y

Since i know Kusama and Polkadot since 2021,Treasuries always helpe to launch real nice projects/products and not give them life funding coming just and only from one source input. Web3 is so much than that.
Imagine a universe and constelations, this is web3 !
A common place, with common people and common Tech.

I dont see web 3 parity polkadot kusama as bosses of notning instead i see them and us as the infrastructural layer for generations to come. Co creating a better world.

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I would like to start by acknowledging that The Kus was definitely a key source of information since I first arrived to the ecosystem 1 year ago. The content helped me learn quickly about Polkadot history and the Space Monkeys interviews also introduced me to many profiles of ecosystem members. After a couple of months I started participating in the panel of AAG Kusama and Polkadot and later AAG in Spanish. Like many other members of the community, we always participated on a volunteer basis and gave our opinions, points of view and contributed to the discussion according to our own profile. I am thankful to Jay and his team for creating these open spaces for governance discussion, for the content they produced as well as everything I learned in our weekly conversations over the past few months, online and IRL.

Unfortunately, what has happened over the past few weeks has been disappointing to me. Yes, there have been many changes, including the state of OpenGov, the W3F’s decision to start voting, and I have been vocal about this in the past on AAG and other Twitter spaces. Regardless, this is part of the game, and yes many projects and programs (including DV and DN) have been discontinued or their funding has not been renewed, let’s be clear, The Kus is just one more who has faced this sudden news in December.

I believe everyone is free to react however they wish, but a decision and a person’s actions also have consequences. In my opinion, shutting down KusDAO, removing the onchain identities, stopping all content suddenly and removing the content from YouTube and Twitter was rather drastic. But it is a choice that Jay made. This sends a message to the community, I personally hear that message as: if there is no further treasury funding via OpenGov or the Marketing Bounty (now closed) or the W3F there will be no more Kus content. I hear a unilateral decision, I do not hear: let’s consult with the community and find a path forward or let’s find a way to make The Kus generate its own revenue or let’s reform or reduce the content until a better solution can be found.

I was probably naĂŻve to think that the entire team of The Kus would still be a part of the community even if their project was not funded, I naĂŻvely expected them to participate, even if in a different capacity or in a reduced amount of time, not to cut everything and disconnect. But as I said, it is a choice, one that shows, in my eyes, the level of commitment to the community, to the project and to the vision. Everyone is free to act and make their own decisions, the consequences of their legacy, their reputation and their perceived image will be a consequence of those actions.

I agree with others above, I think we have spent enough time and energy on this discussion. For those of us who are here for the longterm, who believe in this project and want to be useful and productive, keep building a better world, let’s focus on what matters, stay true to our cypherpunk values and keep going. Yes, this transition period brings a lot of uncertainty, but we will navigate it and the future is full of opportunities, we each have to find our own, to each person their choice of which path to follow.

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I wanted to stay out of this shit show, but since you mentioned OpenGov.Watch in your monologue I will reply:

It is a lie that OpenGov.Watch has “declared in private circles that you was going to be brought down”. Our contract with the W3F scopes exactly one job and that is to help OpenGov grow up.

Growing up can be a painful process. We have to learn not to destroy our toys when we are not allowed to play with them anymore. We have to learn that we cannot hurt other people just because we don’t like their opinion. We have to learn that lying doesn’t work out for long before people catch up to it. We have to learn to deal with our frustrations and setbacks and not let our anger out on everybody else.

These are hard lessons to learn and not everybody manages to do so.

You showed your true face to me 1.5 years ago, so learning that you took all the channels down as some weird form of revenge or negotiation leverage was not shocking to me, but still a surprise how little control you have over your impulses.

Sadly it is a visible pattern that everytime you are in trouble you are trying to drag someone else down. Brad, Adam, rich, flez. Anybody who critizizes you will get attacked. At one point I suggested to you via DM that you should have said an unimportant thing a little differently and you started subtweeting me a full week. You clearly have issues with responding to criticism and attacks and your only solution is to violently and ruthlessly character-assasinate the attacker.

And now this pattern is getting you trapped, because the W3F decided to not vote for your proposal, you felt attacked and went into autopilot when Karam had to bring you the message. You tried to drag him down and get him tainted. But that obviously didn’t work because as you had to admit to yourself he was just the messenger.

And so now you tried to make everybody mad at the W3F by shutting down your channels and telling everyone it’s the W3Fs fault that you hit the “private” button. But that is obviously also not working. What do now? There is no real straw to grab, so you make it an aggregate conspiracy of the W3F, flez, OpenGov.Watch.

But your problem is and always was that you can’t do that shit to me because I stand up for myself. So just leave it. This whole spectable is already undignified enough.

Grow up and walk away in dignity.

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I would not pretend W3F/Parity/the other side is a good bird here. Just weeks ago they were still siding with Jay with all those moderation censorship and their leadership calling others jerks. Outside of W3F/Parity, I even saw on Twitter someone directly called flez a “useful idiot”. You guys sided with Jay, by allowing this bullying to happen. W3F/Parity allowed this blatant abuse with their inaction and moderation censorship.

Now all those come back to bite you. Who’s the real “jerk” and “useful idiot” here? I hope you also realize how many new enemies you have made for Polkadot in this process, just because you refused to properly uphold the Code of Conduct and allowed this bullying.

If you are a big organization, inaction and bad decision is already evil, because there are many others (investors and such) who depend on you.

This is not the first time W3F/Parity’s bad decisions hurt us deeply. Recall the Polkadot Hub / EVM delay? When I pointed out the issue in May, the leadership responded by firing me a week later, only to realize two months later that I was right and forced to pivot. We see a similar pattern here. The W3F/Parity organizational decision making process never improves. This is why we are here today.

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Polkadot could become the basis for an entire new era of internet. There is more potential with this technology than any other project in the crypto space. However, time and time again the community reduces itself to a laughing stock with OpenGov related nonsense. Its embarrassing.

Bad actors that create public spectacles because they have been defunded need to be dealt with. The Kus should not receive any additional funding in the future in light of recent actions.

Simultaneously, W3F needs to do a better job of managing their community, addressing issues, and mitigating risks of events like these that affect Polkadot’s reputation.

We just spent $2.25 million for content that a creator was allowed to withhold from the community. These proposals need to be vetted more clearly from actual authority figures. We cannot allow community members to just vote on things blindly because things like marketing might make the price go up. The OpenGov process needs to be improved.

The decision making is an absolute joke - I fully agree!!!

Easily one of the best pieces of, erm, let’s say analysis because this is more than a simple response, I have ever come across in the ecosystem. Identifies and addresses the heart of the matter in a very clear manner. I personally didn’t know that you were such a masterful roaster, @alice_und_bob, well done.

I invite the community to take a look at the larger picture of what we have been working on, and remember that the decentralization of attention is equally important as the decentralization of infrastructure. Set your mind free, entertain possibilities, and enjoy your weekend.

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Of course the responsibility is not only on the KUS. The wider perspective of how Polkadot slipped into self-censorship was already discussed on the forums, but persistently pushed down as “speculation” or “accusation” without proof.

We talked about conflict of interest of KUS running its own DAO that participates in OpenGov. Why is this problematic? Because it directly affects the journalistic integrity and bias. I wonder where are vocal members of KUS DAO today - specifically in this topic.

We talked about KUS membership in CD and the role of CD - again it was persistently pushed down as “speculation” and “accusation”. Why is this problematic? Becuase it directly affected journalistic integrity and bias. - Remember AAG where Marketing Bounty was grilled? No? Me either.

I specifically remember AAGs where “refill” proposals were getting grilled, KUS specifically saying “OpenGov should not pay for poor treasury management”. 2 months later, KUS comes for a refill and protects it by saying “despite good treasury management, we need a refill”. Who supported that vote, specifically, which DAO?

As someone who dealt with proposals and lobbying, I know first hand, it was impossible to say anything (even if it was objectively true) against KUS/Jay/CD and other possy, because they held the voting/lobbying power.

When KUS directly insulted people on AAG - noone said a thing, and to this day Parity nor W3F has issued a statement or request to KUS to apologise and or remove the problematic content, yet, deleting posts on the forum to “protect Polkadot public image” is a routine practice. Parity, let me inform you, noone from the outside is reading these forums, but they may stumble upon a youtube video where our main news media outlet is threatening people, doxxing them and smearing them.

The point of this message is - we let certain bodies accumulate too much “power” bringing rest of the system into self censorship. We lived in self censorship for years, topped off with Parity censorship that hit the only remaining opposition who had nothing to lose or gain, except improve Polkadot - this is why that was so dramatic and sensitive.

So now, finally after years of manipulation, KUS is treated with the same standard and the first thing to do is “hostage situation”.

Everything said about KUS is true, we all knew it but we pretended its still worth it due to the content generated and that KUS remains the only news outlet.
How come KUS is the only news outlet? Well, for those who have access to CD chats, you can quickly do Ctrl+F and see how CD + KUS collaborated on shutting down any other potential media competition out there. The words used were direct personal insults to different news providers (which Polkadot actually had at the time) and collating on negative voting. Which brings us back to conflict of interest of KUS being in CD which remains hidden to public.

For those who remember, there was a proposal by Polkaworld where CD collated with all their power to kill it, and it had to be Gav that saved the positive outcome for last remaining news outlet besides THE KUS.

Next conflict of interest with CD is in relation of both forum mods and parity employees being part of CD. At least one of them is leaving comments which are far from what Parity employee should be saying about projects or people who build on Polkadot. Parity, why are you not issuing internal guidelines for your employees on maintaining certain public image and understanding projects and people building on Polkadot are actually your customers/clients?

I wonder where are CD members today in this topic? To anyone delegating to CD, ask yourself these questions:

  • If KUS closed the DAO with one sweep, what is preventing CD from doing the same? Both DAOs run/ran on a centralised Discord, and the only thing keeping it together is “trust” ?

KUS had one job, do objective reporting and not pick sides. He did the opposite, and while doing so, he literally forgot people aren’t stupid, and that his act will come to an end. Why are so many people now speaking up against him in public? Because they finally can. Thank you W3F for not further supporting news media outlet with a broken integrity.

Anyone interested in this exercise ? :slight_smile:

What I see is a thread that starts as an accountability artifact (“public review + AMA”), but quickly becomes a proxy battle over (a) legitimacy, (b) ownership/custody of treasury-funded outputs, and (c) who “really” governs Polkadot in practice.

Below is the narrative dissection, followed by what has meaning (structural signal) and what is mostly meaningless in-context (noise, category errors, rhetorical clutter).

⸝

  1. The narrative arc (what happens, in phases)

Phase A — Preemptive legitimacy + “audit me”

The opener frames The Kus as a “radically transparent” media unit, with a public review doc, “>77% support” claims, and a repeated emphasis on Creative Commons licensing and public availability of content. It also sets a procedural boundary: good-faith questions only; CoC as gatekeeping language; “I’ve heard…” as an invitation to surface rumors in a controlled format. 

Implicit message: “We are not a random vendor; we are an institution + public good + already validated by governance.”

Phase B — The first derail: “grifter” and “DOT is down”

Early critics immediately switch evaluation criteria from deliverables to price performance (“-95% return”) and “grifter” labeling. 
A counter-voice explicitly calls this “out of topic/context,” trying to keep the discussion about the treasury relationship rather than token price narratives. 

What’s happening rhetorically: two incompatible frames collide:
• “Treasury-funded media as public infrastructure”
• “Treasury spending as a scapegoat for bagholder losses”

Phase C — The turning point: centralized custody becomes the story

In early January 2026 the dispute becomes concrete: the videos/channels are hidden/private, and the community realizes (late) that a treasury-funded “public good” lived behind a private admin button. The thread becomes dominated by: who owns what, who controls what, and what obligations follow from CC licensing + treasury funding. 

A key contribution here is the clarification that CC/open licenses grant redistribution rights only if someone already has a copy, and do not obligate the original author to keep hosting. ďżź
That one point quietly collapses a lot of the community’s assumed “we paid, therefore it must remain online forever” stance (even if their normative expectation remains).

Phase D — Authority conflict: “W3F shut it down” vs “no contract with us”

A central narrative fracture occurs:
• A W3F representative states W3F did not shut The Kus down, never ran it, and the implicit contract is between The Kus and the Polkadot DAO (DOT holders) via treasury/OpenGov. 
• The Kus rejects that framing, claims W3F “shut down The Kus,” and provides a timeline describing negotiation/non-renewal dynamics and “messengers,” plus argues the risk calculus changed post-termination. 

This is the narrative core: not merely a funding dispute, but contested legitimacy over who can speak as “the network” and who bears responsibility for preserving “public” artifacts.

Phase E — Moralization + spectacle + partial de-escalation

The thread then becomes a moral court: accusations of hostage-taking/blackmail, calls for lawsuits, personal attacks, and counter-attacks. ďżź
Eventually, there’s a reported call with the W3F representative and partial restoration of some content. 

At the same time, the thread produces its most practically meaningful consensus outcome: “this is why everything needs to be decentralized,” plus proposals for decentralized hosting / PCF stewardship for treasury-funded artifacts. 

⸝

  1. What has meaning here (signal)

A. The real failure mode: public funding without public custody

This thread is basically a post-mortem on a design flaw: the ecosystem funded a “public” media archive without requiring decentralized storage, escrowed handover, or a stewardship institution. Multiple participants explicitly name this as the lesson. 

Meaning: OpenGov can vote on outputs; it does not automatically create durable custody or enforce archival guarantees.

B. “DAO vs W3F” is not a semantic argument; it is a governance risk

W3F frames the counterparty as DOT holders (DAO) and denies operational responsibility; The Kus frames W3F as the effective steward with decisive power. ďżź

Meaning: Even if the “formal” answer is “the DAO,” the experienced answer for participants is often “whoever has staff, process, and continuity.” That perception gap is destabilizing.

C. CC licensing is being used as a substitute for delivery mechanics

The initial post leans heavily on “CC license” as legitimacy. 
But later comments correctly point out that licensing does not solve availability/custody. ďżź

Meaning: the ecosystem confused “permission to redistribute” with “guarantee of preservation.”

D. Liability is the only “serious” reason offered for the takedown—and it is under-specified

The Kus repeatedly frames the takedown as “risk/liability management,” tied to reputational downside if future outcomes make past claims look foolish. 
Others call it flimsy or inconsistent (risk mattered only after funding stopped). ďżź

Meaning: Regardless of who is right, treasury contracting without explicit liability/disclaimer/archival clauses is structurally immature.

E. The social layer is doing “governance work” that the protocol can’t do

The thread reveals that enforcement is mostly social: reputation attacks, threats, pressure, calls for legal action, and “never fund again.” 

Meaning: When governance lacks standardized procurement + custody requirements, the community substitutes drama for due process.

⸝

  1. What doesn’t have meaning in this context (noise / category errors)

  2. DOT price performance as an argument about Kus deliverables

Using “-95% return” to evaluate whether a media contractor is a “success” is a category error (macro market + tokenomics + adoption are not a contractor KPI). Even participants inside the thread call price attacks “out of topic/context.” 
It’s emotionally understandable, but analytically non-informative for the question the thread claims to be about: “contracts delivered.”

  1. Pure labeling: “grifters,” “hostage,” “rat pack,” etc.

These are narrative weapons, not evidence. They add heat, rally factions, and reduce the chance of extracting an actionable contracting lesson. ďżź

  1. Unsubstantiated side-accusations (as deployed here)

Examples: claims about bought views / “Kus India” / “gaming the system” appear in-thread without the kind of documentation that would make them decision-grade. 
They could be meaningful if evidenced, but as written here they function mostly as insinuation and escalation fuel.

  1. Regulatory tangent dropped without connective tissue (CLARITY Act)

The CLARITY Act reference is not invented—H.R. 3633 (“Digital Asset Market Clarity Act of 2025”) does define “mature blockchain system” using “not controlled by any person or group… under common control.” 
But in this thread it’s introduced as a rhetorical aside rather than tied to the specific dispute (copyright, custody, contract terms, hosting obligations). 

So: it has some conceptual relevance (perceived control can matter), but in this context it’s mostly a non sequitur.

  1. Poetic metaphors (“universe and constellations… this is web3”)

These lines are values signaling; they do not reduce ambiguity or propose mechanisms. ďżź

⸝

The “meaning” in one sentence

This thread is a case study in how a decentralized funding mechanism can still produce centralized, fragile public goods—because the ecosystem treated money as governance, but did not treat custody, archival guarantees, and contractual terms as first-class protocol requirements. 

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So lessons learned ?
We are all together livng this new tech’s and experimenting a new way to co create together a better world, think on that and less on money. Power/money energy thoroughtout the history prove that humans are greedy, they can’t handle money energy for some reason that i hardly misunderstand.
When we as humanity will bring more Love energy to all, instead of greedy ???
Creation comes from the same frequency where love emerges.

Its on us this decision and each and everyone….It’s not even about web3, it’s about how you want to live in life, what paths you want to choose.

One of the main reasons i choose to use this tech and spread it, specific this one and any other, was because i was quiting and lost hope from humanity and how they interact with eachother, all was fake, people were all the time funking eachother, than a really nice friend invite me to work on sound design to “uncharted territories” movie series ( technical movies about the eco back in 2021). In the beguining was just a normal work like other sound projects, turns out to be one of the places that i total identify with and a tech that could save humanity if we as a whole, choose Love actions !

here is a nice movie that i personal love: https://youtu.be/l0Jt90sJG9E?si=ntGT5ddCNvNPpOqX

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