The operational freeze of the Oversight committee and myself, voted by AADAO internal
governance, is now in effect. I will honor it and I admire AADAO collective wisdom and
resilience in navigating such a complex time. Furthermore, I’m happy to fully collaborate with
the ongoing investigation and help the team shed light on the circumstances that caused this
extraordinary situation.
Now that the entire situation is public (it should never have been if properly managed internally), I want to shed light on some of the events that led to it. The mistake I made a few months ago was to not ask Patricia Mizuki to resign after committing multiple ethical violations. Back then, I wanted to protect the team from internal politics.
Our scope of work has significantly expanded in 2024 and I did everything I could to shield
my collaborators from distractions so they could stay laser focused on their work. I realize
now how big of a mistake it was.
Below what I consider to be grave failures that disqualify the 2 members of the Oversight:
Patricia Mizuki failures
A. forcing herself into the performance bonus pool
B. Trying to change the retention pool period of reference to maximize her financial benefit, where she would have been the only one to benefit. At the same time, that change, if
implemented, would have negatively impacted all AADAO members eligible for the 2024
retention allocation.
C. Sharing individual salaries and bonuses on a public slack channel (with twisted numbers,
to damage my own reputation and undermine my leadership), hence breaking basic
confidentiality and social peace best practices within the organization.
The combination of A and B above resulted in an oral warning to Patricia on a call (February
23rd.)
Grace Yu failures
A. Intentionally rushed the publishing on an inflammatory report instead of attempting to
resolve the issue internally. By doing so, she has severely damaged the trust
between Oversight and the AADAO team on one end and between AADAO
contributors and their leadership on the other end. This approach is completely at
odds with protecting the best interests of AADAO and the ATOM community.
B. Selective prosecution: Didn’t investigate Patricia’s alleged failures (see above) when
reported by Youssef Amrani. Oversight, by nature, is supposed to be the body with
the highest ethical standards and allegations of serious misconduct by an Oversight
member by the GM should have been processed by the Elected Oversight member
with as much diligence as the investigation into the GM himself.
C. Intentionally broke communication lines between GM and his team in order to isolate
him. By doing so, Grace started a shadow leadership that left the team confused and
fearful.
D. Encouraged Patricia Mizuki to publish salaries with the entire team, breaking basic
confidentiality and social order rules.
E. Clear COI with involvement in ATOM ONE, a direct fork of the Hub whose founder
rage quitted the ATOM community.
As an ATOM-focused organization, AADAO’s primary goal should be to preserve and
maximize the value of ATOM and the Cosmos Hub.
The recent actions by Oversight, which we assume should be aligned with the success of
ATOM, undermined this mission by scaring away ATOM holders and prospective investors
while seriously disrupting (some would say put to a halt) AADAO operations. Oversight
actions are deeply troubling and raise questions about their commitment to maintaining the
integrity of our organization.
I believe that effective oversight should be constructive, benevolent and hands off, only
acting as a last resort when AADAO is unable to self-regulate. After all, AADAO has limited
autonomy from the Hub, as voted in prop 865. Limited autonomy means AADAO can
privately manage its own internal affairs without the need for the Oversight to interfere or
even worse bring chaos to the public space.