Can we please get more details on the “investments” that AADAO has been making using investor funds?
Why is AADAO the one benefiting from the upside of these “investments” from other peoples funds?
Why is there no oversight body monitoring the term sheets of these “investments”?
How much economic benefit are AADAO members seeing from these “investments”?
Replied to you on telegram btw.
Excited to move on to talking about “doing the right things”. Still not sure all of the facts have been brought to light in a holistic manner though.
We likely can’t fix the “breakages” in the governance design in a robust way if we don’t understand how / why it broke, yeah?
One thread I am still unclear on is why Damien left his Oversight role within the DAO? What date did that happen? Can anyone who knows Damien ask him to come here and make a statement?
Grace, is there a transcript of your call with Damien? Can you provide it end to end in some way? I was really hoping your investigation would bring these kinds of details to light, and was sad when it didn’t seem to do so. When you spent 7-8 days making methodological critiques of the team’s attempt to get you and Pati to respond to questions, it just seemed so odd, IDK, your words about being willing to share everything transparently and your actions they did not really match the past 7-8 days.
++++
I know moving to DAO DAO on Cosmos Hub is in the works. But it’s probably more complicated then that as DAO DAO feature set today won’t fully solve the issues of how to ensure performance comp and retention distribution methodologies are developed fairly and not to the benefit of the creators. fortunately as a stop gap some of these nuanced team process mechanisms can be put in place via the “All of AADAO Vote” mechanism that we have in place on DAO DAO on Neutron already, and this way the props are recorded and voted in a way that is transparent to the community, and the evolution of the Internal Protocols can happen incrementally one prop at a time.
Working with Noah and team to build features into DAO DAO to future proof DAOs from these governance “breakages” is a very hopeful pathway. If we can all look at this situation for lessons in what not to do in governance and oversight, maybe we can harness this whole situation back into a positive direction, and make the governance and oversight design for AADAO much more rigorous with much better guardrails to avoid this kind of situation ever happening again.
How is this relevant to the situation? If anything this is a separate issue. Stick to the topic at hand.
Performance comp and retention bonuses should be removed entirely. This is a non-issue. As I see it there is currently no logical reason for not migrating to a preconfigured DAODAO setup on Cosmos chain, today.
@Cosmos_Nanny ’s suggestion really is the only way forward on this.
Add to that, @Better_Future clearly needs to consider his future in the DAO. Anyone listening to that call between Pati and Youssef knows it for what it was - clear signs of an unsafe working environment. No one should be treated like that; especially for doing your job. Totally unprofessional.
Just a simple question as well, what would happen to a grant application from a team that had been as @Youssef put it “Compromised”.
Were they making grant decisions based on this? On politics?
Thank you for the DAODAO proposal @Syed, seems the only logical next step. I agree with @BendyOne about how oversight and the DAO need to work together though, the length and content on this thread is absurd and honestly a waste of time at this point.
Let’s get a new post from AADAO about how they are planning to proceed and what they are going to change. Thanks to all involved for their work.
“Working together” with Oversight isn’t Oversight. It’s “Compliance”. Or “Legal” Or simply just “Management”.
It’s not called Side-by-side-sight.
It’s also not a synonym for post hoc auditing.
If there’s a redo then everyone hired into AADAO v2 should sign a common formal acknowledgment that they are Accountable to Oversight. I.e. accountable to the community.
And their job (with KPIs) is to keep the community satisfied proactively, not operate first or opaquely & then get reactionary over _ Investigations _.
Or else call it something besides Oversight. Mission Alignment. DAO Diligence. Disfunctional Debate Club. Whtvr.
Well, evidence is relevant if it establishes the context of an event, the circumstances of an event, or if it explains a chain of events.
Remember this whole investigation started under the label “Notification Regarding Proposed Bonus Methodology, Alleged Misconduct and/or Mismanagement Involving the General Manager (GM), and Governance Concerns”
As it relates to whether the GM behaved correctly, it may seem like a separate incident, but as it relates to whether the bonus methodology was designed fairly, or whether there are governance issues involving the DAO and Oversight itself, then it is extremely relevant, yeah?
afaict, the Feb events were:
in the direct chain of events leading into all of the issues reported in Grace’s incident report,
help the DAO and community to understand circumstances of how and why Oversight was removed from admin’ing performance comp and why Youssef was working on performance comp basically independently thru 2024,
shows context of Pati’s emotional disposition towards Youssef as she may have felt steamrolled by him from their earlier multi-week dispute in Jan/Feb which he ended by reprimanding her and taking back the function of assessing the performance comp (this is relevant to seeing clearly Pati’s motivations in pushing back at Youssef),
So I don’t really see how you can separate the chain of events and arbitrarily say, “well these events in the chain are relevant, and these others are not relevant”.
If we want to do an assessment of how performance comp at AADAO went wrong, how the GM stumbled, and how governance broke down, it seems necessary to do a holistic analysis of the upstream events as well as the downstream events, imho.
I mean, if you look at the other candidates that were up for the position they both acted as if it was some kind of PR role, meant to assure or convince the community that whatever was going on was perfectly fine and that they have nothing to worry about. One even went so far as suggesting that they would (paraphrasing) ‘ensure grants are approved as quickly and with as little red tape as possible’.
The fact that this was seen by the majority of candidates to be a potentially winning position is in itself is a massive red flag.
Fortunately the voters did not just vote for whoever seemed to be trying to appeal to the dao itself in place of basic ethics and standards.
OK, why not go a step further and investigate the entire existence and total historical actions of the entire project? There’s a lot more context I could bring up that is barely relevant but can be presented in a way that it may seem as if it is.
(See where this leads?)
On a more productive note - are you implying that there is some conspiracy or coverup going on here? Does the oversight ‘officer’ in your mind have some hidden agenda or something? I really do not see the point you’re trying to make here.
If your point is like “Yeah OK, Youssef might be a real jerk, but so is the person who pointed it out” then no, those are two completely different things that are really not relevant. Why? Because the accuser has provided and brought to light a fair bit of evidence to back that statement up.
So far all I have gathered about the comments and accusations directed toward oversight is that it seems like certain individuals are feeling incredibly inconvenienced because they are being held accountable for probably the first time since they became a part of this organization.
I did speak with Damien on Sept 3rd, after reaching out to him on Sept 2nd. He agreed to the call on the condition that our conversation remains confidential. I respect his wish for privacy and cannot disclose any further details about our discussion. Damien has made it clear that he does not want to be involved in this matter at all, and I urge everyone to respect his boundaries.
Concurrently on Sept 3rd, I had my 4th conversation with Pati, lasting approximately two hours. Please note that these interactions were not conducted in a therapeutic capacity as implied by you.
In all my interactions with all contributors, I have conducted myself as an elected member to Oversight. Franky, what you allege as my “cherry picking” of facts, and allege as bias towards her “narrative” is demeaning to the rigor I bring to all my professional engagements.
You don’t know what I know.
By the end of the Sept 3rd call with Pati, following prior communications on Aug 27th, 29th, and 30th, I had the majority of supporting material I felt I needed to see to prepare a public report pertaining to the mismanagement issues incidental with the disputed bonus menthodology.
Separately, I also felt confident in preparing a conclusive report re a series of violations committed by the GM, including but not limited to: coercion, intimidation, creation of a hostile work environment, acts of sabotage, gross negligence in fulfilling public mandate, breach of internal protocols, and direction to obfuscate financial information.
It is crucial to acknowledge the inherent limitations and general impossibility of obtaining comprehensive factual information wrt to ALL presumably relevant chain of events, Ryan.
A hierarchical assessment of the infractions that matter most is necessary. Any hypothetical, self interested advocacy by Pati regarding the utilization of 2023 salary for retention bonuses would be deemed immaterial and also non-actionable. Youssef’s SELF EVIDENT inability to rationalize his decision in using 2024 base salaries for retention bonus calculation IS prima facie evidence of managerial incompetence.
Why do you not see this?
Based on my observations since commencing my role June 11th, I have often wondered about Youssef’s qualifications for his GM position. And I am not alone. Several contributors share this sentiment.
Notwithstanding any potential disputes between Youssef and Pati, the alleged mistreatment of Pati over an eight-month period, AS known, AS substantiated, IS misconduct and gross mismanagement.
Your persistent focus on the content of the converstion of Feb 23rd is construed by me as your attempt to misdirect attention from the most pertinent violations, potentially contravening stated organizational principles and perhaps even your own stated personal values.
On Aug 30th, seven witnesses were present during a team call where Youssef’s behavior towards Pati plainky violated professional standards. The lack of intervention, save for a minor admonishment from myself, raises concerns about the organizational culture and ethical standards at AADAO.
The unchecked use of manipulative tactics to evade legitimate inquiries indicates to me a systemic issue within the DAO.
I believe these cultural issues are so pervasive and problematic, you had multiple contributors coordinating a false spectacle of “impartiality” and diligence for the past three weeks – wittingly or unwittingly.
Youssef created and promoted an environment conducive to intellectual dishonesty and unethical behaviors – removing him is the easy part.
Removing his influence will be a challenge.
If you want to constructively work towards addressing the profound challenges that afflict the DAO you helped create, PLEASE – do us all a favor and stop obsessing over the conversation of Feb 23rd.
It doesn’t rank. It doesn’t matter.
What matters is what do we do next.
What can we develop and nurture together so events like this can be minimized?
oof, I missed this one. This is disgusting, and confirms pretty much everything I had already gathered from previous statements, and just the events in general.
Anyhow… a couple people have already stated this and I tend to agree - this conitnued back and forth becomes less constructive as time goes on.
In the end, the situation boils down to quite literally ‘he-said, she-said’. Due to the nature of the issue and the environment we occupy here, it will always be this way, and for that reason it is impossible to not take both sides at their word on everything they say.
The more important focus, and the only way imo to make any kind of sensible judgements in these situations is to look at three things:
Again I will remind you, I don’t get paid for this, nor do I stand to gain anything in any possible way. Hell, I barely even hold any ATOM at all anymore, and it’s specifically because of the perpetual swindling that goes on and the complete lack of desire by just about any existing party to correct any of it.
Therefore, I will close with this:
This is not my first job, actually it’s not my job at all. It is neither my first interaction witih organizations like this nor the first with this one specifically. It is my opinion based on what I have seen over the past 18 months or so, and from these recent events this issue did not occur overnight. These issues in general, do not occur overnight.
When I hear a recorded team voice call where Youssef is belittling colleagues, shouting at them as if they are children (please don’t talk to your kids, or really anyone like this), and this continues for maybe a full minute or so before anyone speaks up in any way against it, this is a serious red flag.
This is not normal, and in the real world this is where HR gets involved and ultimately policies are added to the gargantuan tome that is your organization’s corporate policies and procedures manual.
This is not a healthy or normal working relationship, and it does not form over a short period of time. This is a textbook abusive relationship, and one I am very personally familiar with.
This adds significant context that paints this person as beyond unprofessional, and completely devoid of respect - for the people they work with, the position they hold, the orgnization they represent and the integrity of the community which entrusted them to guide this organization, and to grow this ecosystem.
This person has clearly shown through both his own actions and inactions, that his main concerns are first and foremost, control and power. Power over his colleagues or who he sees as those lesser than him. His concerns are his own image, and most likely his continued ability to receive a truly outlandish salary, and to remaincompletely unchecked and unaccountable for either his own actions or the actions of the team he apparently leads.
This is not a leader, and this is not a person anyone should trust or place in any position of power or trust.
hi @cordtus, @betterfuture here from my personal account.
My protests are procedural. If we’re going to do investigations within AADAO in the future, lets learn from this situation and improve our process going forward.
Grace was directionally correct in her review of the GM and she was brave to stand up and challenge the GM and it was honorable that she would defend Pati to report information. Yet, at the same time, in parts of the process, it left a lot to be desired.
For example, the process did not really achieve the original objective of identifying the governance gaps (and there are no resolutions to that, afaict). We need to make deeper improvements in our governance or else its just a firing brigade, and we will just be right back in a similar rut in the mud 12 months from now.
I will try to gather up a few thoughts over next few days and discuss more with the various DAO members, but quickly now while it is all still fresh:
It is a new day for AADAO now that the prop to remove the GM has passed, and I hope we can keep getting better at what we do.
At least we seem to be going in the right direction, Oversight did the job it was designed to do, so I would consider it a win for the DAO, however messy and imperfect the process may have felt. I mean, the ICF hasn’t been able to self-regulate itself at all, just sayin.
Ironically it was a win for Youssef in a way too, as he may have just designed the beginnings of an Oversight function that has worked to curb executive power, as creating this Oversight function was truly his passion, and he so dearly wanted to get it right to be irreproachable. It took Grace to actually put the concept into action, though! 
The most vexing question for me as we try to get these DAOs to work as a new class of orgs: there will be the next set of execs who try to go back to intransparency, as that is the incentive and it is where corps and govts all end up, how do we deal with that? are we ok with that? if not, how to fix it?
I’m signing off for tonight. 
PS - looks like Roo is back! Haha toggling between accounts all day and pretty exhuasted, can’t seem to keep the right one logged in, I’ll just leave it this time and add a note above to avoid confusion.
So the point you’re trying to make is finding out:
WHY was Youssef acting like an unsustainable GM who crosses lines. // WHAT LED Youssef to abusing his power. // HOW did Pati cause UNJUSTIFIABLE - NO MATTER WHAT - behavior by Youssef.
While you may think you’re trying to present us ‘the whole picture’, your current proposal on DAODAO shows that it doesn’t change a thing. The context that you think you gave us was no new information at all and wouldn’t have changed the report one bit. Some things are simply not worth adding to a report. Like, when someone commits a crime you ask about the motif, you don’t ask endless questions what led to having this motif. A misconduct is a misconduct. Red flags stay red flags.
The facts were so obviously true when Youssef didn’t even try defend himself one single bit. His indefensible behavior caused an unusual wave of attention on X. the audio recording, Patis receipts…which were the basis of the report !! were found authentic by the community - which is why this whole “fact finding” investigation seems super odd. It’s really on you guys, to have wasted so much time.
Removing Youssef was literally the first comment to the report - by me. He was removed while I write this comment and it was clear from the beginning that his UNJUSTIFIABLE actions will lead to removing him. The time wasting really is on you guys and it did you no good. Trying to come up with a working framework what to do in such a special situation while in the need of it, revealed that you guys have a wrong idea about your working relationship with oversight. You don’t get to ‘work together’ with Oversight, as @SpaceMonster said.
And with respect, some of you lack basic understanding of the terms that you are using that were key element of your ‘investigation’. Understanding what testimonies are and what they’re not is pretty crucial, when collecting testimonies.
@BendyOne your attempt to gaslight Grace with one comment in here and one in X didn’t work. Just better don’t keep trying, it’s not working.
Edit: I just read your comment @Roo and I am somewhat satisfied reading it. Congrats you guys did the RIGHT thing on voting accordingly on the prop.
Thank you so much for acknowledging that oversight did their job. and yes, was brave for standing up. It’s so freaking crucial AADAO members see that. That gives me peace.
@betterfuture here, my personal account.
While you may think you’re trying to present us ‘the whole picture’, your current proposal on DAODAO shows that it doesn’t change a thing. The context that you think you gave us was no new information at all and wouldn’t have changed the report one bit. Some things are simply not worth adding to a report. Like, when someone commits a crime you ask about the motif, you don’t ask endless questions what led to having this motif. A misconduct is a misconduct. Red flags stay red flags.
I’m hearing you. 
In retrospect, you are correct. In my head all of the events were linked, and it was all one big long chain of events, as that is how I lived through it.
But in terms of the case against the GM, I mean, yah, Grace did package it up pretty neatly, and it was sufficient info to create a momentum to remove the GM (as the unanimous team vote shows), even if not holistically complete.
Apologies if I didn’t understand what the objectives were.
I thought the objectives were also addressing how/why the perf comp went off the rails at AADAO (and what to do about it), and, making gov improvements so that it doesn’t happen again.
Probably it is for the best that the objectives were narrowed for now.
Trying to fix too many things at AADAO too fast could be yet another cause for AADAO to fail, it is still just a young org and the GM change is pretty massive, and the org will need to digest that now for awhile…
2 years in is no way a young org. It not being able to meet objectives assigned to it is a function of its setup. In Structure, in Processes and in Personnel.
If anything the GM’s removal should prompt a reassessment of everything. Why has it been a failed org so far? Is it even measuring any of the indicators relevant to its success? Why are grant evals taking so long? What’s with the venture obsession? Is this what the community voted for?
All is up for reassessment - and I have to say @Better_Future your takes on all this just shows you don’t get it. You’ve constantly been trying to excuse the inexcusable. The community at large should be looking at your role in all this.
The vote establishing AADAO meant it became the gatekeeper to funds intended to grow and ensure the health of the ecosystem. From the evidence of the last 2 years (even given wider market malaise), number of users has gone to nothing. There have been no original ideas, no one thinking from first principles. Instead the community finds out the DAO was putting its energies into suppressing and concealing disclosures of grift and wrongdoing.
There’s a lot that is wrong here and new leadership needs to be able to address them with a remit from the community.
Following a recent vote by the contributors of Atom Accelerator DAO (AADAO), Youssef Amrani has been removed from his role as General Manager.
Please read the blog below for more details 
https://www.atomaccelerator.com/202409-aadao-votes-to-remove-youssef-amrani-as-general-manager/
Hey sorry I didn’t have time to fully ingest this but yes I agree there are more, and maybe deeper issues here.
I think one of those issues is that aadao feels as if oversight is beholden to them in any way. They aren’t. Oversight represents the interests of the community and of the chain above all else. There is absolutely no scenario in which the entity being overseen should have direct influence upon the oversight body.
