Formally request full financial transparency from the Interchain Foundation

Hub Proposals
21

Could you describe specifically what your ideal transparency report would look like? Is it just a budget or something with transactions that have already occurred? I see you’re concerned about people about saying notional is expensive, have you considered a transparency report of your own to help justify the cost?

22

I am in favor of a transparency rapport, I think pretty much everyone is. Although I do think it’s strange to submit this proposal the day after Catdotfish said they are planning to release the transparency report “in the coming week”. If anything you should have waited it out and submitted this proposal after that term passed; next week or something. A few days wouldn’t have made a difference.

That being said, I’ll vote No on this proposal for these reasons:

  1. No clear requirements have been stated on what this report should even contain or what “full transparency” entails. There is no reasonable way for the ICF to even satisfy this request because the ask is entirely unclear.
  2. The proposal contains incorrect facts and is phrased in a very divisive manner, for example, the No option is ridiculous. There are many other reasons to vote no. I definitely do not desire to “formally allow the interchain foundation to continue to operate in complete financial opacity”, and I’m fairly certain nobody else does either.
  3. This proposal has not received adequate feedback from the community, nor was a last call / deadline given for when the proposal will go online so that people would know feedback was due before that date. This is suggested in the forum guidelines, although not enforced. However, in this case I think it could have tremendously improved the proposal.

I think we can, and should, do better in Cosmos Hub governance.

3 Likes
23

There is no clear outcome for this proposal. What would happen if it passed and no response still?

24

Censure, not slash.

And then at least – speaking for myself – I would know.

25

If you want to complain about the style of a proposal, then you should really use the hubs governance, or are you saying that making random rules in the forum, that’s grounds to criticize people for stuff?

This proposal is not – for example asking validators to leave the cosmos hub, like in proposal 69.

I think you voted yes on that one Noam.

The no text here is as it is because I should not need to deal with this. It has now been over a week since @catdotfish comments, and therefore your argument no longer holds water.

It is truly sad @Noam that it is considered divisive to ask the foundation for transparency, when it claims to be transparent.

I apologize that I got the current %age of atoms incorrect.

How many times has the community been told that a transparency report would be released “next week?”

So, the bigger issue, to you, is the regrettable inaccurate citation of the %age of total atom supply, NOT the total financial opacity of the ICF?

Sir Notional most certainly isn’t chronically failing to deliver on promises of transparency to the community.

Also, Noam, is this statement by an informal systems team member true?

I don’t think that it is and I cannot think of any good reason why someone whose salary ultimately is paid by the interchain foundation to claim that there are no service agreements related to the cosmos hub.

It is true that the interchain foundation is supposed to serve much more than the cosmos hub.

So, in summary, some pointed questions:

  • is the icf operating transparently, as it should?
  • should I have needed to make this proposal?
    • why did I need to make this proposal?
  • why did you not make a better proposal, guiding the icf towards transparency, since you say that you’d like to see greater transparency?
  • does the icf pay informal systems for work on the cosmos hub?
    • how much?
    • since when?
  • was Thyborg telling the truth?
  • are forum guidlines the equivalent of a passed governance proposal?

This is the worst of it: judging by replies here, the foundation team members seem upset about this proposal. Why is that?

26

it’s published on this forum, and you can find the full amount of our payment, including the portion that has already vested, directly on the cosmos hub blockchain at proposal 104.

27

@Noam sir

@Syed

talk about a missing stair!

someone might think TAB… exists

screenshot cause I didn’t rtfa right away and the tweets don’t give readers any idea what’s going on

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image1284×1398 257 KB

28

Hello all. As there has been very little discussion on this proposal outside of the two main actors, I want to contribute what I hope will be an useful perspective. Consider me the “medium guy” with respect to ATOM holdings… more than most, not as much as some others. FWIW…

This subject IS one that needs to be discussed. The setup of the proposal may not have been the best, and perhaps too targeted, but it can serve to get the conversation going. There’s some admitted mistakes on both sides of the argument, and valid points on both sides as well. I’m not going to try to adjudicate any of that.

OVERALL: The crypto space is under heavy regulatory scrutiny, and many of the proposals being floated about in Washington and other places are not favorable. I know this because I spoke to these agencies last week. The general impression from the FED, US Treasury, and others is that the lack of regulation or transparency within large crypto orgs is a lightning rod for nefarious activities. They DO NOT like it. And trust me, they are watching this discussion and many others like it.

If we do not regulate ourselves well, then governments are going to do it for us. But besides that, we need to have standardized reporting simply for its intrinsic value. Having that open accounting of assets builds trust in the system and informs users’ decisions on important governance votes. It also demonstrates our collective responsibility in keeping this space as honest as possible.

What does that look like? Well, it should at a minimum be a standard line-by-line accounting of assets and expenditures, much like we see in quarterly earnings reports for publicly traded stocks. You may also throw in anticipated expenses, if known, for the near- mid- and long-term. You, as very large and important organizations handling millions in ATOM, should be communicating regularly and often with the community. Period. Publish a schedule and stick to it. No excuses. This absolutely should be coded into the Cosmos DNA through governance, and not just a good-faith expectation that you can do or not do based on whatever you are prioritizing at the moment. In other words, we as investors should be entitled to this information and never in the position of having to ask for it, or say “thank you, that was so kind of you to do.”

Cosmos is a multi-billion dollar enterprise. It must have the business practices of a multi-billion dollar enterprise if it hopes to attract, and keep, serious investors. We DO eventually want crypto space to be mainstream, and IMO that will require adopting some traditional motifs. It will also require convincing some very skeptical people in positions of real authority that we can be trusted.

4 Likes
29

Governance is the problem?

I see this as highly disingenuous.

30

I don’t admit mistakes with the argument. The ICF should operate transparently.

I do admit mistakes with procedural items related to this proposal.

Rather than admit mistakes have occurred over a period of years, affecting tons of millions of dollars annually, I see the ICF attacking this proposal purely on procedural and circumstantial grounds.

If anybody has any questions about anything related to the ICF or what inspired this proposal I am glad to answer them.

From some comments on Twitter, we can see that an ICF team member has now stated that the transparency report will be delivered before this proposal’s voting period is over.

Rather than attack the timing of this proposal, the ultimate way to diffuse this proposal is to deliver a transparency report.

Rather than attack the procedural aspects of this proposal, the ultimate way to diffuse this proposal is to deliver a transparency report.

31

Most people do not track across all platforms for info, so this story is probably bigger than most people would care to know. That being said, such stories are not a good look for Cosmos. I think a better approach moving forward would be to structure a proposal in such a way that it would include the real target of your concerns without specifically naming them. For example, you could say something like “Propose that any organization or DAO which has custody of ATOM tokens on behalf of project development and/or tokens granted to that entity by community vote must provide quarterly accounting of all granted token usage.” Or something to that effect. Then we can get valid business done without having to bring everyone into all the drama. It’s just a bad look for the ecosystem.

1 Like
32

But we only have one that is claiming to be transparent and is not. It needs to be dealt with in a specific manner, and if a broader governance proposal were made of the type that you are describing, it would then still need to be dealt with in a specific manner. This is the unfortunate reality.

I have spent over a year attempting to get a transparency report for the ICF and every second of that work has thus far been wasted.

33

I can appreciate that and I understand the frustration you’re presenting over a matter that you clearly know more about than most people probably care to learn. However, this is only one example of a wider problem that is emerging in the Cosmos Hub. In layman’s terms, people are being granted tokens with no backend requirement for reporting.

The 20,000 ATOM given to “Turkey Earthquake Relief” is a recent example, but there have been others. Why not capture the larger issue first, and then deal with the nuances of each case in turn? I don’t personally have an opinion on ICF right now because I haven’t had the time or inclination to spend on trying to digest all angles of the issue. But if there was a proposal in place for all ATOM recipients/custodians to report, that would be beneficial to all of the community and it would place ICF on notice.

I’ll add that we should also consider collateralizing any endowments we give out, or phased payments based on adequate reporting for payments already received.

My two cents…

1 Like
34

The foundation claims to be transparent, but is not.

Agreed on the Turkey funding, that’s why Notional didn’t vote for it, though we do encourage charity.

We’re trying very hard to lead the way in improving transparency in cosmos, here are some things that you might want to check out:

35

Yes, this has been overdue. I vote YES to proposal #787

36
3 Likes
37

  • When did the BOM stop talking to the TAB?

  • Why did the BOM stop talking to the TAB?

  • Why did the ICF not announce the TAB’s dissolution?

    • the consequence of opacity here is that when I had an issue that the tab could help with as technical advisors, I instead (metaphorically speaking) didn’t see a missing stair and broke my ankle, because (metaphorically speaking) instead of getting assistance I ended up witnessing a mexican standoff.
      • No one in the community could know that the TAB did not exist. TAB members fear retaliation, and in my opinion have already been retaliated against.
      • Only transparency can protect us from mexican standoffs and missing stairs

  • If the 2023 budget is set, why does this not provide information on the 2023 budget?

  • 2023 was for incumbents only. Please publicly recognize this or I my hand will be forced. I was told applications were closed. ____ was told to make an application. It was explained away as “well they’re incumbents”.

  • The ICF article about the dissolution of the TAB says that TAB members helped to design the 2023 budget. TAB members deny this. Please explain.

  • The ICF cited nondisclosure agreements with vendors as a reason for the slow delivery of this information to the community. Have those been nullified? If yes, bidirectional proof, please. If no, why not?

Plz answer above queries.

Note: I avoided using names of people and companies in this post I try really hard not to speak of other individuals or orgs or specifics because I am well aware that they fear retaliation. Some of these people told the icf directly, in my presence, that they feared retaliation, too.

I have given the interchain foundation permission to publish every word of every conversation at any time with a notional labs team member. They have not given me the same permission.

38

Financial transpiracy is very much important in our day to day activities. Coc once ur transparent people will trust you for who you are. And as a leader if your government is transparent, people under you will experence the devedence of democracy.