[PROPOSAL #34][ACCEPTED] Luna Mission - Funding $ATOM

[johnniecosmos]

Silas hi and good day to you!

The campaigns were decided via a mixture of 1. polls and 2. discussion among the community while taking into account suggestions from AiB. And i repeat i know close to nothing about marketing.

You really need to speak to AiB and ask them about the methods, outcomes, measure of success. Not much i can say or answer here.

Regarding your comment about bribing influencers: The rewards are a means to an end. What we care about is for the word to be spread out, the world to understand the value proposition of $ATOM (no fake statements, no BS). Please see all my previous answers why we deem $ATOM’s value proposition must be communicated and why the community deems this quintessential. The ethos of the community in my view is of a high standard and quality; because of this it was always stressed out that this is not a typical paid shill but that it should be educational. So any influencer would have to engage in this spirit.

Please join the governance channel or contact AiB directly if you think you have any other actionable stuff to offer. But please remember that the community is voting as we speak. And kindly ensure these messages are communicated to AiB directly too if you have too it may be more effective this way.

As a community member i would wholeheartedly support the idea of webinars, tutorials sounds awesome! I am personally all up for it.

I think education is important and please bear in mind that the spirit and aim of the community for hiring influencers is to educate about the project, not bribe (as you say) a random person to shill senseless. But i agree long term value of webinars and tutorials is probably better but this is only my personal opinion. i do not decide on this or dropping one initiative over the other. Community can.

However i think the wording of the proposal allows for some flexibility and i will wholeheartedly support in my capacity as a member the idea of quality educational material such as the ones you suggest. But i think it will make sense to come up with some more specific proposals.

I have personally invested time in providing articles and material without getting paid for it; i do it because i believe in the value or articles, explainers and any educational content on the ecosystem. So I do believe (deeply) in the value of spreading the word through education especially through the methods you suggest. If it is possible to do it within this proposal then why not.

[silasdavis]

Thank you for the response.

@johnniecosmos

The rewards are a means to an end.

I don’t think the end justifies the means. It is possible to increase awareness without resorting to making large payments to those who’s authority is supposedly based on some level of impartiality. I understand this is not an uncommon practice, but I think it runs contrary to trust and in the longer term is counter-productive.

@johnniecosmos

it was always stressed out that this is not a typical paid shill but that it should be educational.

This doesn’t carry much water, particularly given the sums involved; this is more than a ‘contribution to the officer’s uniform fund’, it’s an unresolvable conflict of interest.

Furthermore, I would personally rather not have any ‘influencer’ who is willing to accept such a bribe to be associated with the Cosmos ecosystem.

But please remember that the community is voting as we speak

Indeed, which is why am taking the opportunity to dissent now, though the proposal looks to have plenty of momentum.

[johnniecosmos]

This doesn’t carry much water, particularly given the sums involved; this is more than a ‘contribution to the officer’s uniform fund’, it’s an unresolvable conflict of interest.

Could you please clarify this? Sorry i am sure it is a figure of speech but i did not get this genuinely.

Also Silas you sound like a guy who is thinking and i appreciate people with ethos and principles please suggest ways (more specific types of webinars, tutorials related to the hub), how this can be better, please also contact AiB.

I believe during the course of the next week/weeks anyone with good ideas like yours should communicate them and offer suggestions.

[silasdavis]

@johnniecosmos

Could you please clarify this? Sorry i am sure it is a figure of speech but i did not get this genuinely.

Sorry that was packed with a few too many culturally specific idioms!

I mean I do not think that asserting ‘not a typical paid shill’ has much merit in allaying the conflict of interest. Talk is cheap, money talks.

@johnniecosmos

Also Silas you sound like a guy who is thinking and i appreciate people with ethos and principles please suggest ways, how this can be better, please also contact AiB.

Is this not an appropriate public forum for this discussion? I have suggested some changes in the comments above.

[johnniecosmos]

I think only influencers who speak/evangelise/educate on the merits of the Hub and $ATOM in a coherent and not hyperbolic manner should be appointed. I am sure there are respectable and educated individuals among that crowd.

But i do get your points and cannot find a right answer to this i.e. what is better. I think we need to pick some momentum now Stargate is almost here though we need people with influence and people that can spread the news and the message.

I am sure a talented team such as AiB will come up with some great ideas. But i think that any actionable suggestion is important this is why people who care for the hub should offer ideas/suggestions.

[johnniecosmos]

I do not think enough people will see these comments. And i personally deem important that as many as possible do.

[johnniecosmos]

Here is one suggestion from me based on Hyung’s suggestion:

I think some of the banners could lead to your contributions to the hub that form part of the ATOM2021 initiative Hyung. You should e.g. create some educational stuff to be used by influencers or - alterantively - redirects from banners could get to your content. it should be stuff created for the initiative specifically. I do not know how this could be done but could you coordinate with AiB to this end and explore its viability/discuss with them?

[jrmoreau]

My personal opinion on this proposal, backing up what Dan and JK have stated - having ATOM gain more exposure as an ultimate goal is great. I want that too. But how we get there is very important. Constraints should be placed on the tactics used and measurements we value to ensure that what we desire does not cheapen the long term vision we hold for this.

Hope to see more discussion on this. For those of us who work in the space, we can take the heat. We are used to it. Let’s all hold each other to higher standards.

[melea-trust]

melea votes on proposal #34 YES

https://www.mintscan.io/cosmos/txs/537D811640D16D828E81C330FF8F65CC0E13C20D0DB8B82AD266DD477C0E8362

I explain

From my personal point of view as a validator and not as a user, it is a proposal that escapes my understanding and I would vote NO.

But as a user of the Atom coin I think it is a good idea, it should be noted that the thinking of a user is upward thinking, it is a trend, so as a user I think it is a great idea.

I know that satoshi did not pay for advertising, but it is normal, Bitcoin never needs advertising for being the pioneer. So as a user I think it is a great idea to make Atom known to the world, simply because it is a good product and when they see it they will be interested as it happened to me when I saw the repository on Github for the first time.

So, I’m honest, I want to be a good Validator, but I’m learning to be the voice of my delegates to express my vote.

It is not my vote, in reality, it is the vote of all my delegates, and that I included in them I am only a small percentage, so I think that my personal opinion should not cover all the voice of my vote, not in this particular proposal.

It may be that for previous proposals and some future ones, I only use my validator criteria since they are very technical proposals that guarantee an improvement in the Cosmos Hub and that is why I simply believe that everyone should vote YES.

Before thinking about all this, I went to my colleagues and the proponents of the proposal to comment that the safest thing was that I would not show my support for this proposal, that is to say that I would not vote with a YES, they have accepted it quite well.

For my part, I feel that it is an important proposal and I wanted to express my opinion before the vote.

Finally, in this new teaching that I am having of how to be a good representative of the voice of my delegates via vote, I hope I am making the correct decision and that is why I vote YES on this proposal.

Thank the promoters of the proposal and wish them the best of the campaigns. salute

Greetings and Thanks for the support.

Vctr
melea

[johnniecosmos]

I think everyone is aligned with this your point is valid James, but in the light of the proposal passing (types of marketing activity have already been broadly defined and form part of the proposal) we will need to specify which these constraints are going to be in particular against each one of these activities.
We have already addressed some concerns but it would be awesome for all people who have contributed to the conversation to be specific so that AiB addresses these concerns and takes them into consideration.
An example of a constraint is that we should avoid cheap/tacky shilling by random or even influential youtubers for example.

[johnniecosmos]

Also, because i deem Selena’s input valuable i forward her post on the proposal’s Github PR here too, it was also forwarded on governance TG a week ago:

Hi everyone! Jelena here from Informal Systems. Great initiative. Some suggestions below:

It is pretty difficult to discern causality between ATOM price and marketing efforts around ATOM. So, how do you plan to measure audience reach as it relates to token adoption and more specifically token price appreciation? Perhaps this retrospective on the success of the campaign can be concretized within the proposal to be shared with the community at a specific date (i.e. 10 days after the end of the campaign).

For example, is the plan to reach current ATOM holders and get them to buy more ATOM? Or is the idea to get new ATOM holders in the ecosystem? Or is it a mixture of both? This plan should start with audiences in mind and from there a plan on how to reach them (i.e. via memes, paid for advertising, etc).

The “why” for this campaign should have a falsifiable hypothesis if we are to measure the success of this campaign. Based on discussions in the gov working group telegram chat, it sounds like this campaign is experimental in nature. So, if this is to be an experiment, it would make sense to have data that is consistently measured throughout the duration of the campaign. Hopefully this data would help to inform future viral token marketing campaigns within the Cosmos ecosystem. Some ideas of data to measure:

** who the token buyers are*
** from where*
** social media engagement (need to identify bots here to get accurate engagement ratio)*
** cost per ad spend - how much are you spending to reach your desired buyer(s)?*
** what kind of data is the ad provider giving you to come up with a persona on your target customer? from there, how are you using persona identifiers to reach your target buyer?*

In general… how will you disengage correlation from causation (via the falsifiable hypothesis)? Perhaps you can look at comparable tokens to ATOM and measure their correlation over certain time frame (3 months in past from when ATOM campaign starts). At the start of campaign, you can look for the measurable difference between $ATOM and comparable token so that at the end of the campaign you can disentangle macro market conditions from the measurable success of the marketing campaign.

In general, the success of this marketing campaign should be measured beyond the identified deliverables (memes, influencers, paid banner ad). Otherwise, it’s possible that you will end up with an outcome that doesn’t necessarily correlate to the hypothesis that you intend on proving/disproving for this current campaign, and for future campaigns.

[johnniecosmos]

Many thanks Victor for both your vote and support to the community’s initiative.

[jnxmas]

@johnniecosmos

major youtube thought leaders with a minimum reach of 100k followers and 3500 ATOM each to 7 major Twitter thought leaders with a minimum of 50k followers.

I saw this one, … just because it didn’t mean to be seen

[jnxmas]

Seriously, thanks for sharing this discussion.
I am following up on things in the cosmos community for some time and I like the initiative to invest on marketing.
Let say that the world of tech can be stranger to the marketing for some … days, months, years ever .
But it is never late at least not for DLT !
JohnnieXmas

[dan]

As a validator, stakefish has decided to vote no on proposal 34. This is not because there is disagreement on the proposal’s motivations, but it is mainly due to the rushed process, potential conflicts of interest represented, lumped action item controversy, and potential unwanted precedent setting its approval may support.

To emphasize, we are aligned with the intent of the campaign for getting more exposure for Cosmos. We have been staunch supporters of the ecosystem very early on and continue to be so. We have supported the ecosystem through our own Cosmos specific grants program, grant.fish, and have been ensuring representation as one of the largest unique validator delegator sets.

To reiterate, we want to ensure that due process in community specific governance proposals is respected to the highest degree and that responsible precedent is set to lay the foundation for future governance proposals for what we see as a fascinating and exciting future that is being ushered in with the coming of Stargate.

These are the points that we’ve made in prior discussions and have had some time to discuss with the community:

• Time for proposal specific discussion
• Fund allocation and decision making conflicts of interest
• Checks and balances
• Action item separation

These are some potential suggestions/solutions that we’d like to see and potentially support and contribute to:

• Followup proposals to augment or amend concerns many have had on specific action items of proposal 34
• Integration of quadratic funding mechanisms: credibly neutral implementations of community-backed funding
• Dedicated working group for marketing/education that represents the gamut of entities across the decentralization of Cosmos
• Ensured, sufficient discussion periods for all proposals

We’d like to lay out a bit more description to some of these points as we feel it is fair to describe our stance given the strong opinions people hold.

Time for proposal specific discussion

There was not sufficient time for feedback and discussion on the official forums when the proposal was published. There were very valid points and perspectives that held some concerns that were not addressed before the proposal went into a vote. The duration of discussions that come from Telegram group chats that led to the creation of the official proposal draft should be counted separately from that of official discussions into drafting, receiving opinions, and revisions made. There needed to be fair treatment and ample time for people to discuss this proposal given discussions on key action items. It should be noted that the recognition of the current bull market prompted quick movement to not miss the wave of enthusiasm for many new entrants into the cryptocurrency ecosystem, but it’s also important that there is a process that should be levelheaded as well that should be reflected in time for discussion. This situation brought up unpopular analogies to omnibus bills in traditional legislation in which representatives were only given very short amounts of time to read, discuss, and decide on massive bills with many action items stuffed in before a vote went live.

Fund allocation and decision making conflicts of interest

With the significant amount of community resources being acquired here to spend on behalf of the community, we felt that it was important to ensure that there were no explicit conflicts of interest specifically to ensure that decision making was being done properly and with responsibility. Although it is difficult to have a complete infallibility with particular decision makers bearing the burden of the community’s interests (which can vary by extreme margins), it is important to show those external to the Cosmos ecosystem that we as the Cosmos ecosystem were operating in such a way that no one could call us out for skirting fairness or responsibility. The Governance Working Group was a fantastic place for discussion for enthusiastic individuals involved in governance, but it does not necessarily have the full representation of the entire community–which this proposal should represent in full public forums. Great ways of formally choosing the committee members could have exposed how each was chosen, by whom, and if there were any specific conflicts of interest–particularly with how this entire process was conducted. For example, it wouldn’t be out of the norm to ensure that proposers should recuse themselves from influencing the voting set or being a part of the voting set. Perhaps easier in theory than practice.

Ensuring to the rest of the cryptocurrency ecosystem that Cosmos does things correctly, responsibly, and without conflicts of interest is important in setting a good example of how on-chain governance can be conducted for a prominent and established ecosystem. Not allowing any independent observer to question the validity and fairness of Cosmos’ actions is extremely important for reputation and trust that new entrants to the cryptocurrency space–significant portions of this proposal’s target audience–see of Cosmos. If there is an ironclad way of proving to the world that we can show no conflict of interest, then any criticism that we, as the Cosmos Community, might face will fall flat because we took responsible steps here.

Checks and balances

As this proposal on-chain records things as a statement that is permanent and supported by the community if it passes, if there are differences of opinion as to how it is executed or one of the action items is very opposed, how would it be remedied? Just as handshake agreements won’t hold up against literal agreements, this was a danger of not having formal ways of holding accountability. Although the committee was entrusted with this responsibility on behalf of the community, having proper safeguards in place to protect the interests of the community was important and this was not discussed in the proposal.

Action item separation

At face value there are action items currently that may be seen by some members of the community and external observers that are questionable in nature. Most of the action items were agreeable but some were not. As it stands the proposal looks to pass all of them. It would have been better to separate each of the action items into distinct proposals so that the community and those who feel strongly about each, could vote for the action items agreed with. It is very reminiscent of unpopular omnibus bill tactics that push forward monolithic agreements with undesirable items.

We definitely recognize that it is easy to armchair vote on this without any followup, so we’ve put together potential suggestions and solutions to this matter.

Followup proposals for each action item

This would have followup proposals for relevant action items that the community takes issues with. One would be the paying of cryptocurrency influencers to speak explicitly about ATOM prices. A sample proposal could either remove that particular action item from the budget for proposal 34 or augment that action item to ensure that there checks and balances on-chain (and not on an abstract trust basis) by which influencers are chosen via a community vote.

Quadratic funding implementation

An integration for now and the rolling future of credibly neutral community-backed funding mechanisms. This would look something like this:

• Action items broken down into separate grant proposals to determine the amount of funding for each.
• Cosmos community members could use a wallet (like Keplr) to donate to each of these proposals and the number of unique donations from members will apply the appropriate quadratic funding multiplier that that grant would get funded from the 129,00 ATOM warchest.

A quick integration with Cosmos to Gitcoin would allow for this functionality to be ready out of the box.

Dedicated education/marketing working group

Create a dedicated working group for marketing and education that spans the existing but independent entities that represent the Cosmos ecosystem. This for example can represent members from All in Bits, ICF, and the large independent community contingent that has been, as we all have seen, tirelessly (and sometimes thanklessly) working to further the Cosmos ecosystem. This can provide a long-term and dedicated working group that still embraces the decentralization that Cosmos has been widely regarded for with an important unified vision.

Ensured, sufficient discussion periods for all proposals

As had been discussed earlier, there should be dedicated and sufficient time for discussion on proposals before they go to a vote.

Again, stakefish has and is dedicated to the Cosmos ecosystem. This is all to ensure that things are done infallibly and that we don’t expose the Cosmos ecosystem to any backlash and criticism for trying to cut corners for something well intentioned.

[doctorwho]

I totally agree that Cosmos needs marketing,
but I disagree with Proposal #34 and I vote no.
I think setting dedicated marketing working group (same as @dan mentioned) is better idea for following reasons.

1. Marketing is endless maintenance, not the one-time promotion. However, I think proposal #34 only focused promotion plan. I do not doubt the importance of promotion, but promotion is usually not so effective without good marketing strategy.

2. For setting and executing marketing strategy, experts are highly required as much as software development. Though community should and could supervise marketing plan and give direction; for planing and execution of marketing, however, it is better idea that we have marketing organization consists with marketing experts, dedicated community members and developers.

3. Moreover, if we want to hire PR agency or marketing agency, it is better idea that in-community (in-house) working group exists. If not, outsourcing failure easily occurs.

Therefore, I think we need to call new proposal for setting marketing working group and its initial budget instead of proposal #34.

[johnniecosmos]

Dear Dan,

That is a very well thought out response. With many terrific points. At least the community should be satisfied they sparked some conversation about marketing, educating, promoting the Hub’s merits. Again please kindly note this is about the Cosmos Hub. The intention is more exposure for ATOM, Cosmos ecosystem (or even ATOM) may or may not be benefited by it. You keep mentioning the Cosmos ecosystem so i need to stress this out as clearly as possible.

I am fully aligned with all your comments about due process and not setting bad precedents and this is an understandable strong disincentive for someone to vote in favour of the proposal. Despite the good cause and good intentions of the community here.

I do not know how we could run more proposals to deal with the shortcomings of this one. I mean if the community votes in favour of it we should go ahead that is what the vote is about. so let us be realistic and try and improve some things perhaps?

Thus, i think there could still be ways to improve on the existing one as long as such improvements do not deviate from the wording and instructions of the present proposal or place burdens on the members of the committee.

Thus, If someone can provide the human resources and invest the extra time required or volunteer in order to effect many of the brilliant suggestions provided in your comment, i think we could go ahead.

Since the proposal’s intention has been for the committee to merely approve on suggested actions/plan by AiB (based on the proposed set of voted activities) i do not know if Stake Fish (or anyone) would like to get more actively involved in this and help on the execution. Is there a way you could coordinate with AiB and get more actively involved Dan?

In order to be more precise the activities being voted here are the following:

i. One set of actions for incentivising, educating thought leaders so as to engage through media (Twitter, YouTube) for a period of 3 months and educate their audiences about $ATOM without any unnecessary hyperboles, something that would go against the values and ethos of our project;

ii. One set of actions for engaging the blockchain and crypto communities for 3 months via 3 monthly meme contests whose intention is to make $ATOM going viral on Twitter.

iii. One set of actions for a 3 month header banner and/or homepage banner advertising campaigns on 4 platforms with high and/or relevant traffic to the Cosmos Hub such as CMC, Coingecko, Blockfolio and Staking Rewards platforms, whichever of them have available spots.

iv. A maximum of 10% from the budget will be used to engage a high profile PR Agency to help with the Media and Marketing efforts. AiB and/or committee members will request and share offers from different PR Agencies and the offer containing the best marketing plan will be selected by the committee members through vote. AiB will maintain the relation with the PR Agency and will report to the committee on the status of deliverables.

Every spend has to be according to the above that provide an outline of activities.

I believe the wording of the proposal allows e.g. Stake Fish and anyone interested in the prompt and more efficient execution to suggest, coordinate with AiB etc, so that they decide which percentage of sums to be allocated to what activity etc.Only condition set is 10% for marketing firm and this is i guess binding on all.

The committee will merely have to approve the release of funds based on the outlined activities and presented plan so if you want to create a middle point of checks/controls this is fantastic. But still the one to communicate to the committee members (as to the proposed actions etc) has to be AiB again as per community’s proposal.

You can carry out the deliberation and voting with AiB so i would personally be happy for this to be done and i as a community member am not impartial, but supportive to this. I would be happier if you get involved. But again for this to be effected you have to discuss about this with AiB and AiB will - at all times- be the one to communicate the proposed actions to us (committee members).

This is the only realistic solution i see here.

So as long as no additional burdens (remember we committed based on the proposal’s wording and are full time employed) or time consuming processes (remember we do not want to add slow processes the community demands this not me not someone else) slowing the progress down, why not try this?

You can coordinate with teams from the Hub and create a marketing group (HUB related not Ecosystem) then vote on which influencers, how much per activity etc or whatever your concern is, also by including Jelena’s points that i deem important they are answered (i also expect AiB to address them)…but please note we need to execute within 3 months; especially meme competition has to start at once.

So, as a response to the point on checks and balances i strongly suggest that a group could be created where votes could run on actionable items. i do not think any of us committee members should have a problem with approving based on AiB’s suggestions (that would be the result of the work of these groups) but i cannot commit or have the time to organising any of this; and i also cannot stress enough that there should be no delay during that time while you are deliberating.

the committee’s purpose here is by default to approve AiB’s suggestions and - among others - decline if amounts have not been invoiced or activities deliverables not met or not meeting the description of the proposal

In turn you have the opportunity to create a middle point where you have some checks made through running eg votes on influencers you deem controversial or all of them if you like and deliberate over amounts of allocation for each activity. Community could participate in this and encouraged through the public tg channels etc. But this should be done between you (or whoever desires this layer of check) and AiB. Committee should remain impartial to this and its role merely to approve what AiB presents to them. What AiB presents to the committee has to be in accordance with the spirit of the proposal.

Finally if any of this happens it has to happen fast. This check should not be a burden on the execution of the plan.

I believe you should talk directly to AiB about organising this, i as a community member like this as an idea that i believe adds a layer of checks and trust and improves the proposal.

Asking to run subsequent proposals etc is against the spirit of this one which is being voted and about to pass. This is my 2c on the matter.

So my question is, would you be interested in undertaking something like this?

[Immasssi]

Thank you for your feedback Dan,

The nr.1 point you keep stressing is the timeliness for discussion of the proposal.

Proposal #34 was discussed in the dedicated governance working group for 2 weeks before a draft was put into place.
Polls were made to get community feedback on what marketing effort should be prioritized. This lead to the dismissal of several ineffective and cost inefficient solutions.
Upon consensus of dozens of participants in the working group, the idea was brought up by the community participants to select a signers committee to oversee the rightful execution of the planned steps.
These members are now listed in the proposal as multisig signers. Including very active community validators and delegators that have zero conflict of interest. On the contrary, the signers were selected because of their 4-5 year full time dedication to the Cosmos Hub and ATOM.
Upon community consensus 4 areas had the most backing:

1. Ad & Banner campaign
2. Influencer campaign
3. Meme competition
4. Marketing agency to support all efforts (Capped at max 10% of the total sum requested)

Each of these campaigns will be executed primarily by Tendermint. The neutral signers oversee each effort performed by Tendermint and release funds based on the successful completion of the tasks on a monthly basis.
Tendermint will work closely with their marketing agency to effectively deliver.

Proposal #34 was not rushed. Like previously mentioned weeks of planning went into the draft with many rounds of community feedback.
Yes this is not a long-term marketing plan. This is a comprehensive action plan to give ATOM 3 full months of active exposure as we enter the next altcoin cycle.

In the past 5 years there have been 0 marketing efforts for ATOM and the Hub and the result of this lack of targeted exposure has lead to ATOM being insignificant in today’s market environment and even though its clearly the best technical solution, nobody knows about it. In addition competitors like Polkadot with an inferior technical solution have prioritized the marketing route and it has lead to a substantial market dominance.

The time to act is now and the community will no longer watch how ATOM looses relevance.

Thank you for your feedback. The neutral signers committee is motivated to oversee that proposal #34 will be executed in accordance with the previously discussed focus and in the best interest of ATOM holders.

PS: Up to the point of the Stakefish no vote, 99.9% of the community voted YES on #34. Personally i cannot envision that the majority of Stakefish delegators would vote against their interest. Therefore bypassing your delegators is not in the best interest of the network. We hope that Staklefish delegators will join the united community consensus and support proposal #34 and overwrite their validators vote.

[catdotfish]

To tell the truth, it is a fact that the place where proposals should be officially discussed is the Cosmos forum.
That we prefer to talk informally on telegram before defining the draft is more than fine, but we can’t fragment the communication channels because the teams, following many networks, obviously can’t keep up with what’s going on.

As already analyzed by Gavin over the months when he was working on drafting a suggested procedure for this kind of proposal, posting the draft in the forum and waiting a reasonable period of time is one of the essential steps to make a collective and informed decision.

I can’t accept that the result of a poll published in 2-3 channels of minor exposure is associated to a decision taken by the totality community of cosmos as well as its delegators, because objectively it is not a realistic comparison.

Among other things, the participants who participated in the polls for the most part are anything but marketing experts, so they could, with all good intentions, have made decisions without having enough context.

That’s why, instead, having left open the possibility to edit the draft in the forum before its publication would have been strategically important: we have many marketing experts among validators and community and I’m sure that their contribution and experience would have brought a great added value.

I’m not aware that there was any vote to elect multisig signers, or at least it wasn’t reported in the governance channel. Also, it is not true that all multisig signers have been active on Cosmos for 5 years and are engaged full time on Cosmos Hub development. But even so, we should not vote on the basis of a person’s reputation, but on the basis of the text of the proposal that is presented.

One thing I find very interesting: one of the basic arguments is that until now no effort has been made on marketing for the Cosmos Hub, but it happens that the very team that you say failed, since it was the one in charge of marketing and communication for Cosmos, is chosen to carry out the task.

I personally have a lot of respect for Tendermint and I think they are doing an incredible job lately with Stargate, I only mentioned the above because I think there is some inconsistency at the base of your reasoning.

Any time is the time to act: but the how is as important as the why.

Another note:
99.9% voted yes, but the voting power comes from the validators, and their delegators may not necessarily agree with them as much as stakefish’s ones.

If stakefish voted no, it is because, with the important experience they have, they believe this is the best choice in the interests of their delegators.
The fact that one opinion is not accepted, as relevant as all others in a concept of decetralized governance in which we are all equal, is the thing that most of all leaves me perplexed.

We are in a democracy and to continue to say that those who vote no or abstain clearly go against their interests and those of their delegators is highly inappropriate, especially after that they have studied the proposal in detail and provided more than legitimate reasons for their choice.

I would like to see the same emphasis on promoting dialogue rather than eliminating those who think differently.

[johnniecosmos]

Hi sweet Daniela thanks for the points you raise,

I will only answer the ones that concern me.

The community chose Tendermint so the trust placed on AiB is beyond any doubt at least as far as the community is concerned.

A proposal does not bear a prerequisite for pre-voting on it. As explicitly stated above the proposal was a mixture of rough consensus reached among members and voting. I think this proposal had a lengthy and unprecedented deliberation process even unofficial voting on the merits of the proposal (trying to remember one on this or any other chain where this happened). Participation was active and no-one objected to the proposed committee or actions. Trustworthy people in it…Zaki, Jack…not talking about the community members. but anyone with an objection can raise it here. However, The test of this proposal is the on-chain vote.

It seems that - so far - delegators and validators agree i.e. 80%.

Please also read the responses more carefully, everyone with a healthy mind frame understands Stakefish is entitled to vote as they please and - very honourable of them- they have taken the pain and fully explained the reasons which are totally respected. I actually agree to many of them.

I also agree that due process or a better formality should have taken place for this proposal but it is what it is there was a push for it to go forward. Yet, governance is a living organism we call make it better.

Also speaking for myself i never claimed i am a follower for years or a dev or a marketing guru. This is why Tendermint is handling this…it is in the proposal.