[Proposal][Last Call] Rectifying Proposal 72 Committee Actions

Hub Proposals Community Spend
1

Change log

  • 2023-10-31 Created initial post
  • 2023-11-13 Updated header to Last call

Summary

I write on behalf of Simply Staking to address our situation following the failures of the technical committee appointed by the Cosmos Hub community through Proposal 72.

Proposal 72 was initiated with the goal of financially supporting three teams with early runway to build applications with a vision of becoming consumer chains of the Hub and aligning with the AEZ. A Funding Committee was appointed with the mandate to select suitable projects on behalf of the Hub community, and to administer the distribution of grant funds to these projects. The projects ended up being Neutron, Fairblocks, and our project, now known as EntryPoint.

The agreed-upon structure was to disburse 50% of the funds upon submission of a forum post and the remaining 50% upon achieving consumer chain status. However, as you might have seen from our recent post, the committee did not adhere to this, effectively not upholding the promises made on behalf of the Cosmos Hub community.

Details

The following is a succinct timeline of events:

  • September 2022: Confirmation was received that Simply Staking qualified for the Proposal 72 grant.
  • October 2022: Our project, EntryPoint, was unveiled at Cosmoverse, with the backing of Prop 72 funding.
  • October 2022 - June 2023: We dedicated ourselves to EntryPoint’s development, consistently updating the committee. No changes or deadlines regarding the funding were communicated.
  • May 2023: A potential conflict of interest was raised by a Committee member.
  • 30 June 2023: Our open letter was shared on the Cosmos Hub forum, and subsequently went unanswered by the Committee.
  • July 2023: Attempts to communicate with the Committee were largely unacknowledged.
  • August 2023: We discovered the promised funds had been returned to the community pool.

As a long-standing Cosmos contributor, Simply Staking has always strived to act professionally and in good faith, even in the face of this disappointing situation we now find ourselves in. We have tried to engage with the Funding Committee, but our efforts have largely been met with either silence or lack of accountability. We have been told by several people in the community that since the funds have been returned to the community pool, we should engage with the community to receive our promised funds.

And so we now turn to you, the Cosmos Hub community, with the hope of resolving this matter once and for all. We understand that the community’s word is final and this will be the last time we address this situation, whatever the outcome may be.

We believe that we have held our end of the agreement reached with the Proposal 72 committee. We have invested significant time, resources and funds into our project, with a good amount of these resources allocated to understand what a move to ICS entails and how we should be adapting our project’s technical and governance specifications to account for this new paradigm, based on the assumption that we will be receiving funds allocated from Proposal 72.

On the other hand, the Funding Committee chose to ignore the promises made towards us and to simply wash their hands and disburse the funds back to the Hub; notwithstanding the clear financial repercussions of this decision to our team.

Furthermore, this behaviour sets a clear precedent that will make any party wanting to collaborate with the Cosmos Hub think twice lest the promises made by any committee on behalf of the Hub be simply ignored later by the committee itself. This is the last thing the Cosmos Hub needs as it establishes itself as one of the foremost open governance-driven projects in the world.

Therefore, with this proposal, we’re asking the Cosmos community to address the committee’s actions to ensure that past commitments are honoured, and see that the 16,250 ATOM (½ of the earmarked funds) that was pledged by the Funding Committee to support the development of our project is distributed accordingly.

We think that this vote should not be influenced by your opinion of our project. Instead, it should focus on whether the Hub community should uphold the agreement made on its behalf by the Prop 72 Funding Committee—an agreement which the committee did not wish to honour.

Your engagement with this proposal and our prior forum post is genuinely appreciated. Thank you for giving these matters your time and consideration.

Recipient

[to add address on submission]

Amount

16250 ATOM

Forum post link

[to add link on submission]

IPFS link

[to add link on submission]

Governance votes

The following items summarize the voting options and what it means for this proposal:

YES - By voting yes, you agree that Simply Staking should receive the funds it was promised by the technical committee appointed via Proposal 72. The funds will be taken from the community pool and sent directly to address [to add address on submission].
NO - By voting no, you do not agree that Simply Staking should receive the funds it was promised by the technical committee appointed via Proposal 72.
NO WITH VETO - A ‘NoWithVeto’ vote indicates a proposal either (1) is deemed to be spam, i.e., irrelevant to Cosmos Hub, (2) disproportionately infringes on minority interests, or (3) violates or encourages violation of the rules of engagement as currently set out by Cosmos Hub governance. If the number of ‘NoWithVeto’ votes is greater than a third of total votes, the proposal is rejected and the deposits are burned.
ABSTAIN - You wish to contribute to quorum but you formally decline to vote either for or against the proposal.

7 Likes
2

This is only fair - i vote yes

1 Like
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I am good with this, for the following reasons:

  • there were legitimate questions about the handling of prop 72
  • the poor handling of prop 72 with respect to Simply Staking absolutely should harm the hub’s reputation as investor
  • the broken promises likely had singificant impact on the well being of the product
  • the hub’s reputation should be valued, not sullied

My sole concern is surrounding product:

  • please do great work
  • please try to keep the product as nimble as possible, don’t let faster ones eat all the juicy goodness in the vault (referring to my concerns about gov use and execution speed)
  • please do consider a tokenless launch even if it means asking for more atom – this way we don’t need to have a zany merger conversation several months later

thank you for participating in the hub

5 Likes
4

Generally supportive of this proposal based on the events, facts submitted. We’ll take a detailed look and revert with feedback.

2 Likes
5

What happened to you on Prop72, as you explained in the previous post, is scummy and crap. As a Hub staker, and someone who voted for Prop72, am ashamed that happened.

And I agree with the reasoning that this incident shakes confidence in Hub - if we can’t keep promises, we are not a good counterparty to anything in the future.

That being said…

I do not think we should just vote for this prop to just “rectify” the decisions of 3-4 ppl. That sets a bad precendent - that multisig folks can promise the world and then some, and Hub governance will have to cover for them.

I think the better move here is for Hub gov to vote for your chain - a fresh, independent proposal - that once passes, passes inspite of the dispicable crap that happened to you.

Hell, your prop can even name and shame ppl…e.g.

“Vote yes to fund Entry point to continue development and become an ICS chain, inspite of the broken promises and corporate espionage conducted against it by Person A and Person B”

LFG!

3 Likes
6

We would vote in your favor

3 Likes
7

Thanks for taking the time to go over this. I appreciate your comments.

While I understand the risk you mention, I feel that the precedent this proposal will set is that if promises have been made on behalf of the Cosmos Hub and such promises were not followed up on, then the aggrieved party has a way forward to rectify the situation; i.e. explaining their point of view with good detail and as objectively as possible and asking for the community for its opinion.

The community is in full control and can agree with either party in a democratic manner.

1 Like
8

I would vote NO on this for the following reasons:

  1. The Cosmos Hub is not a venture capital investor and as such it should not invest in unproven early stage projects with questionable product-market fit. The community pool of the Hub should be a buyout fund that is investing in projects with proven product-market fit which would benefit from Hub scaling and the Hub would benefit from their technical features and product offering.

  2. Given 1, startup teams should have no confusion about what the community pool of the Cosmos Hub is for and thus breaching Prop 72 is ok. I don’t think any startup team should be depending on the community pool for funding.

  3. Under no circumstance should community pool funds be disbursed based on a “submission of a forum post”. A forum submission is a ridiculously low bar for disbursing 50% of funds.

  4. The Cosmos Hub community is different from the “Funding Committee” and as such can’t be held responsible for their actions. Based on this criteria everybody can invent harm and then start sending bills to the community pool fund.

1 Like
9

supportive of this prop based on principles!

2 Likes
10

The status of this proposal has been updated to “Last Call”. Please air any final considerations now, and expect the proposal on-chain shortly.

11

I agree, the 50% funding disperssement upon “creation of a forum post” has been a bit of a running joke in some circles for some time now.

What exactly was shipped that was not paid for? Is it live now?

12

Would be good to hear more from the Funding Committee side.

2 Likes
13

I would like that as well.

14

The EntryPoint dApp is live:
app.entrypoint.zone

and so is the testnet chain:

Here is the explorer:
explorer.entrypoint.zone

Upgrades to the dApp are imminent which will provide more functionality in the next few weeks.

15

It’s great to see that this is A real project, And it only seems fair that they should get their funding. That said, I think everyone would agree that the original funding terms were ill thought out. I don’t think anyone would disagree that funding targets should strive to be more clear in order to avoid ambiguity and also help ensure accountability.

It’s not necessarily fair to change the funding targets now after the fact, But in lieu of the history here, and the risk of The history affecting the future deliverables, I’m sure it would put the community at ease if they knew they could trust the Simply staking team, to put all that aside and still deliver a good product. I personally would vote yes for funding the team, with some updated targets that are fair, but also help encourage accountability on both sides.

16

Rebuilding Trust

There is a clear set of arguments here pleading the case to be made whole. The Simply Staking team is only asking for the initial half of the committed funds that was supposed to be sent prior to the start of the project. It has been a year and the Entrypoint app is nearing completion, but no funds in sight. The funding mechanism in the past via a loosely governed committee should be rectified to help rebuild trust in builders seeking for partial funding to help launch dApps bringing utility to the ecosystem, potentially targeting institutional investors.

The rectification is set as Prop #851 and is already up for voting. We are voting YES on this proposal.

Product Market Fit

For those who haven’t tried it out yet, the idea for the Entrypoint app conceptualizes what TradFi has done for decades. The initial product is quite well done, to realize the vision of a perceived indexed-based fund. The road to mainnet is still underway because there’s further investments necessary to commit to liquidity through business development, finalization of development for audit-readiness and other operational diligence such as licensing and compliance, which are all signs of maturity for the development of the app by the Simply Staking team.

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Root Cause and Moving Forward

I’m curious to hear from the previous committee about the reasonings behind how this played out through the year, so we can root cause the inaction from a previously agreed upon funding, for a case of potential conflict of interest, the lack of transitions, or something else… also whether the previous committee will now vote to approve this rectification in Prop #851 since the funds were returned to the community pool.

Previous committee members below, quoted from this post Proposal 72 funding gone wrong - A governance scheme with holes:

4 Likes
17

uhh ok, can you explain what I am looking at here? It looks like another very unremarkable, very painful to the eyes DeFi dashboard. Someone asked for this? Do they realize there is already an index token smart contract that doesn’t need any of this?

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19

Hello,

You are looking at a testnet, first iteration dApp frontend.
We appreciate the feedback and rebranding efforts are proceeding steadily internally, check out the twitter profile to stay updated (https://twitter.com/entrypointzone). I promise you that the new version will look much nicer.

Someone asked for this? > We believe there is significant room to grow for this market segment (taking inspiration from TradFi strong PMF and ETF market CAGR), and after talking with a large number of industry players we believe there is a dormant opportunity. The partnerships we are starting are supporting the thesis, but will not be disclosed until further notice to follow the designed strategy (check twitter for that).

A smart contract doesn’t have the advantages of being a sovereign platform. Pretending it is not true would mean fading the app-chain thesis, which I personally strongly support.

1 Like