I liked the post because I like the source, and it was humorous to me. Not everything is a conspiracy.
I have been, and always will be, available, open, and direct. Ask anyone who’s worked closely with me. In fact @samuel, I could even remind you to go back to when we’ve discussed things in the past. I listened, asked clarifying questions and looked for proof, then attempted to take action. I even initially reached out directly to you to ask about regular updates such that we could improve understanding.
Is there any reason you (or anyone else disgruntled or confused) didn’t continue to just ask around or come to me? If anyone has instances of me ignoring them, I’d love to know so that I can remedy it in the future. I’m not entirely sure you represent the majority here. I’d argue there are many instances of the things you ask being provided, but maybe you haven’t’ been a part of them. People don’t tend to like posting long, drawn out arguments like this so you probably won’t hear about it.
While the crux of what you ask for in this thread isn’t subversive, your actions behind the scenes very much are. I don’t need to provide proof from the many DMs I get, I have direct experience from you doing it in the past. Please, let’s not pretend that isn’t partially the case.
As for the indirect accusations towards you being a saboteur, I’d argue you’ve simply just always tended to be verbose and inclusive, and a little conspiratorial. But it’s an async org and can’t really blame you for most of that, context and clarity are good. Actually, the humor in you being called that is found in the fact that I know you really care about Status.
Now, there are valid asks and complaints about leadership and transparency within this thread. I, personally and “leadership”, am/are working my/our hardest to improve clarity and transparency of leadership decisions as well as what’s going on around the org such that others can easily find and contribute to it. It’s a complex thing, and as Jarrad pointed out, this structure is new and takes time to settle in. That being said, it isn’t like it’s been non-existent this whole time, and I basically see it as my job now to continuously make it more clear and transparent, and in a timely manner such that feedback can be given.
I’m cataloging all of the complaints and requests, they are quite useful in pushing to make things better. In the meantime, look around and ask where things are and what the current thoughts are instead of hijacking a thread that’s actively trying to share in the open and improve how we work together.
I think that is very fair. Thank you. I don’t disagree with you here. I want to write a more detailed reply, but as a placeholder I’d like to give this immediate mini-reply.
That’s true. I talk too much and I’m conspiratorial, I get pretty paranoid sometimes. That is actually fairly succinct.
No, no pretending, that’s true too. There was a period in the past when things seemed utterly hopeless and isolating, I saw the impact it was having on others and I wanted to help, but I didn’t know who I could talk to or trust. Things inside Status at that time were very unpleasant, morale was extremely low and we had someone telling us that we should listen to them because they were shielding us from utter madness.
For those that experienced it, it was very oppressive. Among the many things I was told, I was assured that if I spoke to Jarrad directly I’d get the whole team fired, I was told that multiple times. In fact relevant to the topic of CIA playbooks, I was asked to bog down Jarrad’s initiatives to improve user experience and on boarding in debate and critical analysis, which I never did. The environment was completely toxic and no-one seemed to be paying attention, so I hoped to attract help through whatever creative means I could think of. I was being subversive, and for the record not for position or any advantage, I just wanted someone to listen, someone to notice things were not right and to come and help us, and in a way that didn’t get the team fired.
It always felt like a risk, but I thought better I risk my role here and things improve than cower and let it continue. Though it took a long time for things to get better.
I remember clearly, you did, I still think about it. I heard that you attempted to take action, and that you looked for proof. I am grateful that you tried. To give some context, me reaching out to you like that felt like a really big risk, because I wasn’t sure if you would help or what I was told was true and I’d get everyone fired. Ultimately what I was telling you about was true and really needed urgent attention, so I asked for help, I think time has borne out the truth of the matter. I am grateful that you did what you could in that instant.
There is. Though I feel hesitant to share, but if you want to know I can share. It took a long time for that particular problem to be resolved and it seemed that you were not interested in helping. I didn’t hear back from you about next steps or what happened when you tried to fix the problem. I was really relying on you, but the issue seemed to be beyond your control and you didn’t seem to want to talk about it after. I can own that, I could have reached out to you for a follow up. But please bear in mind it was a sensitive subject and I didn’t know your mind on the issue (you knew my thoughts, but I didn’t get yours) and the problem looked indefinite.
During that time I was reported on (for collecting feedback and building consensus about the problem we had) by someone I trusted, and the reaction was fury, I was subject to a number of punishments, I was forbidden from speaking to anyone, even my own POps partner, under duress I had to agree not to come to the Status offsite, I was demoted from my BA role and subjected to follow up attempts to fire me. It was only for the support of my lead and comrades that I am still here, for which they have my undying loyalty. The issue was eventually resolved but it was an exhausting process of pushing and waiting, pushing and waiting. It was tremendously stressful and when it was finally all over I still didn’t hear anything from you. The last message from that time is from me to you detailing how you could verify all my claims, after that nothing.
I didn’t believe you cared. I felt that you just watched it play out and waited to see who survived.
This is fair too. I would call it reframing though, but if I step back and put myself in your shoes I can see how it may look like someone picking a fight.
I read your topic and perceived an attempt to whitewash. I saw blame being placed on Status CCs and I wanted to point out that there are very explainable systemic reasons for our apparent discordant narrative.
From your point of view you’re looking to start a conversation about direction of our project and you’re met with an immediate list of grievances. You follow up with a light hearted acknowledgement and attempt to refocus the conversation, then you’re met with assumptions you’re not a good faith actor and an essay on major systemic problems we’ve had in the past. I sound like a crazy person.
If I could help you meet me where I was/am at, I would want you to understand how the past has shaped the present. I don’t know if anyone outside of Status know what it was like.
I don’t bring these things up to open up old wounds, I bring them up because the impact of that time lingers. The CCs who made it through that haven’t forgotten what it was like. When leadership speaks about misalignment, confusion, or lack of ownership in our narrative, what I hear is a lack of recognition of how we got here.
I see that you’re acting in good faith, and I believe that you want to improve things. I hope you can understand my perspective, I experienced a moment where I needed leadership to step up, where I took a personal risk to ask for help, and where in the end, I was left to fend for myself.
That experience changed how I view the IFT leadership. It changed what I trust, and it changed how I interpret conversations like this. So when I see a topic that (to me) looks like an attempt to rewrite history, one that doesn’t acknowledge the conditions that led us to where we are now, I push back.
I never want to see those problems we had in the past to happen again. Never. They derailed us to near destruction.
Ninja edit
I don’t either it is really draining.
Morning after edit
If you have the energy to re-read the things I’ve written, please do while considering what I’ve said in this post. I personally feel that we are owed some ownership of that time, not as a gotcha but to give proper closure to that whole period. Thank you
Thanks for the original post! It helped a lot to frame Status goal(s) for me. It tends to be hard for me to follow changes in strategy and goals and I get stuck with “old meaning” or “old explanation” - this helps a lot.
Also kudos to @jarradhope for reiterating on the Superapp - I now remember seeing/hearing this explanation (multiple times, to be fair:)), but it just fades away with all the other stuff that is going on.
sorry for the late and long reply but now that we finally have all relevant ppl here in one proper forum i really wanted to speak on a progression of issues that have frustrated me for years and it took me a while to find the right time, words and energy to express those and hopefully concretely solve them.
yup 100% co-sign on everything til here
glad to see this adjustment. there was a streak of a few years i think from 2021-2023ish where it seemed like the only economic term used in presentations by you and corey seemed to be ‘public goods’ which was pretty frustrating as an snt holder after seeing all the vac and then logos subprojects with no concrete plans for snt token value accrual. tbc i also cringe at the widespread financial nihilism in this space but i think the only way to solve it is for legit projects with long term value to capture it and subvert its energy into something good. part of the capture should be financial (token holder rewards+ecosystem reinvestment) so that the average smol fish can rediscover again what it means to benefit by participating in free markets, both individually and collectively. and the other part will be users falling in the rabbit hole of status, p2p apps, privacy, sovereignty etc.
thanks for mentioning coinhero and syng, with these keywords i realized there were six pre-2017 repos related to them in the status github org (move, trustdavis, general-market-framework, syng, ethereumj-personal, and status-lib-archived, though couldnt find anything anywhere online on coinhero). on quick glance over the linked github insights it does seem you had a bit more coding activity over there counting 114 additional commits by you total over those repos, i guess a good few months of full-time work if we (very) generously assume each commit to be a day worth of work. it does readjust my view of your technical profile a bit upwards again, i was actually afraid for a while you might have zero technical experience and all you learned about software was conversationally through sitting on meetings with your employees. one reason i was starting to think so was because theres nothing to find on your resume before status online. before the v2 debacle my somewhat lazy assumption genuinely was that you were some dark cypherpunk coding samurai that left 0 trace of his wizardry online rotating keys from pseudonym to pseudonym, satoshi probably one of them. idk i was just pretty impressed with one of the few ico projects that actually had somewhat working software next to an inspiring whitepaper before tge. and also the somewhat decent result of the app as a poc by 2021.
the other reason i was starting to become skeptical with your technical abilities (and as a result leadership abilities bc i cant see how a pre-traction tech startup can be led by anyone without a deep day-to-day technical understanding of the product and roadmap) was because of a few imo revealing remarks by you in recent years. for one the fact that in your internal february 2023 note you were still convincingly saying, quote: ‘the Status v2 beta should be landing at the end of Q2’. iow you actually thought v2 was only 4 months away at that point instead of more than 18 months away in the broken state it would eventually arrive at. another revealing moment was in the october 2023 townhall where you seemed to have nothing substantial to say about status even though there were a lot of question about the product. basically all your answers were ‘ask the status lead’ (who wasnt there). extremely passive attitude for a ceo (well nominally) of a product that was many months late after not releasing anything for over a year.
before all of this it was already noticeable after following you for years on twitter that you barely ever mentioned status let alone said anything substantive on the product or its process of development. yes i agree cypherpunk values and occasional political commentary are key especially given the positioning of status as a product. but i see those as the constraints of our optimisation problem, theyre definitely necessary but far from sufficient. tbh your complete collection of public statements in the last 5 years (i wasnt on twitter before that so dont know how you communicated on there before) seems indistinguishable from that angry low-agency uncle whos 24/7 ranting about politics on his tl and has nothing else going for him. not to dig on those ppl, there is plenty to be frustrated about and vent on with the current state of politics and freedom in current times. but as an agorist and definitely as an enthusiast of the actual product let alone as a token holder i dont want 100% political talk, id much rather see 20% of that and 80% of focusing on the actual product, how is it progressing, what were the setbacks last month, how did we pivot/adjust to solve those etc. at first i was only annoyed about this since the lack of ever publicly discussing the specifics of status, from product features to tokenomics, made it pretty much impossible to build any kind of enthusiastic community before the full product arrived.
but the intensely disappointing v2 release since made it completely clear these data points were the tip of the iceberg that was the dysfunction in what should be your leadership in making the status superapp a reality. the reason the koppelmanns/romeros/vitaliks/haydens or really any tech entrepreneur yap about their products non-stop online is not bc theyre doing some act. its bc if youre actually involved in building these highly complex products you automatically have them on your mind 24/7 since they absorb you completely and naturally become the most interesting topic you can imagine that you genuinely cant shut up about. contrast that with the high school student that has to do a class presentation at 9 am about a topic they hate and just ends up freezing for 15 mins straight. or the mba ceo that uses fluffy business language but knows little about the product and its problems on any day since they cant be bothered to get down and dirty with the actual thing theyre selling among his lowly employees building the thing.
the key point i want to bring across is this. the ceo has to be the most involved, knowledgable and enthusiastic employee of the company in both its full breadth as well as depth. internally and externally. this function cannot be diffused. simply because there are too many hard cross-domain high-value problems within status alone that no individual employee can be expected to solve. its your job to maximally understand the code+tokenomics, maximally understand the market and be the singular node in between both to 1) communicate with and collect feedback from the team, market and/or tokenholders in close to real-time to convince them, yourself and the team that the current plan for your product+token will work or needs adjustment and communicate clearly on that and 2) substantively manage and iterate efficiently on these adjustments based on the evolving insights from 1. this cannot be outsourced to other employees because only the ceo has the ability to zoom in and out the scope of company problems to any level of precision and make quick decisions that are coherent with the full scope. and importantly the ceo is maximally incentivized to do the right job in this regard. for one he probably receives most of the ico dev token allocation, but at the very least most of the credit if things go right. also since the ceo is the employer he will at least keep his job until the end of the startup, whereas employees have more downside risk of losing their jobs (say when insisting on going one way vs another) and ofc relatively less upside risk in token appreciation or credit for the end result. a strong leader is required until the product has traction. only after traction can this function be split up into different offices since the org will then mostly be focused on maintenance and slight upgrades. learning about your product primarily through your employees never works bc the only tool you have when things go bad is fire who you think are the bad employees and hire better ones while literal years of dumpster fire go by before you realise whether things are bad. not to speak on the downward momentum in morale this causes among the rest of your employees causing some of your most talented ones to leave as well adding insult to injury as a result. let alone the complete disrespect youll rightfully get from the larger crypto token community. for all the constant talking down on token holders that has been engrained here theyll notice this shit way faster than you but the smart ones quickly pass on to the next project that is managed well rather than writing down a whole analysis down for you like im doing as painfully-down-bad group-chat-admin bag-hodler after scouring all your socials, repos and the activities in them looking for signs of hope for years.
this is why i insist so much on a ceo that has contributed substantially to the actual current status codebase since pretty much all the hard problems will have a coding dimension to them next to a usually more easy to understand tokenomics dimension (at least for most cryptonatives). without the ability to directly reason and intervene on both the product will always be a frankenstein of pockets of nifty product and tokenomics features but never actually an oiled coherent machine of attracting users, keeping them hooked with a core set of valuable features that interplay well with each other, and finally capturing the economic value generated through the token. sure the status reborn idea from a design perspective totally had this ambition of coherence but if no one in leadership can accurately reason about the current code during planning it all just ends up being a castle in the sky.
i mean the ‘who we are’ section at https://free.technology has no one who contributed any code to status since ico and really no one who ever substantially contributed code (if my observations above from the repos are accurate, pls correct otherwise). afaik the same holds for ift leadership in general. so how on earth do yall even strategize anything if you dont have a solid grip on the actual thing its all about? ive heard a lot of talk about disappointing results with a former status lead but its completely laughable to me that we just accept that the complete fate of status was in the hands of nondescript employee without proper incentives and ownership while the actual guy responsible was off on his logos and now ift side hustle and writing a book since there was apparently nothing better to do with his time.
wtf is ift
this also ties into this clusterfuck of whatever the duck ift is. as if the complete neglect of management of status wasnt bad enough we now have this weird new org no snt hodler ever got a say in, nobody knows the finances of and no one knows to what degree it is dedicated to status or whether its just a fancy holding company manned by mbas that dont know anything about the underlying nor the prime relevance of status far above anything else in ift.
no clarity on snt hodlers getting their fair share of what they contributed to logos. the fact that 8 years in and at least 5-6 years since teasing waku and codex to snt holders in quarterly reports yall still refuse to publicly acknowledge that snt hodlers should receive most (if not all) of the codex and waku tokens (or even anything) means to me snt hodlers and the status org cant be blue-balled by this whole vac/logos initiative any longer if none of it leads to snt value accrual. what little attention the ceo has left besides writing novels is now split amongst status, waku, codex, nomos, vac, nimbus, keycard, logos operatoor and now even this stupid cats fishing game ift is developing that is going to be completely unrelated to any of the aforementioned. basically there is a conflict of interest here. from ift leadership perspective its completely fine and fun to let status rot on the side or just ‘intervene’ every now and then while chasing all their fantasies with infinite side projects hoping one of them will hit the jackpot to line their private pockets with one day. and then when ppl get mad about this in community chats or twitter just snide that they dont understand the vision (its just 8 years bro were building for decades bro). completely dysfunctional. ive always loved the vac waku and codex initiatives based on substance especially since they were initiated by the same guy, oskar, who was waist deep in the development of the status product itself. but if theyre led as separate side hustles with no clearly stated benefit to status and snt and no strong technical leadership that has strong coding roots in both status and logos to ensure it all comes together in status and snt then that side hustle should be put back directly under the status org and managed by the status ceo (see below). im leaving nomos a bit in the middle since it wasnt advertised as explicitly to snt holders although there were definitely some consensus hires in 2021 under the status org that ended up becoming nomos. but i guess a lower airdrop of 10% of nomos to snt hodlers would be appropriate enough given the loose relationship.
the way ift leaders, jarrad and even corey talk about status internally and externally is always like some distant far away and even disappointing thing (like they have 0 agency in actually shaping it, like that frustrated uncle). the excuse might be this weird never explained ‘venture studio’ setup but that only begs the question even more who then is the actual ceo of the status portfolio company. and that also simply puts ift leadership as coequal to snt hodlers as fellow investors. if jarrad/ift leadership wants to live the vc lifestyle and adhd around dozens of unrelated ift crypto projects thats fine but then first admit your failure in managing the one project that actually mattered all along and then properly hand over the keys to status and all its subprojects and spinoffs to a new ceo (with status coding experience) that is willing to directly run it as a dedicated executive.
status and the snt ico are the only reason ift or jarrad are publicly relevant in the first place. this vague under the table pivoting away from status and onto some other shiny ift thing will only cement to any observers that nothing ift does can be trusted in the long term if they cant even show full dedication to status succeeding first before moving on to something else. let alone to tokenholders that are laser focused on what projects deliver to their holders especially as this industry is maturing
proposal
jarrad if you stay on you at least need to:
take on a status improving coding project specifically using one of the before mentioned status repos. my tip would be building a status plugin so youll get a feel for what potential status ecosystem developers will face if they dont want to study the status codebase in depth. working on this will make it clear what both status app and status network will need to prioritise to build an actual developer ecosystem on and off chain. and its the most low effort high impact growth opportunity atm anyway. its also the easiest opportunity to introduce yourself as a technical founder again if you want to stay on. skip the other side quests like logos lib, zk fhe etc for now and go all-in status. if status fails you fail and all of ift fails. everything is contingent on status. and imo short to mid term success for status is a status developer api.
publicly state snt hodlers will receive most (if not all) of codex and waku token supply to make up for all the time invested into it by key status employees and the wider org including its ceo if it wasnt already enough that waku and codex have been explicitly advertised as part of status since 2019 and 2020 in quarterly reports. replicating the snt reserve and devtoken allocation takes care of handsomely rewarding all the talent that has worked on this so far and even in the future. so i really dont get why there is such hesitancy for years to ever pin this down its so straightforward. product and tokenomics can be further worked on and even improved after launch just like many other projects have done in this space. if you dont take snt hodlers serious on this you are directly contributing to the nihilistic meme token narrative in this industry by showing that the most serious developer backed cypherpunk project in this space cant even properly reward its cryptocurrency holders after 8 years.
focus all your working hours on status and constantly think about how to move the product forward. not only at a feature level but also at a code organisation and process level to make development and shipping sustainably faster.
communicate A LOT more about status. if doing the above three seriously it will happen automatically that you wont be able to shut up about status. but at the very least write a monthly discuss post and tweet it on your account in which you discuss your updates that brings together everything from technical developments to product strategy and how these help eventual value capture and tokenomics. preferably also engage in discussion online or offline where you actually take offense and basically pitch why status is the best superapp at all levels of intellect. from pro-ninja cryptographers to smooth brain meme traders, no one is below or above you since theyre all supposed to join your social app. doing this regularly will help you give more effective instructions to your marketing/comms team who can scale up things you learn from these public discussions, and as a bonus also helps you to find subtle features that are easy to squeeze into next release. and when ppl observe this quick feedback to execution loop they become even bigger fans, thats how youll get the chainlinkgods, merts etc by your side. no need for pathetically paying these fake 100k shill accounts on twitter that no one smart or wealthy listens to. but again the credibility of this point all depends how deep in the weeds you are with 1-3 and will also make this point very easy and natural to achieve, it will basically become part of your thinking and reflection process.
bonus points if you can convert this more regular and intensified thinking about status into slightly more frequent snt votes on product strategy. right now weve had 2 votes in the last 8 years (2020 and 2024). i think there are more than enough important decisions made on a regular basis that i think a few snt votes per year could def work. but this pretty much depends on an active executive that is so deep in the weeds that can timely recognise when something is ambiguous enough to be decided by a vote and articulate a proposal with pros and cons. anyway this is not that crucial but it would simply be nice to have more of an actual token community, ppl notice when there is energetic smart leadership which in turn attracts more smart community members that can chip in. it would be more of a green flag showing that this project is finally being led well
if jarrad you cant do the above you should find either a current or previous status coding cc who can fulfil these demands. my favourite would be oskar thoren since he was deeply contributing to the status codebase and founded vac, waku and codex (dagger at the time) from a specific product focus so im sure he would be able to make the whole thing work to the benefit of status. at the same time i can see how talent like that is basically doomed to leave status/ift when hes stuck working under someone with half his drive, interest or even knowledge about the whole thing.
anyway im open to any ceo that would be proposed by status mobile+desktop+go core devs. majority vote among them would probably be fine, i trust their judgement.
jarrad if you want to keep control of the values and boundary conditions that seems like the one function id trust you with since thats the one thing youre unbeaten on and legit pretty epic on, but that could easily be solved with a board in which you have simply exclusive veto power. and thats it. dont really see how thats equivalent to any executive function let alone chief executive since youre not really executing merely constraining (which is important nonetheless). so drop the ‘executive’ from executive chairman, its cleaner
btw if such an intense ceo position requires more snt incentivization than currently in possession by status org id definitely be open to an snt vote on allocating some of the snt reserve to the ceo position with proper time and performance based vesting insofar that can be arranged.
outside of waku codex and perhaps nomos i really dont care what happens with the rest of ift. i guess jarrad can continue funding them with his vague private never-before-mentioned-in-public and never-before-specified supposedly-gigantic loan from before ico that somehow, he says in private, funds the whole ift but i guess well never fully understand how. money only buys the talent at one point in time, but intense leadership is what activates and retains it. i just want status waku and codex to ship and accrue value and stake to snt as concretely promised in public and we need an executive that will focus squarely on that. if we finally have the ceo status deserves ill be glad to be his mert sidekick on all socials with a vengeance to make up for the lost time and probably with me many others.
Hi everyone, I represent a group of American thought leaders, scientists and philosophers who are looking for a decentralized and uncensorable platform for their community. On the one hand, I think the approach of setting up Status as a decentralized organization is terrific. On the other hand, it makes the adaptation of Status incredibly difficult. For communities like us that are not made up of web3 developers, there is no way to get a feel for how stable and sustainable Status technology can be. For example, is there a contact person with whom we can discuss how to onboard apx 1000 new community members?
