Lost community members

Read his last post on this forum and you will get the picture.

Just read it. So because @JordanLee created an alternate motion, @creon felt all the work and discussion that had been done on the first motion was wasted? I don’t understand how he reached that conclusion, given that voting had only just started for both motions. Either one could have succeeded in the end. He can’t expect that only one motion will be under consideration at any given time. Any shareholder has the right to propose anything they want. Maybe he was just upset that the project leader decided to go another way? Still, that’s no reason to just pack up and go home. These things are to be expected in business and voting environments. Not everybody is going to agree with each other and I imagine many topics in the future will have different sides in an argument. Hopefully he will see his error and return someday. I just can’t believe that this is what caused him to leave. It just sounds silly to me.

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He was not in error.

The way that particular motion was handled was pretty messed up and it was rather obvious that my motion (submitted by a newish member) did not stand any kind of a chance against a motion put up by the head developer, especially after JL insinuated that he would not follow through with my motion even if it did pass. There were a lot of things going on at the time that could easily be seen as non-transparent and corrupt. I will attempt to articulate them in bullet form. You can feel free to disagree that any of the following events happened, but it is one of the perspectives that I adhere to.

  • JL asks for shareholder funding, creating an atmosphere where burns are redundant
  • Buy side liquidity dwindles to 0. JL blames shareholders for not increasing park rates enough.
  • Shareholder funded B&C fails, the much needed burns still haven’t occurred, park rates are approaching 20%/year
  • JL suggests Creon write a burn motion if he wants it so badly
  • Shareholders begin drafting a burn motion. Most of the Nu Team essentially abstains from the discussion.
  • I put the motion up for voting. JL immediately puts up an alternative motion for voting without any discussion.
  • It becomes immediately obvious that the Nu Team is voting for JL’s motion and not the other shareholders’.
  • JL puts up a motion without any discussion about making motions pass faster: a motion that grants voting advantage to those with more shares. This motion has since failed.
  • Fast forward to today where my attempts at refining the burn process have been completely ignored by JL and the Nu Team, aside from the statement that he doesn’t “understand how this motion would be implemented” and he “couldn’t do it even if I agreed to take the time to”.

Hopefully the Nu Team will see their error some day.

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Hmm, it seems there is more to it than I thought. I guess my question then is why is the Nu team or Jordan ignoring these discussions? Is it simply due to lack of time or something else? I know they are juggling a lot of things right now. Ignoring important discussions though is not exactly conducive to promoting an environment where shareholders feel encouraged to contribute.

Not so much ignore as dismiss

personally I have to admit I am pretty alien to the discussion that took place. I always tried to participate in the community as much as I can while keeping focused on other activities. My apologies if my lack of discussion on the matter made it appear like I am ignoring it, I just learned about it. For some decision/votes I delegate via data feeds to avoid getting crazy keeping up to date!

Hope it helps clarifying my position.

Nowhere in that thread did he insinuate that. He did say that he would be happy to comply with a motion requesting the transfer of NSR to a different custodian if his privacy couldn’t be maintained under the terms of the draft motion. That is a reasonable suggestion for someone whose privacy is so valuable.

If the core architect can’t understand how something would be implemented, I’m not sure what more you would like to hear. @JordanLee’s architectural choices so far have led to the creation of a very stable network, and I trust his judgment. For what it’s worth, I disagree with the use of NuShares as a constant backing for NuBits’ valuation. This is because the value of NuShares is largely derived from the expectation of future NBT demand. Permanently backing NSR with NBT is flawed circular economics and will lead to the scalability problems faced by BitUSD. Our burn system is more designed as a last line of defense in the event of a major demand shock.

As an aside I have zero issue with motions being proposed that ignore other similar ones. If the new motion passes, the majority of financial stake in the network supports the decision.

I agree that we didn’t if buy-side liquidity was not stimulated.

Not once have I ever been asked to vote a certain way by anyone on the Nu team. I preferred Jordan’s motion and apparently others did too.

Let’s remember that @Indigoman submitted the idea for NBT burning as a brand-new community member and it was embraced. We care about finding the best ideas, not blindly supporting the longest-term community members. The environment we operate in will have lots of contentious debate, which can luckily be solved with motions.

I think it’s important to not view the rejection an idea of ours as a personal attack. I strongly disagreed with the CCEDK motion that just passed, but still complied with shareholder wishes immediately after it passed.

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This was posted 2 days after I posted my motion hash. The things that caused Creon to leave were not in his head, I experienced them as well. You can say everything was completely unrelated and there were no subtleties to anything that was happening, but that’s not how it looked to Creon and I.

Oh, I don’t know, maybe I expected some kind of a reply after I fully implemented it by myself with no help or funding. Maybe I expect too much.

Yet shortly thereafter he acknowledged that a burn was needed to the point where he proposed a burn motion himself. I’m attempting to give context to Creon’s statement about JL blaming shareholders for a weak buy side liquidity when B&C was effectively acting as a veto for any discussion of burns.

Posting the hash is asking people to vote for it.

His motion was not in competition with a motion put forth by long-term community members. As far as I know, my motion was the only one that ever had that kind of competition, and it ended predictably. I attempted to make it clear what was happening at the time.

You may be of the opinion that everything went peachy keen and there were no issues at all. However, let’s just remember how we respond to those that believe certain types of discussion are discouraged or even squelched on this forum:

Creon and I make 2, and we’re just the ones that were vocal about it. I have felt so much opposition to discussion concerning corruption in our democratic process it has made me so deeply sad at times.
Without Creon, MoD, Cryptog, and mhps I probably would have left these forums several months ago. The loss of Creon has weighed on me more heavily than I can express.

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The development roadmap might have been derailed to some degree but still I want to add some more to it (maybe moving a part of the discussion to a separate thread would be an idea?).

I planned to write an extensive post about my view of what happened. Thinking about it I found out that it’s the wrong approach.

Sometimes it’s less important what we say (or write) than the tone of it.
Sometimes, especially when deep beliefs or fears are concerned, people tend to react emotionally.
That makes discussion hard. It makes finding a consensus even harder.
I know what I talk about - it happens to me from time to time, but I start getting better at recognizing and mitigating it.

It’s of utter importance that we treat each other with respect - everyone!
If the discussion remains on the factual level, the results can be overwhelming.

I want Nu to succeed. I believe Nu is on a good way to be important, ground-breaking, freeing cash flow from governmental control.
I consider it a big loss that @creon decided not to continue at Nu. His thoughts were valuable, his contributions were important.
Whatever can be learned from that story should we attempt to learn.

Nu is foremost a business. But happy contributors often do a better job.

Maybe we need to remember more often what SunnyKings says:
“Have fun!”

And I’d like to add: take it easy. Keep focussed. Be kind.

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Maybe we could separate this into its own thread?

done

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Can you remove the ‘disagreements and’ part of the title, as I think it’s bad precedent to relegate all disagreements in the community to one post? I think we should keep this discussion to community members we have lost.

Honorable mention to skullandheadphones.

I sent him a message on Reddit. Hopefully he sees it. He apparently hasn’t made a post there in over 2 months.

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Yeah by the time I had read the first several lines of that motion I got the feelling that either politics is being played or someone was not caring how others would feel. Jordan is the chief architect and the manager of the dev team, whose words carry enormous weight (I’d say 51% :wink: according to how quickly his motions usually pass). That is good for efficient development. Nu will need a steward for quite a while. However if we want Nu to be a decentralized organisation we want to avoid concentrating power to one person, as we all know power corrupts eventually. We should cultivate broad community involvment and encourage normal members to spearhead important motions and development. To that end the members who take initiatives should have the benefit of priority, recognition and credit.

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We are a community that has created a decentralized peer to peer currency that allows shareholders with a mere $20 stake to have direct influence over important decisions regarding the network. We don’t trust authority. At all. I have been deeply saddened and disturbed by the violence and corruption that has resulted from centralized authority structures outside the scope of Nu. I know many of the people here have similar feelings that serve as the motivational foundation for their involvement here. Most people have a strong emotional motivation to find reasons to align themselves with authority and the crowd. It feels safe and brings people the social approval they crave. The people in this forum are the people who are so strongly attracted to a peaceful and mutually beneficial model of human interaction that they are willing to become social misfits for the chance to pursue and articulate this alternative and positive vision of human interaction. But we don’t just dream and complain about what is wrong in the world. We dedicated ourselves to building an alternative in the real world. We created something completely open which is a powerful facilitator of human cooperation that is simultaneously completely incapable of being coercive to anyone.

So, it is no surprise that this community is extremely sensitive to anything that even looks like it might have a hint of authority in it. That tendency is helpful in enhancing the open and decentralized network we are trying to grow.

I’m the developer who started this project. In the very beginning I was the only one. In that moment the project was perfectly centralized. Mine was a plan to create a pure peer to peer network. But there were no peers at that time. Just me. Since that day in December 2013, month by month we have decentralized the network. It is remarkably decentralized today. Other peer to peer networks have centrally issued checkpoints. Even though I would be the one with the power to issue those checkpoints I said no, there will be no such ability. Other networks have centrally issued alerts and automatic software updates. Again, I said no. I could have designed the system so I held reserves. But I said no to being a trusted authority. I advanced this motion that will end my power to distribute network equity. I have articulated plans to end the centralized reserves that provide buy support. I have asked for people to come forward to provide interim reserves using a multisig addresses in a manner that completely excludes me. I haven’t desired nor reached for power over the network or any individuals. I’m also aware that having any power over the network is a threat to my personal safety, because someone who is willing and able to threaten my safety could gain some control over the network if I held any control over the network.

Much of the angst displayed here seems to center around my influence over the passage of motions. Shareholders are perfectly capable of rejecting my proposals for actions, as they did here. I have always complied with motions and indicated a willingness to cooperate to facilitate potential motions. This does not mean I can be commanded to do anything, however. Motions must relate to network actions. To the extent they require action from me, they must not bring undue harm to me. If that is the case, I have the right to say I won’t participate, so long as I don’t prevent the mandated action from being performed by others.

I understand this network. I’ve demonstrated a talent for understanding what will and won’t work. Most shareholders appreciate my expression of my professional and informed opinion about actions proposed by others and my own initiative in proposing improvements.

I acknowledge the important contributions of @Nagalim and @creon. We have provided an open forum for the expression of dissenting opinions. I’m only aware of one individual who has been banned from the forum, and that was for personal attacks which were abusive and behavior that was clearly intended to be harmful to the network.

At risk of irritating @Nagalim, I will point out he has simultaneously criticized me for articulating a vision that in one case was different than his while simultaneously criticizing me for being silent about his work in other contexts. That seems inconsistent.

Finally, I encourage everyone to be positive while refraining from being negative, because it just repulses people. For instance, we can oppose centralized authority or we can promote voluntary cooperation. We ought to choose to promote voluntary cooperation in that case.

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A history lesson and to be told I’m inconsistent: definitely what I needed to not feel dismissed. Systemic power exists in all political structure, very much including democracy. Ppc was distributed by PoW, Nushares you distributed by hand. The consequences of vote distribution and many other systemic factors contribute to a network in which some have historical power and others don’t. We have opportunity to make a democracy from scratch without shouldering the responsibilities of the rest of humankind, however we must shoulder our own shortcomings. The loss of Creon was a mistake on the part of Nu, and it was a direct consequence of people in positions of authority not respecting their power.

JL, you write like you don’t think you hold a position of authority even if you had no direct control. Even if you sold every NSR you own, you have systemic power in this organization, authority to say what is and can be, and responsibility to respect those who are not in such a position. No, no one can make you do what you don’t want to do, no one can make you be responsible for your actions, no one can tell you to choose good over evil. However, I can certainly point out the options and suggest that you be more aware of what your doing and how it affects those who are struggling to have their voices heard in the Nu Network.

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Is there the equivalent of Robert’s Rules of Order for a DAO, or can Robert’s Rules be adapted?

We’ve seen there is already the sense of rhythm around motions, and a sense as to what constitute sufficient time to review / debate. Perhaps these things can be codified a bit more for Nu.

Dealing with exigent circumstances does remain an area where there is not a lot of clarity, and the buy side getting thin seems to be the one case we’ve seen be the most contentious.

Perhaps the underlying issue with park rates / burning indicates that there must be some amount of (bounded) autonomy given to one or more trusted subset of actors. There is already the strategic reserve of NBT; perhaps there can be a strategic reserve of NSR (or multiple ones) that can be called in to maintain the peg. Perhaps this could be standardized at a less-than-par rate of $0.95 or $0.90 to allow the market to fill the void.

Perhaps custodianship of a reserve could be voted on continuously / regularly – or it is “auto burned” by the protocol.

There’s certainly an important lesson to draw from this important element loss.
What lesson?
How to improve Nu?

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I’m attempting to bring @creon back to the community. I received a reply from him with his concerns. I agree with a lot of them and think they need to be discussed by shareholders. I won’t post them here, but I’ve encouraged him to come back and open up a new thread to explain why he left and what his major concerns are about the Nu organization. I don’t know yet if he will, but I’ve tried my best to make the case that he owns part of this network and that he should make his voice heard if he feels certain things aren’t as they should be. Shareholders should feel empowered to ask questions, even of the dev team.

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Thank you so much!

I firmly believe that in democratic systems (which Nu is in a quite pure form) especially controversial discussions are valuable.
That’s why I miss @creon’s contributions so much. He was able to provide discussions with valuable arguments and positions.

Whatever the consensus would be - with controversial discussions it were based on a better set of information than without these controversial discussions.

Just remember the discussions about open sourcing the Nu code. Hundreds of posts with good arguments for or against opening it. Some posts contained a lot of emotion.

And this is the point where it gets tricky; as soon as emotions play a role it’s hard to stay on topic, focussed, polite.

I’d welcome @creon with open arms as much as I’d welcome everyone who is here to contribute, to help, to evolve Nu - no matter whether they share my opinion or not.

What can be better than getting your own opinion moved in a discussion where someone has good arguments, to show you perspectives you wouldn’t have found without help?

You are able to make a better, a more educated decision than without having had this discussion!

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