Rosciosueg

DOTSAMA

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@shawmakesmagic @shawmakesmagic

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@shawmakesmagic whato do you mean by "agent of dot"?

[ᑕᗩ₱₱ΞX @CryptoCappex]

FUN FACT: The whale that was pushing for the approval of the Chainalysis referendum—later rejected with a record turnout from the Polkadot community on OpenGov—now seems to have sold their $DOT holdings before the ETF approvals.

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@OnlyDeFiGuy @devdotsasha Send me an email address in dm

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@OnlyDeFiGuy @devdotsasha I have a rust videocourse, It’s really complete and well made. It covers from begin to advanced concepts. Incan send it to you 😊

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

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[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@mattpocockuk It is

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@SkybreachNFT @base Yo im literally addicted 🤬

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@OnlyDeFiGuy @mar1dev Riders on the storm 🎶😂

[Alice und Bob @alice_und_bob]

Breaking: Polkadot Pay

A new payments app that allows you to pay in > 1 million stores in the US and 35 more countries, built by @NovasamaTech, handled through @RaiseApp; announces @bjornwgnr, CEO Parity

To be launched in 2024-H2

[gbaci @gbaciX]

many will hate to read this, but it is what it is:

Polkadot does NOT have a marketing problem.

or phrased more accurately,

Polkadot has bigger problems than marketing.

the current emphasis on more marketing is sometimes, i think, tied to a (in some cases, unconscious) desire to see price go up. but it is such a shortsighted understanding of where things are. why?

even when marketing is done right, what would it lead to?

A) a developer chooses to build on Polkadot.

B) a user/investor chooses to buy more DOT and stake.

the developer’s POV
in the case of A, what does this mean in practice? having chosen to build on Polkadot, the developer finds out that the only thing they can build on Polkadot (relay chain) is a layer-1? if you are the developer, what do you do?

assuming the developer is interested enough to decide that ‘since i cannot build an app on Polkadot, i will build on one of its parachains’, they then have to consider which parachain to choose. who is helping them make this decision?

we wanna pull developers to our ecosystem, but have we created a smooth onboarding flow that is permissionless? Polkadot Blockchain Academy, while great, does not cut it. without a smooth onboarding flow, why should the developer spend time trying to research further?

the user’s POV
but moving away from the developer’s POV. in the case of B, can we (who are in the Polkadot ecosystem) honestly say that it is easy to understand and use Polkadot (i.e. from the POV of a noob who is tryna get to Polkadot from a CEX?)

this isn’t about Polkadot-JS. we are talking about the friction around getting tokens into and out of Polkadot (and its parachains, which is much worse).

it is a steep learning curve to understand how to interact with our ecosystem and we seem to think this is cool or normal. worse yet, we do not realise that it is killing us every day. if we did, we would put far more emphasis on UX than marketing.

the real problems
do not get me wrong, this is not a doomsday post. far from it. you cannot make adequate progress if you do not see reality (facts) as clearly as possible.

to be crystal clear, marketing is NOT why Polkadot fell off the price charts. ease of use is the first key obstacle, and it underpins all else. the poor usability is a result of design choices (poor from the POV of the user, not the tech).

the second big issue is liquidity, which is brought by users/investors. if it is hard to onboard myself to the ecosystem, why should i bridge my tokens? thus, it is partly due to stressful UX that liquidity cannot accumulate with ease. of course, it’s also about incentives that draw the liquidity.

the possible solutions
in an idea world, we would pour more $$ behind fixing UX and would refrain from making big marketing spends until we can guarantee that the leads we generate will convert into sales.

thankfully, there is already work on hand to make UX smooth. one of them is the work @alice_und_bob is doing (gathering relevant developer and user information to find a singular home for them), the existence of the Polkadot UX Alliance @braille_wtf, the launch of the Polkadot UX bounty, and the renewed focus on smoother UX from the core development team (you can find this change in direction by reading the Polkadot forum).

if this progress is being made, why did i make this tweet?
because more people need to know that marketing is not the problem. all our energy should be focused on ensuring that onboarding to Polkadot as a dev or user is the easiest of all the blockchains out there. this should be where we show our technical prowess, not just in building complex powerful systems.

also, until JAM arrives to save Polkadot from the design flaw that has severely hampered it, we should focus marketing $$ on promoting parachains that users can actually use right now.

this means providing liquidity to improve the incentives for these parachains. the 1m DOT grant to @hydration_net is a great start. we NEED more of this. @InterlayHQ failed in getting a similar kind of liquidity injection for its iBTC product because some people in OpenGov would rather back WBTC. which i find a bit strange, but everyone is open to their opinions.

in summary
the Polkadot community should focus more on ensuring Polkadot has the best UX there is. also, OpenGov should be far more liberal in its support of active parachains and apps that have shown a track record of acquiring users.

Polkadot is nothing without the apps on it. so why market Polkadot directly when you can do so indirectly using the success of one of its chains or apps?

what do you think would happen to Polkadot if, for example, @Moonbeam was able to draw 100-1000x the number of users/transactions it’s currently doing? we should be asking ourselves ‘how do we get Moonbeam (insert other good performers) to be bigger than it is? what does it need help with that OpenGov can help with?’

[SO/DA zone @SO_DA_zone]

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[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

🤤

[Bifrost - Staking Yield Layer @Bifrost]

https://t.co/DhJ2ksiE8j

[Alice und Bob @alice_und_bob]

Giotto did the smart thing by submitting the cancellation proposal himself.

If I had posted it, it would have carried this message to @chainalysis:

[Alice und Bob @alice_und_bob]

This is very disrespectful behavior from Chainalysis. The root track is reserved for high priority proposals like runtime upgrades and MUST NOT be abused like this. They should take the feedback and propose a more sane referendum.

I will propose a referendum cancellation.

[The DeFi Guy @OnlyDeFiGuy]

Polkadot Proposal #684 has been officially rejected by the community.

I've been taught when we play games we should be humble in victory and gracious in defeat so now is not the time for gloating.

I believe this was the most voted on proposal ever and I do have some thoughts on this saga that I took some learning from. Maybe they will be useful to you to.

- Clearly price matters, I've no doubt many would expect the arbitrageur to say this. But picking numbers out thin air with little to no justification is a poor strategy. We will double click on how you got to these numbers.

- 'The Frontman' that Chainalysis choose not only changed multiple times but they seemed to not know really know who they were pitching too. OpenGov isn't a sales call with the chief compliance offer. You need to win over the community. I think a better strategy would have been to send in the young guy every time rather than trying to bore us with compliance speak. The Salesman matters.

- We need to get something tangible. Saying you've got 1300 clients or the word "institution" a few times, is meaningless to everyone involved. Proposals should make an effort to return value to the community be this via events, airdrops, NFTs, tooling, applications ect. This should be easy to explain, point to and not "gated to specific individuals"

- Community voices do matter far more than can be measured, we need to speak up. I have got many DMs/emails/calls about this proposal, I was amazed the reach some of my posts had. But I cannot weigh in on the majority of proposals. My only real professional experience is in DeFi, HFT and financial markets. This means that we need other ecosystem actors to weigh in on marketing, events, XCM tech and countless other topics. I am not and will not be the only voice, we should be leveraging our communities individual strengths. I'm happy to battle on the finance topics, but I have little to add to marketing debates. So we need more actors to take up arms when they are knowledgeable.

- Dirty boxing, when it became clear that my words had moved the voting market. A certain someone decided his best strategy would be to attack my character through speculative comments rather than address my concerns. This actor knows what he is doing and will use this strategy again. Alas, this is part of life, when our opponents begin to dirty box, this is a tell. Our blows have been effective, do not let up, stay clam, keep your chin down, hands up and move forward. In life we must fight for what we believe in even in the face of unfair competition.

To the @chainalysis staff reading this. GG well played, we took this round but you are of course welcome to play again. But please:

- Drastically lower the price.

- If you want to use the "institutions" selling point, then bring an institution with you who will onboard DOT. i.e. if you brought an IBKR, Fidelity, GrayScale ect with you. This whole process would have played differently.

- Know your audience, telling us you'll be selling all our information in a highly organised way to the highest bidder. Would make even the most honest market participant uneasy.

- Onboard all the parachains as part of your package. From our perspective your whole product is useless if you can't see the parachain activity. All of our interesting activity happens on the parachains.

- Lower the price. ( I'm hitting this one twice as we both know you pulled that original 10M USD number out of thin air )

To summarise:

@Polkadot community!

WE NEED TO SPEAK UP.

There are many of you reading this that have run live events, marketing campaigns, can code or have another very specific skill. When the conversation eventually arrives at your area of expertise, say your piece. Write a report, get involved. The community will listen.

To all who messaged or supported me in this venture, thank you. Your support will not be forgotten. 🍉

[Rosciosueg @luca070707]

@alice_und_bob @thewhiterabbitM @Tur1ngM4ch1n3 GG @thewhiterabbitM and @Tur1ngM4ch1n3

[The DeFi Guy @OnlyDeFiGuy]

Proposal #684 from Chainalysis regarding their 10M USD payment is currently passing by a hair.

I've felt the need to write my thoughts about this proposal in a report as I cannot see why large token holders can find any value in this proposal.

My personal opinion:

In my past life, I regularly interacted with Chainalysis. Their software is fantastic, top of class compliance and anti-money laundering software. I have used it myself and it was a pleasure to use. I have attached a picture below for you to get a taste of what they do.

In short, their software will show exactly the movement of all your assets, each wallet/contract you interacted with and which exchanges and off ramps you use. It does this in a way that is easily digestible for compliance staff around the world while recording all information onto their internal private database.

But let's not split hairs here, Chainalysis is a compliance company. What does that actually mean?

If a company lets say, Coinbase. Want to accept deposits+withdrawals of digital assets onto and off of their platform they would need to do specific checks to ensure that these transactions follow the Bank Secrecy Act + Anti-Money Laundering Directives from the EU. Just to name a few.

Lets double click again, what does this practically mean in the real world. Let's take an example of a 10,005 USDT transaction. This transaction would trigger what is called in the industry a “currency transaction report” in this report the institution would need to figure out, how you got the money, where it’s going, who it’s going to, if any parties are on the "sanctions list" which is determined by the unelected Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. They then would write a little article about you and your transaction, what your risk profile is and if you should be allowed to do this transaction.

Above is exactly how this software will be used.

1.) Their software will be used to record, collect, manage and then sell all of our on chain data to regulators + compliance staff.

They 100% will sell this service as a core part of their business, they will generate massive amounts of ARR on the back of this software. So why do we have to pay for it? It’s my opinion that even if we don’t pay them with this proposal they will still integrate Polkadot, because that is literally their whole business.

I.e. They want us to pay them, so that they can make money selling all our data? This data they sell will never be used to benefit us, it will only ever be used to stop the polkadot community opening accounts, interacting with regulated markets and passing compliance checks. The worst thing about this is, one of the rules in all compliance departments is to never tell the client why they’ve been rejected/ had their account frozen. This would be called a “tip off” in the industry. You would never even know that it was Chainalysis that took you down.

2.) Chainalysis was last valued at 8.6 billion dollars!

They have raised a total of 536M USD, with their last valuation at 8.6B USD. (source shown below)

Polkadot’s market capitalization is ~9.3 billion dollars. I honestly don’t even think Polkadot raised 500M USD in funding. Simply put, their pockets are full of cash. Why do they need ours? They’re not going broke anytime soon, they run a for profit business with many active contracts from the US government. They don’t need this money at all.

3.) Opportunity cost

I bring this up a lot in my reports but never has the situation been so aggressively unfavourable for the Polkadot community. My back of the cigarette box maths is.

10M USD = 20 different teams, projects, marketing campaigns, chains, ideas, tech solutions all getting 500K USD. In my world 500,000 is huge, more than enough to start up a new dapp we can all use, bankroll a new developer team or pay for an exclusive marketing campaign. So the payoff metrics are completely off in my opinion. If we funded 20 teams, I am highly confident that at least 2 would give the community a tangible application that provides real value on-chain. The number is probably even higher than that.

OR

10M USD = Gets sent directly to chainalsysis and no one in the community gets to use their software, we all face further compliance checks, they do a couple of podcasts, put a few of their engineers onto a Polkadot integration project and we pay the Christmas bonuses of Chainalsysis upper management this year.
A terrible wager.

4.) Compliance does NOT equal investment

They kept implying this on AAG and in their proposal, and quite frankly I find it very dishonest. I know for a fact their team is highly intelligent. They know exactly how compliance works. In short, it’s a cost of doing business. I.e. If we want to hold XYZ client assets we need to satisfy ABC rules and regulations.

As long as the money is yours, in capital markets, you can invest in whatever you want. To be super clear. For my fully regulated, MICA compliance trading LLC in Ireland, I do NOT need compliance software to invest in Polkadot coins. My firm can deposit fiat and buy DOT to my heart's content.

I would only need compliance software if I was what is called in the industry a “money transmitter” i.e. sending and receiving money on behalf of clients/users/other people.

So this idea they are selling, or hinting at. ‘If you have compliance, the coin price will go up’ is objectively incorrect. If any institution wants to buy DOT tokens now, they can use coinbase, a US listed fully regulated company.

I have no doubt that their push back on this will be, “oh well there’s second order demand effects from specific entities being able to do compliance on Polkadot”. Ok true, but the positive community reputation of onboarding Polkadot then should be given to that entity? They’re the ones going through all the hassle of actually launching a product to generate demand, so it’s only logical they get the praise when it’s successful.

5.) Extremely limited scope

They are only going to onboard the Polkadot relay chain and the EVM parachains, do they even know how Polkadot works? All the interesting transactions happen on the parachains not the relay chain. Also if they never onboard the parachains, would that not make their software useless?

I.e. Dirty assets received on the relay chain > XCM to parachain A > swap asset > XCM bridge to parachain B > swap back to DOT > XCM back to the relay chain. Is this now clean money?

6.) 0 accountability, 0 visibility into how the money would be spent, 0 KPIs we can measure.

For most proposals, we go into super fine detail about the cost, who gets what, who holds the money. As Chainalysis would call it the “flow of funds”.

I find it almost comedic that they have not provided any information on how the funding will be spent meaning there’s no cost breakdown and their whole business is built on the idea of tracking funds for compliance.

So, we will have to comply with their rules. But they won’t do the same for ours?

My recommendation:

I am strongly against this proposal. I don’t see any value at all accruing to the Polkadot community from this proposal.

I would even go as far to say, we would get more value burning 10M USD of Polkadot than we would get from this proposal.

I believe the Chainalysis team knows exactly what they are doing, they are “free rolling” us. They think we will not push back on them, they can drop the word “institution” a few times and this will be the easiest 10 million dollars they’ve ever made.

I would highly recommend all to vote NAY with high conviction on this proposal.

Think about all the flat broke people we have nayed in the past for tiny amounts, then also spend some time thinking about all the people who have had their accounts locked and funds frozen as a direct consequence of Chainalysis with literally 0 feedback as to why, just because they interacted with an entity an unelected official doesn’t like.

They don’t deserve or need this money, they don’t have crypto values and they have never contributed to our community before. I really don’t know why I need to say anymore.

[The DeFi Guy @OnlyDeFiGuy]

Attack of the memes,

Re proposal #684