Formally request full financial transparency from the Interchain Foundation
The interchain foundation is a Swiss foundation created to manage the assets in the fundraise process described here:
GitHubGitHub - cosmos/fundraiser: Code for the fundraiser subdomain
Code for the fundraiser subdomain. Contribute to cosmos/fundraiser development by creating an account on GitHub.
The ICF (Interchain Foundation, hereafter “the foundation” or “the ICF”) has not issued any reporting to the Cosmos community on its activities in nearly two years. Numerous current and former, ICF funded teams have come to me to voice distress. They fear retaliation if they speak out, just like I did when I spoke out.
vote YES to formally request full transparency from the interchain foundation
Would be good to add the No options as well, although it might be a little bit rhetoric.
It would be needed to get a full statement of the position of ICF and how it is managed. Is it a non-profit? Is it a company seeking profits? Etc. That would also make their position clear for future cases. Mainly because current statements and behaviour not completely match up.
This needs to happen 200%
Something that I should note here, in the original text for the proposal, I mentioned informal systems, and I said something about them receiving some disproportionate amount of funding, however, in the absence of transparency there’s nothing that I know for certain, so I have updated the text of the proposal and I’d like to make it very clear that at this time I can know literally nothing for certain.
Due to litigation against Grace Yu by https://twitter.com/Allinbits_inc/status/1639410529943920640 I have been advised that I should not put this on chain. Anyone can do that, though.
It’s been here for >1 week and I think it is quite fair game.
Just I can’t do that.
The easiest way to make gov props is this:
No one else has done this, I’m electing to take the risk and get back to work.
prop is live:
mintscan.ioInterchain Explorer by Cosmostation
Interchain block explorer and data analytics for sovereign blockchain networks.
Edit: All of this is ofc IMO - and should not be seen or understood to be a formal statement from the foundation, etc etc… jacobgadikian: No one else has done this, I’m electing to take the risk and get back to work. I do not understand the point of this prop, aside from making us - i.e. Hub/Cosmos - look bad for media, investors and hodlers. First off, this prop - yes or no - can’t be enforced in any way. Of course, the Foundation won’t ignore the vote - social consensus is key in our passionate community - but just pointing out that the vote on this is almost meaningless…aside from negative publicity. Secondly, on the “randomly listed” points on the prop…which IMO doesn’t form part of any cohesive argument…much of it is written in bad faith. My thoughts: • The ICF (Interchain Foundation, hereafter “the foundation” or “the ICF”) has not issued any reporting to the Cosmos community on its activities in nearly two years. This is almost true. Almost in that, this statement would have been 100% true as of a few weeks ago. But this Funding Overview for 2023 was published in Feb’23. Additionally, I personally believe this statement is being made in…
Excerpt (1198 of 4534 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗
Syed:I do not understand the point of this prop, aside from making us - i.e. Hub/Cosmos - look bad for media, investors and hodlers.
It’s a formal request.
Syed:Additionally, I personally believe this statement is being made in bad faith - you are fully aware that we are about to publish our annual report for 2022 - something that will probably happen during this vote or straight after - COMPLETELY unrelated to this governance proposal.
You are also aware that I’ve been told that this is about to happen long ago. It didn’t and now cosmos has two markets with respect to software – one which is fully transparent and available to anyone and the ICF, which… is available only to incumbents.
- When was the first time I was told that the ICF would publish this information?
Syed:14M / 336M = ~4%. Substantively different to 10%.
It’s bad that I got this wrong in my proposal. I was going from genesis amount.
Syed:And while I know you are aware of what the foundation spends money on - developing the stack!!! - and in Feb’23, we said our spend even in this market will be ~$40M for the year, you can quite easily estimate the cost of the stack over the past few years.
I fully understand the cost of developing software. There are numerous community members claiming that Notional is expensive. They do this because they aren’t being given complete information.
Syed:That being said, of course you shouldn’t have to to the calculations yourself, the Foundation should have been publishing reports regularly. But it didn’t. It messed up. But it’s fixing it - and you know that intimately.
No, I don’t, I’m sorry, but I don’t.
I won’t know it till it’s done.
Syed:So please, ask these people to speak out! Anonymize their statements if you have to - but lets hear what they want to say. We can’t address criticism and correct out issues if we don’t know what they are.
No, I cannot do that. The proposal isn’t designed as a hit-job.
But since you’re a member of “the hellscape” twitter group, you know it’s true. And that hasn’t been everything.
Syed:This is almost true. Almost in that, this statement would have been 100% true as of a few weeks ago. But this Funding Overview for 2023 was published in Feb’23.
The funding overview, as you’re aware, lacks numbers. Thus, total opacity.
I did not write this for the reddit crowd.
My company holds a whole bunch of atoms. It was not written for the purpose of harming the price of atom, nor for making atom look bad, nor for making the hub look bad.
It was written to get to a better place than where we are today.
Syed:I do not understand the point of this prop, aside from making us - i.e. Hub/Cosmos - look bad for media, investors and hodlers.
that’d be silly, wouldn’t it?
https://twitter.com/gyunit_/status/1642624867374866433
Proposal doesn’t look bad this looks bad
https://twitter.com/gyunit_/status/1642624867374866433
Syed:In light of the above bad faith, I’m calling BS on this. Granted the Foundation maybe should adopt a whistleblower policy or something to formally protect the rights of whistleblowers, but I think it’s in the Cosmos-spirit for people to speak their mind. And I strongly believe we won’t be “litigating disclosures”.
lotta litigation going around
and in my case I’m certain there’s been retaliation and I reckon you’re aware of that too. It wasnt taken kindly, the questions I asked.
Bad faith? This looks like bad faith:
twitter.comG.
Don’t even know what you’re talking about here
Wasn’t aware that we publicly mentioned a timeline for the report previously…so thanks for sharing the tweet and correcting me.
On my “bad faith” comment - it was based on seeing the prop on chain, with the text that’s on chain right now.
Of course since then, there seems to be a lot more “stuff” to unpack with this prop. Would have been good if there was a way to amend on-chain text.
So you mean to say it wasn’t written in bad faith and I have every good reason to demand financial transparency from the ICF?
What text would you amend?
And what needs unpacking? The shadow market must go
Tired of hearing that my organization is expensive you see
That’s never going to happen until there’s financial transparency out of the ICF
ps what’s that stank?
Could you describe specifically what your ideal transparency report would look like? Is it just a budget or something with transactions that have already occurred? I see you’re concerned about people about saying notional is expensive, have you considered a transparency report of your own to help justify the cost?
I am in favor of a transparency rapport, I think pretty much everyone is. Although I do think it’s strange to submit this proposal the day after Catdotfish said they are planning to release the transparency report “in the coming week” . If anything you should have waited it out and submitted this proposal after that term passed; next week or something. A few days wouldn’t have made a difference. That being said, I’ll vote No on this proposal for these reasons: • No clear requirements have been stated on what this report should even contain or what “full transparency” entails. There is no reasonable way for the ICF to even satisfy this request because the ask is entirely unclear. • The proposal contains incorrect facts and is phrased in a very divisive manner, for example, the No option is ridiculous. There are many other reasons to vote no. I definitely do not desire to “formally allow the interchain foundation to continue to operate in complete financial opacity” , and I’m fairly certain nobody else does either. • This proposal has not received adequate feedback from the community, nor was a last call / deadline given for when the proposal will go online so that people…
Excerpt (1195 of 1457 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗
There is no clear outcome for this proposal. What would happen if it passed and no response still?
Censure, not slash.
And then at least – speaking for myself – I would know.
If you want to complain about the style of a proposal, then you should really use the hubs governance, or are you saying that making random rules in the forum, that’s grounds to criticize people for stuff? This proposal is not – for example asking validators to leave the cosmos hub, like in proposal 69. I think you voted yes on that one Noam. The no text here is as it is because I should not need to deal with this. It has now been over a week since @catdotfish comments, and therefore your argument no longer holds water. It is truly sad @Noam that it is considered divisive to ask the foundation for transparency, when it claims to be transparent. I apologize that I got the current %age of atoms incorrect. How many times has the community been told that a transparency report would be released “next week?” So, the bigger issue, to you, is the regrettable inaccurate citation of the %age of total atom supply, NOT the total financial opacity of the ICF? Sir Notional most certainly isn’t chronically failing to deliver on promises of transparency to the community. Also, Noam, is this statement by an informal systems team member true? twitter.com Jacob…
Excerpt (1194 of 2611 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗
it’s published on this forum, and you can find the full amount of our payment, including the portion that has already vested, directly on the cosmos hub blockchain at proposal 104.
Interchain Foundation
@Noam sir
talk about a missing stair!
someone might think TAB… exists
screenshot cause I didn’t rtfa right away and the tweets don’t give readers any idea what’s going on
Hello all. As there has been very little discussion on this proposal outside of the two main actors, I want to contribute what I hope will be an useful perspective. Consider me the “medium guy” with respect to ATOM holdings… more than most, not as much as some others. FWIW… This subject IS one that needs to be discussed. The setup of the proposal may not have been the best, and perhaps too targeted, but it can serve to get the conversation going. There’s some admitted mistakes on both sides of the argument, and valid points on both sides as well. I’m not going to try to adjudicate any of that. OVERALL: The crypto space is under heavy regulatory scrutiny, and many of the proposals being floated about in Washington and other places are not favorable. I know this because I spoke to these agencies last week. The general impression from the FED, US Treasury, and others is that the lack of regulation or transparency within large crypto orgs is a lightning rod for nefarious activities. They DO NOT like it. And trust me, they are watching this discussion and many others like it. If we do not regulate ourselves well, then governments are going to do it for us. But besides that, we…
Excerpt (1196 of 2728 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗
Noam:I think we can, and should, do better in Cosmos Hub governance.
Governance is the problem?
I see this as highly disingenuous.
malgotas:There’s some admitted mistakes on both sides of the argument, and valid points on both sides as well.
I don’t admit mistakes with the argument. The ICF should operate transparently.
I do admit mistakes with procedural items related to this proposal.
Rather than admit mistakes have occurred over a period of years, affecting tons of millions of dollars annually, I see the ICF attacking this proposal purely on procedural and circumstantial grounds.
If anybody has any questions about anything related to the ICF or what inspired this proposal I am glad to answer them.
From some comments on Twitter, we can see that an ICF team member has now stated that the transparency report will be delivered before this proposal’s voting period is over.
Rather than attack the timing of this proposal, the ultimate way to diffuse this proposal is to deliver a transparency report.
Rather than attack the procedural aspects of this proposal, the ultimate way to diffuse this proposal is to deliver a transparency report.
jacobgadikian:If anybody has any questions about anything related to the ICF or what inspired this proposal I am glad to answer them.
Most people do not track across all platforms for info, so this story is probably bigger than most people would care to know. That being said, such stories are not a good look for Cosmos. I think a better approach moving forward would be to structure a proposal in such a way that it would include the real target of your concerns without specifically naming them. For example, you could say something like “Propose that any organization or DAO which has custody of ATOM tokens on behalf of project development and/or tokens granted to that entity by community vote must provide quarterly accounting of all granted token usage.” Or something to that effect. Then we can get valid business done without having to bring everyone into all the drama. It’s just a bad look for the ecosystem.
But we only have one that is claiming to be transparent and is not. It needs to be dealt with in a specific manner, and if a broader governance proposal were made of the type that you are describing, it would then still need to be dealt with in a specific manner. This is the unfortunate reality.
I have spent over a year attempting to get a transparency report for the ICF and every second of that work has thus far been wasted.
I can appreciate that and I understand the frustration you’re presenting over a matter that you clearly know more about than most people probably care to learn. However, this is only one example of a wider problem that is emerging in the Cosmos Hub. In layman’s terms, people are being granted tokens with no backend requirement for reporting.
The 20,000 ATOM given to “Turkey Earthquake Relief” is a recent example, but there have been others. Why not capture the larger issue first, and then deal with the nuances of each case in turn? I don’t personally have an opinion on ICF right now because I haven’t had the time or inclination to spend on trying to digest all angles of the issue. But if there was a proposal in place for all ATOM recipients/custodians to report, that would be beneficial to all of the community and it would place ICF on notice.
I’ll add that we should also consider collateralizing any endowments we give out, or phased payments based on adequate reporting for payments already received.
My two cents…
The foundation claims to be transparent, but is not.
Agreed on the Turkey funding, that’s why Notional didn’t vote for it, though we do encourage charity.
We’re trying very hard to lead the way in improving transparency in cosmos, here are some things that you might want to check out:
-
Telegram: Join Group Chat - cosmos hub governance chat. In the hub tech channel you can monitor our progress live.
-
Interchain Explorer by Cosmostation - prop 104
Yes, this has been overdue. I vote YES to proposal #787
The Interchain Foundation seeks to be a long-term entity with the mission to sustainably fund public goods. We recognize that a deep-rooted vision requires strong fundamentals. A transition that starts with more transparent communication! The interchain is an open interoperable economy built on open-source principles. Aiming to provide a more fair and decentralized future. A vision that lives upon the trust of our community. Building trust requires clear and true communication. The ICF is…
• When did the BOM stop talking to the TAB? • Why did the BOM stop talking to the TAB? • Why did the ICF not announce the TAB’s dissolution? • the consequence of opacity here is that when I had an issue that the tab could help with as technical advisors, I instead (metaphorically speaking) didn’t see a missing stair and broke my ankle, because (metaphorically speaking) instead of getting assistance I ended up witnessing a mexican standoff . • No one in the community could know that the TAB did not exist. TAB members fear retaliation, and in my opinion have already been retaliated against. • Only transparency can protect us from mexican standoffs and missing stairs • If the 2023 budget is set, why does this not provide information on the 2023 budget? • 2023 was for incumbents only. Please publicly recognize this or I my hand will be forced. I was told applications were closed. ____ was told to make an application. It was explained away as “well they’re incumbents”. • The ICF article about the dissolution of the TAB says that TAB members helped to design the 2023 budget. TAB members deny this. Please explain. • The ICF cited nondisclosure agreements…
Excerpt (1198 of 1866 characters). Read the whole post on the forum ↗
Financial transpiracy is very much important in our day to day activities. Coc once ur transparent people will trust you for who you are. And as a leader if your government is transparent, people under you will experence the devedence of democracy.