jbods have sensitive souls like some generations younger than I with who I have first hand experience with in this regard. The only difference is these generations stop working and start scheming and conniving when one uses this method of interaction so watch out who you yell at, it ain’t the 70s or 80s any more. lol 
I’m heavily invested too, which is all the more reason to be critical of the team when they appear to be going off the rails. Not that they have ever appeared to listen to the community and so changed course due to community input - as that would signal they are really listening. But being an honest person I think we have to try. Failure to take into account the criticism of the community is itself a failure on their part and should be acknowledged if they are themselves being honest with the community.
I don’t see how that works, we all have opinions and ideas but if a company (maidsafe) had to change course for every community member idea of what the correct thing to do is, we would never get anywhere.
Nobody could pay me enough to work under those conditions.
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this phrase comes to mind
The phrase “a camel is a horse designed by committee” is a humorous analogy used in graphic design to illustrate the challenges of collaborative creativity. The phrase was famously said by Sir Alec Issigonis, the designer of the original Mini in 1959
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Normally investor relations for a research and development startup are performed by the top brass directly with the investors, so there are private talks - make no mistake, traditionally investors do move the needle.
Now we have blockchain investors and it’s a new ballgame. Management needs to step up to the plate and communicate clearly and effectively why they are going down a path - especially when investors point out serious limitations of a path or even a self-destructive path.
This isn’t a normal software company making a product that is known tech - like a new game - wherein there are fewer things to be critical about.
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It should have been crowd sourcing and banks and bonds, not investors! It could never go right with the obsolete investor model. Investors if you can’t get rid of them are always a cancer they start to hollow products out- a usurious credit card that can never be paid off then they start back seat driving.
This is a really tricky issue, much more tricky that I had thought it would be. In the last year I have been an observer mainly. It’s been tough to watch from the sidelines. Most of the time I could not read or concentrate so that was maybe a blessing.
In any case it allowed me to watch closely and ponder much of this. From my viewpoint we had a new CEO, that was a huge relief, she brought in a few people to help, again I was delighted (I still am), however that team was not me, I spent a ton of time directly speaking with the community and it helps me to do that, but it’s very hard at times as every voice want’s an ear and I only have 2 ears 
Anyway, the view has been interesting.
So the new team took the reins and there were forced to, of course it would be different, and of course there would be changes. So the community is one side, then internally on slack and the team, there were also some issues, but ended up with a team that were really pushing and pumped to get the network launched. So a few conflicts, but progress and progress was so important to me. Anyway things were moving.
Then the launch protocols and prizes and engagement all started. This was after a suggestion from me initially to go with an erc20 or similar as the exchanges were just not working with us, I seen avalanche using a DAG type approach, in fact I used that to persuade devs that such approaches ere not only useful and fast but with our added designs, they could be scalable to billions of TPS, but even Ava gave up and gave up due to exchanges not working with them, also the crypto community charging away leaving them in the dust. So they moved away and at that point I figured, with all their resources and focus (they are money only really) they hit this wall. So instead of squibbling over the money part, let’s focus on the data part, not to leave our currency behind, but to get the network out.
Anyway that has caused major headaches and accusations and … well you name it and it has been thrown about. But I have never been driven by the money, but I am dead keen on a true decentralised and fair system of data/knowedge etc.
Now I see it seems to be the norm for many in the community to be on one side throwing stones and the team on the other taking the hits and not coming too close as folk bite and bite hard.
However, I am still focussed on the network getting out there, I think almost everyone is. That is vital to me, I also wonder btw and it’s again on the side, if money at all will feature in the network at all in the net few years?? I seriously mean that. Anyway it’s not my goal, my goal is this security privacy and digital freedom for the world, that’s still my goal and I cannot see that change. In fact with AI coming (already here) then I see this as much more important to achive, more important that ever. [Please don’t read this as me being anti money or anti profit, I live in the real world, we have folk to pay and investors and holders to reward, this is not that discussion]
So I do see the money focus as both something that has to happen and some thing that is also painful and sore to watch. It’s causing some to be aggressive accusatorial and also stubborn, I am not sure I can help there, but we will see.
Then on to my own wee place where I am again able to help a wee bit in guiding and helping the team with technical issues, not so much the erc20 stuff as I don’t have the bandwidth and there is so much to do, so I am 100% focussed on data/api and being able to deliver apps.
I won’t go into that right now but I hope to have something of value very soon that brings us a really goo set of tools/documents and examples of just what we can build here. It’s a ton of work, but it’s happening as the team push the launch and I hope it’s going to be a game changer for everyone to focus on and remember why we are here and why the return on investment will be a good one. As I have always said, profit follows value, not the other way around, so I really want folk to see the value and I want that to be very visible very soon.
So in terms of the community /company I do see a split and it’s maybe natural at this point, but it’s not fatal for sure. I think passion is great and I see the community has an abundance of that and it’s crazy good, the team are also passionate to get rewarded and have their work appreciated and they know that will be only visible when there is something out there to measure, no matter how small it starts, it has to actually exist.
Now after typing all of this I cannot really be sure I have added anything worth reading, but these are my fleeting thoughts and I hope they help. We are all in this together, but we are unfortunately all in our different spaces and teams right now, but we need to realise we share the common goal and whether we agree to disagree we should support each other. I think it was Bezo’s who said, agree and commit or disagree and commit, but commit is not optional. That was for his team, but I think for the wider community there is something to be said for even if you disagree with parts of this, we can support the goal.
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I think it is just people being passionate, probably better than indifferent.
Once all is said and done divergent paths will come together again, a few lost and hopefully many gained.
Merry Christmas David and all at Maidsafe.
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Let’s all look forward to 2025. It will be very interesting for sure Have a great one.
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It’s important to consider that a launched network brings many benefits beyond just the network itself too.
Folks have been waiting years to write apps for the platform. Some of them may need their investment to start paying off to enable that, providing a virtuous cycle of receiving value, then growing it.
We’ll also start getting new users and contributors. Exchanges will also take us more seriously in the longer run too.
The technology will also mature. It will get to prove itself stable and performant, which will grow the ecosystem of apps and users.
This will allow continued investment into making the network better. Being able to fund teams to extend the network is critical too. There is never an endless runway and competition doesn’t stand still either.
Launch, then iterate. Progress doesn’t stop at the first live network. It is just the end the beginning, with many exciting areas to explore!
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You sure have. It’s nice to hear about the landscape you have been travelling through, so to speak.
It’s also been great to see how the community has been more involved again recently. I’m talking about things like asking for feedback about the Whitepaper, or you having a discussion about the way to make the stuff the registers were supposed to do etc.
I haven’t had much to say in those discussions, but nevertheless it feels good to see how the field has been shared a bit more again.
So yeah, a bit tipsy at the moment, Merry Christmas from Finland, and thanks for this year! May the next bring all the good for you personally and for Autonomi as well!
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This is the best argument for the Trojan horse strategy taken I think. Get in the door, prove the tech and that the token would function the same as data, data=token, token=data, that data is the worlds most valuable commodity and perhaps then exchanges will give in to supporting the network’s data equivalent representation of value and exchange.
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