Vote Tor Paulsen Removed Standing for BI Foundation

[Chappie]

@BI Foundation

Tor Paulsen Removed Standing. At the time of this vote, your Standing is 88%.

Their reasoning for this vote is:

I am removing standing based on BI Foundation not providing any official updates since April 24 2019 (304 days).

I am well aware that people associated with BIF is providing value to the ecosystem through their different efforts, and I am more than willing to reinstate standing as soon as you provide the appropriate community updates.

You can see how Tor Paulsen has historically voted for BI Foundation by going here.

You are welcome to reply to this thread or contact Tor Paulsen privately. And please remember to keep your ANO Contributions area updated.

 

[Niels Klomp]

First of all I am writing this as chair of BIF and co-founder/CTO Sphereon .

We already acknowledged the need for updates and also mentioned our Product Owner Abe will start providing those. Currently he is reading up and he will be providing updates and feedback soon.

You do realize that an entity that brings investors (Off-blocks, Triall and others I cannot yet disclose) new ANO candidates, clients (governments, banks, industry), products, paid/free resources, does a lot of outreach, is in committees and working groups. Has a name to protect and at the same time is being asked by other protocols and large entities to create integrations with their solutions (paid to be clear), but holds them off, by this type of rigidness and with the amount of money and resources we direct to the protocol , is going to create the exact opposite of what you are trying to do here. I guess I already decided right now to go ahead with an integration for LTO network as they are happy to see us no questions asked.

It is in all respect the behavior I have seen from some small fish (let's just call it what it is at this point), trying to push for transparency and accountability in all aspects, instead of starting from a baseline of trust when you clearly see (and know from private discussions) a party executing for the betterment of the protocol.

So you really expect let's say a Google to do every single vote and write reports about what they are doing even though you know they are doing these things for the protocol? You really believe they will tie there name to it? You wandered why MC immediately resigned? They cannot have their name associated with this type of approach in public. We can't either, so we will have to discuss internally.

 

[Quintilian]

First of all I am writing this as chair of BIF and co-founder/CTO Sphereon .

We already acknowledged the need for updates and also mentioned our Product Owner Abbe will start providing those. Currently he is reading up and he will be providing updates and feedback soon.

You do realize that an entity that brings investors (Off-blocks, Triall and others I cannot yet disclose) new ANO candidates, clients (governments, banks, industry), products, paid/free resources, does a lot of outreach, is in committees and working groups. Has a name to protect and at the same time is being asked by other protocols and large entities to create integrations with their solutions (paid to be clear), but holds them off, by this type of rigidness and with the amount of money and resources we direct to the protocol , is going to create the exact opposite of what you are trying to do here. I guess I already decided right now to go ahead with an integration for LTO network as they are happy to see us no questions asked.

It is in all respect the behavior I have seen from some small fish (let's just call it what it is at this point), trying to push for transparency and accountability in all aspects, instead of starting from a baseline of trust when you clearly see (and know from private discussions) a party executing for the betterment of the protocol.

So you really expect let's say a Google to do every single vote and write reports about what they are doing even though you know they are doing these things for the protocol? You really believe they will tie there name to it? You wandered why MC immediately resigned? They cannot have their name associated with this type of approach in public. We can't either, so we will have to discuss internally.

I expect every ANO to use the appropriate channels to provide updates to the Standing parties. This would not have been an issue if BIF did not abstain from providing an update the past 304 days.

Also please take note of the following section in my explanation:

, and I am more than willing to reinstate standing as soon as you provide the appropriate community updates.

The standing system is meant to be a fluid and dynamic system used to incentivize desired behavior in ANOs. As soon as you provide a relevant update I will reinstate standing based on that.

 

[Niels Klomp]

Yupz and I am telling that removing standing for something you can clearly see and know and requiring stringent updates is going to reach the exact opposite for larger entities. They are busy, they cannot provide the same level of transparency as small groups, they have investors.

Ever wondered why the likes of Factom Inc, DBGrow, Layertech, GOi and us are less transparent about what they do exactly in some aspects? All entities that are working on getting actual clients to this ecosystem.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

Looking at the chains in the last few months who would you say is biggest contributor to usage in that list?

There's an unnamed party here who makes far more entries and doesn't say a word about it in public. Highly respect that.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

Edit: I don't mean Pegnet either. Some other ANO seems to be at least making usage of the system and doesn't feel the dire need to tell everyone about it.

 

[Niels Klomp]

Heck you even know we are working with a large oil company and other parties to get your tech on board, you also know that process is underway for almost a year now and it takes an awful long time the larger the clients, with no guarantee of success.

That really aren't things we can discuss in public. Yet at the same time it are these big things that can help the protocol tremendously. It is this tension between working harder for the protocol than most (and please don't explain/take that as discrediting others), putting more money in, but at the same time not really being able to mention that type of info

 

[Niels Klomp]

Mitchel I don't care about usage or whether they name it or not. We don't even know whether it is legit or not to be totally honest. This discussion is not about that at all. This discussion is about an entity doing an awful lot more than most others, with proofs of that and people even knowing that.

All I am saying is that we really are kidding ourselves if we believe we can scale this to larger and larger entities. A lot more needs to be done , and unless we start on that now, we are not ever going to attract these entities to the ecosystem.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

I understand this Neil's but this is a public community with everyone's money being spent on unspecified proprietary projects, think ANO's should be taking the risk first and then when ready to go public all the community backs them for runway and marketing.

Been plenty of time for "trust me" and it simply has gone bad. ANO's should take the risk upfront. If you have something even slightly promising the community will back you, am sure of it.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

There's basically zero risk involved here with failire, no free market works like this, it's a recipe for disaster as evidenced by history. There needs to be an incentive for people to succeed.

Hopefully others can see my point of view here.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

The irony of misspelling failure. (Too late to edit)

 

[Niels Klomp]

What proprietary projects are you talking about?

I am talking about scaling the governance to larger entities here. Completely separate discussions. I am the last man standing for the protocol basically within Sphereon.

Seeing investors in Triall and Off-blocks, developing that product to begin with together with Colin, getting actual clients to the public protocol and some people knowing more details about what really is going on behind the scenes for betterment of it all.

What are you talking about 'trust me' with regards to this discussion. I am telling the current system is a nice start, but as it is now it won't scale and/or attract larger entities and that needs to be fixed asap.

 

[WB]

What are you talking about 'trust me' with regards to this discussion. I am telling the current system is a nice start, but as it is now it won't scale and/or attract larger entities and that needs to be fixed asap.

Would you agree with me that the larger players, i.e. Factom Inc, Sphereon, and formerly Multicoin already have a special status compared to smaller ANOs?

 

[Mitchell Berry]

What proprietary projects are you talking about?

I'll just leave this here:

nda site:factomize.com - Google Search

 

[Niels Klomp]

Depends on how you look at it.

They need to be upheld to the same standards as you need a baseline, but as it is now I believe it will not work and certainly will not scale.

Take the oil company example I mentioned above. That is just one example and Tor obviously knows which company this is. Do people really believe we will be providing insight into our sales and opportunities pipelines in a push for transparency?

I am just approaching this as my role for BIF/Sphereon and stipulating the problem we have in this area. We can only be very vague if people would expect insights into everything and that would hurt us more than not mentioning anything at all.

It would make sense to me that if a larger entity is clearly doing good things for the protocol that gets taken into account at the same time. Thinking parties that are really capable of advancing the protocol will fit in current governance requirements is naive I believe

 

[Mitchell Berry]

The community will likely fund anything with the slightest bit of potential. Many seem incapable of talking about what they are doing nor at least open source their code when it doesn't work out.

I don't see why anyone here should fund other people's riskless ventures. Feel free to debate that.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

And to clarify, being secretive is fine, but do it on your own time and come back when it works out. Everyone will back you.

 

[Niels Klomp]

@Mitchell Berry NDAs and proprietary projects are not necessarily the same thing.

 

[Niels Klomp]

And to clarify, being secretive is fine, but do it on your own time and come back when it works out. Everyone will back you.

What closed source things are you talking about. 90 percent of what we are doing for the protocol is open source.

And I am telling it will probably be to late then.

 

[Mitchell Berry]

Do agree. My point is there's a lot of lost source code out there on potential goldmines.
Some projects are ahead of their time or didn't have the right team. Hiding that away from the world in shame shouldn't be the default.
Open sourcing factom fails should be the norm. Doesn't matter how bad and consumer unfriendly it is, in the end no one will judge you for it. Even a non public repo shared on the various forums for seekers is fine.

 

[Alex]

They need to be upheld to the same standards as you need a baseline, but as it is now I believe it will not work and certainly will not scale.

What do you believe the baseline should be? What would scale?

 

[Niels Klomp]

Just another example we are starting a RFP which will hopefully lead to an unpaid POC for some entities. That POC is projected at 50k dollars. It is competing against other parties and after winning it there is no guarantee you get to execute as this large entity even mentions they might not move forward with it.

The dilemma here for you guys:

We are considering doing the proposal with Factom, even though some requirements do not really fit it. Choosing something like Ethereum or Hyperledger would make it a lot easier.

So should we take the risk worth 50k dollars and do it with Factom or not? That is 50k dollars that could go up in smoke mostly for us as a company.

After people answered the dilemma here. Do you really expect us to discuss these risks we take as a company for the protocol with the rest of you? Or so you trust us doing these things by itself?

If not totally fine, makes these decisions easier for us as a company.

@Jason Gregoire happy to hear your thoughts on the above dilemma and how that is riskless as you classify it

 

[Niels Klomp]

What do you believe the baseline should be? What would scale?

The baseline has to incorporate the (perceived) value an entity brings to the system. Thinking you can really objectify everything is an illusion.

Delegation of votes and standing needs to happen. Token holders and users of the system should have a voice in these matters. Not only ANO's that sometimes have an ax to grind at eachother, or even sometimes see it as competition.

Smaller and new entities have more to prove, but as they grow (or already are bigger) it is really naive to think they can report on everything they do. Especially if some of their actions are already known by everyone.

 

[Niels Klomp]

I already see people having short term memory when deciding standing. Trying to objectify everything. For instance not awarding points or asking questions about work people put in last 2 years in working groups and committees. The fact a committee stopped existing 1 month ago doesn't mean these people have put in the work and probably had a meaningful input. It is short sighted to only look exactly at the present without taking into account the (near) past as well.

 

[Miguel Proulx]

This type of infighting that we are seeing now across the board is the reason I have been pushing for infra ANO only and everything else through the grant pool. There would be a lot less pressure on the standing parties with a system like that as every extra dime spent would have to go through the grant pool process which requires a lot more transparency.

While I agree that a very simple, short and sweet update from BIF would have been appropriate long time ago, I tend to not support the fact that the promotion/demotion system is being used as a weapon to request something like an update.

BI Foundation's efficiency is at 35% right now and you are receiving around 15-20 000$ more than an infra ANO and I believe you are bringing this value many times over as a whole. While our governance is important and a report would certainly be expected every few months, isn't it a bit harsh to remove standing for this while the overall contribution are a net positive ?

If we keep going down this path with our governance, teams with a lot of potential will keep walking away or not be joining our ranks.

 

[Niels Klomp]

Agreed. As I explained in another thread where people start to objectify everything. If you do plain calculations on the amount of FCT we have taken out, versus the amount of money we put in directly (talking money) in investments in open-source code (resources) and companies around us, we are probably above 1m dollars at this point, with more to come. That is not taking into account our commercial projects or money we receive from those. That is purely directed towards code and entities that build on Factom. So minus the FCT we received. Let that sink in please.

Have you heard us about it till date? If i then hear people talking about creating websites that will show what people have recieved versus what they have delivered. All I can do is laugh really hard in pain and anger. It shows the complete small scale thinking of some (sorry to be so utterly blunt about it). How would something like that show for Sphereon/BIF? And do people really expect us to remain involved, or let you tie our name in the industry to it if we go down that route?

Sorry for maybe sounding cocky about this. But i am a bit done with people not taking into consideration that larger entities are doing things on other levels than 1-2 person ANOs.

 

[Miguel Proulx]

Would you agree with me that the larger players, i.e. Factom Inc, Sphereon, and formerly Multicoin already have a special status compared to smaller ANOs?

Standing parties have done a good job making sure they are held to the same standard as others.

I think we should feel privileged to have big entities in our ranks, not the other way around. I certainly would not expect a Google like entity to spend any time doing governance work.

Our governance should be leaner to accommodate this type of entities. For our governance to be leaner, it should start with a flat infra only governance and for those who likes to play politics, we would have a grant system that would allow it.

 

[Niels Klomp]

And to be totally clear. I am all for the standing system. Otherwise I wouldn't have been involved in creating the framework for it together with @Tor Paulsen and @David Chapman . But people are lacking perspective and try to objectify everything. You really cannot. You simply cannot measure exact value. That is subjective.

 

[Quintilian]

BI Foundation's efficiency is at 35% right now and you are receiving around 15-20 000$ more than an infra ANO and I believe you are bringing this value many times over as a whole. While our governance is important and a report would certainly be expected every few months, isn't it a bit harsh to remove standing for this while the overall contribution are a net positive ?

Keep in mind that standing can easily be reinstated and I even wrote that I would in my explanation for removing standing.

We need some minimum standards for reporting from ANOs even if they are the "rockstars of the community", and a short and sweet update that "things are progressing well, and we are starting a RFP which will hopefully lead to an unpaid POC for some entities. That POC is projected at 50k dollars. It is competing against other parties and after winning it there is no guarantee you get to execute as this large entity even mentions they might not move forward with it." would be kind of sufficient. But there has been nothing for 304 days, with 3 people requesting updates starting November 30th last year. That in my book warrants removing of standing, but I will be more than happy to reapply it after the community gets an update on progress.

 

[Niels Klomp]

This needs to be scaled. Right now ANOs can be expected to know what is going on. But indeed you cannot expect for instance a 50M company to provide the same level of openness as a 1-2 person ANO. Or be involved in every little details.

I would rather see the small teams stepping up in doing work, to show their worth. The bigger ones are the ones in the best position to really execute for the protocol (some exceptions obviously). But all work they have to do on small scale hinders them to either join or do that execution. It is a simple calculation