Cardano Foundation: Need for Reform or Community Voting (Opinion)

English General Discussions
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Recently there were several posts, videos, and interesting discussion about Cardano Foundation. Many people are not satisfied with the current state, and I decided to express my opinion as well.

It’s symbolic or coincidence that just a few hours ago I received e-mail from CF about my application for Ambassador which I submitted 2 months ago. It was a copy-paste messaged, not personalized, which had the following words:

*Unfortunately, we have to notify you that you didn’t qualify to become an *
*Ambassador. Specifically, your application was denied because you didn’t *
*provide any links to previous content that demonstrated your capabilities *
in the role, so we were not able to effectively evaluate you as a candidate.

I can’t say if I qualify for being Ambassador. Maybe you, who reads this text can tell me? But of course, I had a link (link to Cardano Virtual Summit overview, which I published on Cryptotexty.io web-site, and 10+ blog platforms). Since then I wrote dozen of articles which got thousands of views. (“Content creator” role) Even my video on Daedalus staking got 1000+ views. On the platforms such as Bitcointalk, Read.Cash, Uptrennd, Publish0x, Hive I always replied to comments even if it’s critics (so I took kind of “Moderator” role as well), some of the texts I translated to Ukrainian and Russian (so I took “Translator” role) and I organized First Cardano Meetup in Kyiv (recap was posted here on the forum). Maybe 20 people are not impressive, but I don’t think these days there are a lot of Cardano meetups going on. (so I took “Meetup Organiser” role). I also paid $90 for Meetup.com Pro account (as was suggested in Cardano meetup guide, it says they will cover this cost, and I wouldn’t mind it, but now I doubt it).

I’m not disappointed in Cardano, I have a lot of things to do in Cardano ecosystem: I’m happy to be in Focus Group of Project Catalyst (and I plan to write a big article on this subject later), I’m helping one of the stake pools with content and marketing, and I continue my research, I have some other projects related to Cardano which are a bit early to tell about.

But for some people, it might be a problem. Somebody can actively work for months, and then do not deserve even a personal response. Some people after this can direct their activities towards other blockchains, where their efforts might be recognized.
Many cryptocurrnecies give Ambassador opportunities, and rewards both financial and esteem, etc.

Other people here already wrote that there is impression that Cardano Foundation isn’t working effectively. In reality, this even gives us a question - do we need it at all?
Maybe everything will be better without it? IOHK, Emurgo, Stake pool operators - there are many companies and individuals who are actively working on Cardano development and promotion.
In some other blockchains I remember that ineffective activities of foundation caused a lot of harm, both for community and the price of cryptocurrency. We can remember the case of NEM foundation 2 years ago.

Charles Hoskinson spoke a lot about Tresury recently (in relation to ETC and not only), so if there will be Cardano treasury (i.e. DC Fund, Project Catalyst), maybe some incentives which are now performed ineffectively, can we done in a decentralised way.

We can put a question - maybe community (ADA holders, SPOs) can vote for Cardano foundation members? Maybe community can vote for Ambassadors as well?

How? This is something which the community can think about, decide, and propose reforms, changes or restructuring.

Probably I wouldn’t write this post, if I didn’t notice many other opinions on this topic.

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I am a little confused also…

  1. I agree with most of your post. I to applied to be an ambassador because they said at the IOHK summit you could start a new YouTube channel and be approved as long as you have the requisite 3 videos… I have a channel that i am doing two videos per week but only currently have five… Now I am thinking that they are no going to approve my application. I have not received a response yet…

  2. Today is suppose to be the day to start submitting your DC Fund proposals… I have one to submit but there is no where to submit it… I asked about it 8 days ago on the forum and nobody knows. I have asked in telegram groups and in discord groups and the responses I get are people with the same questions… I am pretty sure the Cardano Foundation is suppose to handle the proposals. So, I decided to ask in the new Cardano Foundation road map telegram group - twice, at different times. It was super busy each time and there were people posting that definitely would of had some ideas - prominent members of the community… , but no response. This is what is crazy about it - There are hundreds of people trying to decide what the future of the Cardano Foundation is going to be but no one has time for the present - not even a “I don’t know, i wish i could help you.”… look, I think what there doing is great but you can’t just fix part of it.
    I have decided to start a DC Fund thread and post my proposal here… I literally don’t know how else do go about this… I am going to go do that. but good message and on point. But, i do think they are trying to do something. we will see…

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I’d reapply as content creator with links to the new content that you created the requirements say you need to submit at least 3 pieces of content.

Here are the criteria from the Ambassadors page:
https://cardano.org/ambassadors/

PROFILE OF APPLICANTS:

Anyone who is interested in providing content; no specific background required;

Eligibility requirements:

You provide at least three previously published pieces of content.
To apply for an Ambassadorship and qualify for rewards, simply submit published pieces through the Ambassador nomination form for the formal review of the type and quality of content and to provide feedback.

Below are some of the criteria to assess content:

Graphical, text, articles, blogs, audio and/or video content are all acceptable, as well as tools (apps, websites, etc.);
Content informs our community about technical or social aspects of the project;
Content is up to date, well presented; video and audio are of high quality in resolution, editing and production value efforts; graphic design work shows proficiency in execution;
Text is flawless and grammatically correct;
Content represents the values of the Cardano brand;
Audiovisual production excels in quality and delivery

Please keep participating!

Ultimately I think yes the foundation will become much more community led as it should be.

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Hi, What is your YouTube Channel? I’ll subscribe!

I think there will be more information on the DC fund application procedure in the coming weeks. I’m sure the lack of clarity is because they are still getting it ready.

In the meantime yes please post a thread about it. If nothing else probably good to get some feedback on your ideas to improve your chance of success. Regardless don’t give up! Keep showing up and making a difference please!

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Thank you for the suggestion, but I won’t reapply until there are some changes happen in CF, then maybe I will reapply

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  1. Please share your youtube channel here - you will have few more subscribers
    I wish you good luck with your application. In my case it took 2 months or more just to receive this copy/paste response.

  2. I think I can help you with the response. DC Fund is Project Catalyst, and I’m happy to take part in the Focus Group. A lot of work and development is going on in this direction. Now it’s still a test phase, so I submitted my podcast there and will resubmit it at the next stage. I’m not sure about the dates, I just don’t want to give them not to be wrong, but I think in this month it will be possible to submit.
    I also submitted my podcast proposal here on forum, as I wanted community feedback and anyway ADA holders will vote - so if you want to share this information on forum - you can also do it.

I share with Project Catalyst either your thread (or somebody else’s) telling that it would be good to respond with dates, etc. There are still a lot of details I don’t know, I’m just one of the focus group participants.
But here I decided to respond to ensure that proposal submission will be available soon.
That’s for sure, and it will be funded from Cardano Treasury, not from Cardano Foundation.

This is one more reason why I think DC Fund is much funding source than CF.
Some people laugh when they see that CF is giving $20 for meetup organization, when let’s say for example Algorand gives $350

Yes, I did meetup without CF and they even didn’t share it on their channels. So I’m not surprised they don’t reply to you.

CF is not Cardano, we know it but many people might have these associations, and it’s sad that for many people this association might be negative…

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Hello @cryptotexty I am sorry that you had such a bad experience with your Ambassador nomination. At the moment, we are reviewing potential candidates at the end of each month. So if you apply at the very beginning of the month, the time to wait is already long. and we are discussing if this could be done every 2 weeks.

Unfortunately, in addition to that, we had an internal blocker last month, which prevented us from accepting any Ambassadors last month. This means that we could only send all emails for July and August now at the beginning of September. So that’s where the two months waiting period came from.

We have used this time to optimize and improve the overall process. For example, we used to send only one “catch-all” rejection email, simply because we get so many nominations. But of course this was not a good solution.

From now on we have several different rejection emails for example when people did not provide content at all, or the content was not Cardano related, or it was Cardano related but only price speculation, and so on. We can (and maybe should) add easily more canned responses in the future but please understand, with so many nominations, we can not send individual rejection mails (at least for the first response), if you reply to the initial rejection mail we are happy to dig into the details of your rejection.

In your subject field of the rejection mail should be a number, from what I see it should be #591, can you confirm that? As content creator you must have submitted three different pieces. Feel free to send me an email or reply to the rejection mail or with your okay we can also discuss the rejection here in the forum. This may also be helpful for others.

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Hello @anthony_stachowitz,
after briefly checking this, you were nominated on August 30 (#656), and I was on leave from August 31 to September 4, so we had to cut on August 27 for judging the content. That’s why we can look at your content only at the end of this month, please bear with us.

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Thank you for the explanations.
Yes, it was #591 in the subject.

As I remember I submitted Cardano Virtual Summit Overview
https://cryptotexty.io/cardano-virtual-summit-overview/

In Ukrainian translation is was publish on one of the top sites, and in Russian translation is was published on Forklog, the biggest crypto media in Eastern Europe.

Since then I wrote more articles, and organized meetup.

That’s good that you fond time to reply here to me and Anthony, and I think the process of Ambassadors choosing and voting should be improved.

Recently I saw Charles Hoskinson made a video on Cardano roadmap, and Rick made a long video with Kyle where they discussed roadmap draft.
As I see improvement of CF is only a question of time, and then everything will be more decentralized.

I’ll see how it develops and will see if I can contribute.

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Yes, correct you submitted three links. This might seem a bit nitpicking to you but technically you submitted one piece of content that was translated into two languages. This led to the rejection.

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Yes, it depends on how you want to judge and evaluate them.
Since then I wrote dozen of articles. They are different size, topics, maybe quality. I don’t think there is something special in them, but as Charles Hoskinson said that we need to bring more new people to the ecosystem. And the articles are doing so - this I can see by the comments and feedback

Moreover, because some of the blog platforms (Hive, Steemit, Publish0x, Uptrennd, Read.cash) have reward mechanism - I receive some additional tokens for them, this is also some kind of criteria - as people are upvoting them.

I mention this because in Ambassador application there was a place to leave forum profile, so it’s possible to see is the person active or not.
But I think anyway the process will be improved, event the fact you are responding here means that Cardano forum is an important place and that even somebody with small influence and no position in Cardano ecosystem can receive reply, etc.

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Sorry,
I just saw your reply… so many places to get and send messages between forum, telegram, discord, etc…

I think you saw channel in a different post but in case you haven’t, here is the link:

and these are my proposals that i added yesterday and today:
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/My-Haskell-Buddy/319156-48088
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Help-Small-Stake-Pools-Survive!/319171-48088
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Tip-People-In-ADA/319818-48088

Thanks for responding!

Anthony

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I just saw your message also… so many places to talk Cardano in this ecosystem…

Thanks for you reply and advice. I do appreciate it!

Here is my youtube channel and I also put in 3 ideas / proposals today, i will list them also:

https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/My-Haskell-Buddy/319156-48088
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Help-Small-Stake-Pools-Survive!/319171-48088
https://cardano.ideascale.com/a/dtd/Tip-People-In-ADA/319818-48088

Anthony

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I also just saw you message… sorry about that. Thank you for checking on my application. I appreciate you taking the time.

Thanks,
Anthony

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You don’t need to duplicate messages, just tag multiple people in one.

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I didn’t realize I had so many people to answer… I replied as I saw the messages but I guess I could have edited my original one to include everyone… Sometimes my brain falls asleep while the rest of me is still awake… I will remember this trick for next time… thanks Rob.

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#Metoo :grin:

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Thank you
Good Channel,
I subscribed to it

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Just an update,

I received the same form letter rejecting my application for becoming an ambassador.

The form letter doesn’t even know if I was the one who applied. It says, “You’re on a real good track but unfortunately, we have to notify you that either you or the person you nominated didn’t qualify to become an Ambassador.” Excuse my language but what moron wrote that line? How do you know that I am on a really good track if you don’t know whether it was me or someone else that applied. If your going to be impersonal about it at least write it correctly and say, “The person who applied is on a really good track, …”. It’s really a bad look for the CF to be turned down by someone who doesn’t know how to correctly use the language they are trying to communicate in.

I am not really mad about not being chosen… It really is more about getting a form letter that took 2 months to arrive and you can’t even respond with a real reason. Your that busy at the foundation that you can’t find time to write a personal rejection… I guess with all your INDEPENDENT board members having jobs at IOHK, Emurgo and the Foundation, how could you find the time?

But seriously, re-write your rejection letter. It really makes the foundation sound like it’s run by a bunch of idiots that don’t give a shit. Unless that is what your going for…

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Hello, sorry I’m the one who wrote that. :wave:t3:

The problem with this is that we have people who nominate themselves on one side and people who nominate someone else on the other side. - at the moment, we need to have the same response for both. I’m happy to take any suggestions regarding the formulation, and I did a note to improve this. We will look into that.

The answer basically means you are good, your content was good, but others were “better”. I’m deeply sorry about that, for example we could only onboard one content creator this month and I wish there were more.

I’m always happy to discuss in detail your content or anything that was not clear enough, just reply to the email.

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