Update from Guardians of Cardano - Call for Action

English General Discussions
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Dear Friend from the Cardano Community,

Thank you for signing the petition to liberate the Cardano foundation.

You have shown your true passion, love & care to the Cardano venture together with 3500 other fellow Community members.

This is a tremendous number and we might confidently conclude represents the majority of the active Cardano Community.

Within this context it’s very painful and heartbreaking that Mr Parsons, Chairman of Cardano Foundation, didn’t bother or strategically decided not to show any kind of interest in our concerns for 3 weeks now. He has not made any official public appearance nor issued any public statement in response to our questions. This is absolutely unacceptable and unprecedented behavior, lacking any business ethics and you can conclude what this means, what message he is sending to us with his silence.

Our mission has become crisp clear now, there is no other way then having Mr. Pasons immediately resign from the Foundation, handing all the assets & resources managed by the Foundation over to the Swiss authorities.

To achieve this goal won’t be easy, but it’s definitely possible if we can stay and fight together as a strong Community, that doesn’t let anyone exploit our Cardano future, which promises to make a better and fairer world to live. We can not sit back, look away and expect the situation to resolve itself. Each and everyone of you can make an impact!

The Guardians of Cardano are asking for your support and we ask you to review and if you can then join the Open Investigation of Mr Parsons that we have started as described on our website.

Please visit the following sites:

https://www.guardiansofcardano.com/open-letter-2/ (on this page you can find the second open letter, this time addressed to the Community we advise you to read)

https://www.guardiansofcardano.com/distributed-futures-investigation/ (on this page you can find the interim results regarding the investigation of the Distributed Futures Program)

https://www.guardiansofcardano.com/subscription/ (here you may subscribe to our news letter so we may keep you updated with the happenings)

The most essential factor we need for our mission to succeed is to raise publicity for our cause. Publicity is what truly matters and decides these battles. It will make sure our issue gets the kind of exposure, attention & support it deserves from media, authorities and other crypto communities. It also lncreases the likelyhood that we get more information poping up and new clues being discovered that might be useful for the investigation. And not to underestimate the social pressure it generates for Mr. Parsons to have him finally break his silence.

Today we have at least 3500 people from all countries around the world who are aware of the Cardano Foundation issues, but we can definitely make it to 35,000 if you help and share the Liberate the Cardano Foundation initiative within your Social Network (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn).

If there is any help you would like to provide to our common cause then please let it be a message in your social media channels such as “I am John Doe from NYC, USA, a Guardian of Cardano, join our movement at www.guardiansofcardano.com to #freecardano.” Very important: please use the “#freecardano” hashtag in your message to identify the movement.

Finally if you are a Swiss resident and have ADA holdings, then you are a very important and special member of our Community in respect of the Liberate the Cardano Foundation mission. You are in a key position, where you can really make a huge difference and help us significantly to resolve the situation. If you feel like helping, without any obligations, please first contact us on our website on this special form https://www.guardiansofcardano.com/anmeldung/ so we may get back to you describing what this is all about.

Many thanks for your valuable attention and time!

Yours sincerely,

The Guardians of Cardano

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Added a link to your letter 2 in the site’s header. Hope it will help.

https://adascan.net/

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Thank’s a lot @bovich !

Meanwhile we became aware of this article in the Swiss Newspapper Handelszeitung with very intersting news. As it’s German only we’re working on a translation and will publish it on our site. https://www.handelszeitung.ch/blogs/bits-coins/cardano-stiftung-zug-gerat-kritik

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Cardano leads like many other Blockchain projects a foundation in Zug. Now there is an uprising against the foundation leadership.

By Marc Badertscher
on 27.10.2018
For a long time everything just seemed to fit. Attractive Taxes, Informed Authorities, and Good Foundation Law: Zug magically attracted Blockchain projects. Dozens of foundations sprung up, which should take over administrative functions and the promotion of projects. Crypto Valley by Zug - made in Switzerland - guaranteed quality.

But one of the big crypto projects is not satisfied with the way things are going: Cardano. The project is developing an app transactional platform and is currently valued at $ 1.9 billion. So much, at least its own currency ADA on the stock exchanges worth. But last time there was massive criticism of the foundation. No dedication, no transparency, mismanagement and nepotism: that is what the software developers and large parts of the Cardano community accuse the foundation in Zug. There are threats of lawsuits.

Meanwhile, the relevant Internet forums are full of criticism and discussions about the possible misconduct of the Foundation. There are petitions that have been signed by thousands, open letters from the developers. Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, says to the Handelszeitung: “We just realize that the foundation is not doing what it should.”

Hoskinson himself is the boss of the company IOHK, which is responsible for the programming and development of the Cardano platform. He works closely with the company Emurgo, which is responsible for economic cooperation. According to IOHK, the foundation in Switzerland should, above all, build up the community, make Cardano more widely known, but also initiate audits of the code. The purpose of the foundation is to promote the development of new technologies. The foundation can not complain about lack of funds. It had been endowed with Bitcoin and Ada, which are well worth the 60 million francs, as observers report.

The center of criticism is Foundation Council President Michael Parsons. The 72-year-old trustee has been involved since the very beginning, when a Cardano Foundation was first built on the Isle of Man, before being founded in Zug and declared to be an important pillar in the promotion of Cardano. In the Zug Foundation Parsons has more or less the sole say. Next to him, after retirement, only Pascal Schmid sits on the foundation board. But since Parsons has the casting vote as president, he actually rules alone.

Fight with hard bandages
How serious the situation is and how disrupted the relationship between the founders and the foundation is, a letter from Hoskinson’s IOHK to the Foundation confirms. This refers to clues “which, among other things, point to gross, unethical business conduct”. This is how “a picture of nepotism” emerges. Apparently both the stepson of Parsons - as general manager - as well as his wife is committed to the foundation. In addition, high compensation could have been paid out by unusual early fixing of exchange rates.

In the same vein proposes a movement called “Guardians of Cardano”. It is made up of supporters of the new Blockchain Protocol and also worries that the project will be detrimental to the Foundation. What’s right, and what’s not, remains open at the moment. For example, the foundation has not accounted to the public for the cash flow. However, she does not have to, according to foundation law. According to informed circles, there are question marks regarding bookings. In the meantime, the federal foundation supervision has been informed.

Criticism rejected
The Foundation says through a London adviser that, unfortunately, much of the recent public debate is not factually accurate. Cardano consists of several units. “And the Cardano Foundation is by far the smallest of the three protocol units in terms of funding and size,” the PR agency says. “Unlike other similar cryptocurrency foundations, it has not received or paid any fundraising proceeds and has no control over the software development of the Cardano Protocol.” The Foundation will provide more detailed information about its activities and plans in the near future.

Meanwhile, in the environment of the foundation resistance against this representation increases. The PR agency, which is the statement was unilaterally instructed by Parsons and not by the entire Board of Trustees. But Parsons was not entitled to act on behalf of the foundation in this matter, because it was primarily about himself and he would have to step into the strike, the criticism. Also, the statement was wrong that the foundation has received any funds from the fundraising.

The pressure on the foundation is increasing every day. Responsible are not only the dissatisfied software developers, who examine civil and criminal complaints, but also the so-called community. As with all major blockchain projects, this mostly well-informed, dedicated group, organized via the Internet and Twitter, plays an important role. Not least because of the price development of the platform’s own currency, they want a quick solution to the unsightly situation surrounding the Zuger Stiftung.

Update: Added with new review

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I wonder why a PR firm/london advisor knows more than CF’s partners(IOHK&Emurgo) and investors(Community)? Something is wrong here.

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I think there was only 1 marketing consultant I could think of that could have given such a statement.

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Can’t see the link via mobile maybe a pop up announcement be better?

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It is present in both versions of website. In responsive version it goes to the top left menu, open it and you will see.

In case of popup, we will have to show it just one time (after user closes it there is no point to annoy him more with it, so he might just close it without hitting the link) while at current version it present all the time.

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True? I was under the impression they got a cut from the initial fund raising.

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I believe the secret lies in the last sentence of the article

If you look at the Wayback-machine archived version from 30.Nov

it hasn’t the

but a

(Note: this is translated from German)

Also the first version hadn’t the whole second-last Paragraph

So this part was added only after some days and this is indeed VERY interesting.

It reads like Parsons instrumentalized the foundations PR agency to express his own personal opinion towards the Swiss newspaper (a professional journalist would never accept this opinion from the accused chairman itself)

Now think about the other detail:

We know the foundation council is build by only two persons, after Bruce Milligan left his seat. Parsons and the legal domiciliation service. One of this two wasn’t happy and contradicted what the PR-Agency published for Parsons …

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I believe this is their Redeem Address https://adascan.net/address/Ae2tdPwUPEZ9dH9VC4iVXZRNYe5HGc73AKVMYHExpgYBmDMkgCUgnJGqqqq/

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Sorry but I am not quite realizing the seriousness about Mr Parsons’ issue. Does he hold in his hand any decisive keys for Cardano to fulfill its development target?

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This is a good summary of the situation before Parsons resigned:

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