What is Cardano Foundations output? What do you do

I can only speak for myself, but if I think it, then I believe a lot of the community will think the same.

I trust IOHK and EMURGO.
I see what they achieve. Despite some bumps with Daedelus pre 2.0. They seem to work hard. They fix their product problems over time. They seem to make intelligent decisions. Charles, Sebastian and some others do a very good job explaining what they do on youtube.
I don’t think any of the community would disagree that you (Cardano Foundation) are still the weakest of the partnership.

I either don’t see what you (Cardano Foundation) do, or you STILL don’t do enough given the budget you have.
Whats your output? I see:

  • You worked with/paid McCann to do a website, which in my opinion was on average received indifferently. I assume probably not worth the money you paid them. See here : New Website design is terrible. Discuss here
  • Did you help with the summit which was a great success. But surely you didn’t code it, which in my opinion is really where the credit is due.
  • You administrate the telegram channel and some other social media channels. The channels are administrated well (despite some admins being rude occasionally) and you deserve credit for that, but it’s not exactly the hardest thing to achieve. The last twitter update was July 1st… Your youtube channel has in my opinion meaningless content on there that doesn’t particularly promote Cardano. In fact as a new investor seeing that channel, I wouldn’t invest.
  • You choose and pay some ambassadors.

Sorry but this is not enough. You are too quiet. There is too much competition in the industry for this to be it. IOHK and Emrugo are working overtime and what are you doing as an organisation…

Where is your marketing of Cardano. Where is your investment in to DEfi (I realise Goguen/technology isn’t here yet but Plutus playground is). Where are the partnerships. Where is the communicating with IOHK and Emurgo and updating us what is going on.

What has changed since this: ITN vote - Lack of Publicty - Complaint to Cardano foundation
Seems like nothing.

I will be happy to accept that I know nothing about you, and my opinion is wrong but where is your output. I tried to search for it. What is the tangible output that Cardano foundation does. What are you doing with the communities money. Investors look at these things.

I see a lot of corporate spiel, but not a lot of strategy, and certainly not a lot of content or output. It’s positive that you seem professional, but this corporate BS should not be used to avoid criticism or avoid fixing problems.

You in my opinion should be leading the solution to this problem : https://www.reddit.com/r/cardano/comments/iix5bc/cardanos_marketing/

I am not the only one to be concerned. Please check out Ricks youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8gwrgCV5i4

I realise I am just one community member, but I would appreciate an answer to my concerns.

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For completeness i wish to add:
After speaking with some leaders of the community, in telegram, my concerns have mostly dissipated.

I hope and dream that eventually Cardano Foundation will eventually become a DAO : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_DAO_(organization)
This would in my opinion solve the problems listed above.

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I share the same feelings, I’ve asked around and the answers I’ve got so far is that they do a lot of work behind the scenes and that work is more than likely under NDA.

Hey @Lucky!
You bring up what sound like a lot of good points against CF, and then you say you are reassured.

Without exposing anything sensitive, could you also elaborate why you, and by extension the rest of us, should not be concerned with CF’s exposure and productivity so far?

Appreciate it!

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This! I can only hope there’s a lot going on behind closed doors. If they could tell a random community member in Telegram about what they I’m sure they can share that information here as well.

Things in Cardano move slowly in general, it can be some time before we get a DAO. We need to hold them accountable until then.

The CF can’t even get some resources to help with Yoroi development.

Everything stands regarding what I said about the Cardano Foundation, but I’m content things are being done behind the scenes to remedy the problem because:

  • Charles, the stake pool operators (people of influence such as Rick), and the community all seem (in my perspective) to have similar opinions about CF. So it surely can’t continue as it is.
  • Nathan Kaiser (CF) works for IOHK (but he acts independently in his role at CF), so it’s not the same situation as the Michael Parsons saga. There must be a dialogue there. Charles himself said there is a big difference between nepotism and fraud (implying Parsons) vs too much bureaucracy (implying now).
  • Charles wrote “I have wanted the foundation to become a dao”.
  • When I asked how to implement DAO into CF Charles replied: “We are hiring a dedicated product manager specifically to look into these types of things”
  • And “I’m also hiring a lobbyist to try to get legislation passed for legal rights”

If somehow I could do something to hold CF accountable, I would. But I don’t believe I or the broader community have any influence on the matter. I hope that will change will Voltaire. I feel the most I can do is moan a little here and in telegram, and maybe it made a small difference.

But after speaking in Telegram: I’m content that those who do have influence (mainly Charles) are (1) aware there is a problem, and (2) have been considering solutions. I trust they will sort it out in time, and I’m excited about the prospect of the foundation becoming a digital decentralized autonomous organization (DAO).
I don’t believe in ‘the current paradigm of the corporate model’, which McCann and CF seem to emulate (clearly it’s failing) - I would be excited to see something different.

What I mean by ‘the current paradigm of the corporate model’ is this attitude where they congratulate themselves/market themselves with corporate spiel about achieving the most inconsequential of things (the website), then don’t take criticism well (avoid it, ignore it or as is the case for one or two previous telegram admins: get bitchy/angry about the criticism). I hope a DAO could be better, but maybe it would be even more bureaucratic - i’m interested to see.

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Thank you very much for your detailed reply. I really hoped that there was more going on at the CF.
It doesn’t make the current situation any better, but it’s reassuring that the problem is recognized by the other parties and hopefully a proper solution can be found.
Right now Iohk is doing most of the work CF should be doing, and they’re constantly improving on communication. However this is not a sustainable model and it shouldn’t.

PS: there seems to be a lot of action going on in the Telegram channels. Is it worth joining? On the other hand I feel like I already spend enough time in cardano centered social media :wink:

I lurk the telegram most days. It’s predominantly people asking basic questions or technical advice. But occasionally Charles pops up and says something new about the project, so then there is a small talk around that, before things revert back to hundreds of more posts of people asking about staking or ledger etc.

I’m not on Reddit but there is probably more consolidated information there than here.

Another one of my problems with CF was/is that we have different places where people are talking and asking questions and there is no official place where there are answers (telegram, reddit, Charles’ youtube, Charles’ twitter, IOHK youtube, Cardano forum etc etc).
I raised that in this thread: ITN vote - Lack of Publicty - Complaint to Cardano foundation

The official TG channels are full of noises, but it worth joining anyway I think.

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You seem to bring this ITN voting up often and confuse about the cause looking at CF. Let me clarify , this is one of the things that IOG was solely responsible and CF/Emurgo werenot consulted beforehand afaik. I was one of the members who strongly voiced against any such actions/announcements done in public without getting 3 entities to agree upon. But to reiterate, in this particulat case - CF could not have done much as it was an announcement made without consultation directly to community. There are other issues that I agree upon, but I kinda find it unfair to be imposed on wrong teams.

Usually in a new business you have someone who build the tech/product and another one who sell it. IOG is the ‘builder’ and CF is the ‘seller’. Why there are two separate entities? Seems inefficient and just complicate things. The product, legal, sales, finance all need to be closely integrated, why can’t they just operate as one group?

People in IOG also serve as council in CF such as Nathan and Tamara.
Charles just hired a marketing director in IOHK, although CF mission is to drive Cardano adoption.
Then, i believe CF is hiring a CEO and CTO…
Why not just have Charles as CEO, those CF councils as the executive and act as one corporate structure?

I’m glad you clarified. My misunderstandings should be pointed out.

One of the points i made was that the community is kept in the dark regarding what CF does (if my experience is representative). And it makes it seem that CF do relatively little.

I still stand by everything I said previously particularly regarding the governance and accountability, but more recently i got a better insight about what CF does.

For example, one worker or a small group of CF are responsible for the website business and design. This is only what the broader community sees when we see CF output.

But there are other workers at CF that are/we’re doing useful things behind the scenes that the stakepool operators and those in a closed group interact with, but the broader community doesn’t see. So I unfairly lump them in to the same box as the website team and the leadership team.
For example: someone on CF started weekly progress reports and escalations. I think he got fired?
And look at this link for some of Tamara Haasen (CF council member) output: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LwAiIGWxYK0eSt294-STMcvQj3mxMJa49tSuX9OzKts/edit?usp=sharing

Given i moaned a lot about CF i want to present what I learned. Some Things are/have been happening under the radar.

I still have many gripes but at least there is something proactive going on in some parts of CF. It’s not completely hopeless.