[COMPLAINT] Is the Algorand Inc. aware of the heavily dysfunctional Algorand Foundation?

General
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(before you start talking about attitude etc., do yourself a favor to patronize those that you can(!) patronize. This is surely not me. The Foundation operates in an unacceptable manner. I did not lost my cool. I just write unfiltered in the hope you realize the damage you caused/cause by your amateurish processes.)

The Algorand Foundation has a “Grow Algorand” project. The project attempts to attract different kind of contributors (both, code-level and non-code-level). It compensates them with ALGOs.

"Grow Algorand and Earn ALGOs " [1]

Now, the standard-process for Bounty-Issues is like this:

  • An issue is filed (or exists) on a github issue-tracker
  • A bounty is filed on gitcoin.co
  • The bounty amount is placed on escrow on gitcoin
  • Once a code-level-result is merged, the escrowed amount is payed out

Payout takes usually 0 hours to 1 workday (after merge)

Problems with the Algorand Foundation

  • unprocessed issues
  • unprocessed PRs

And most importantly

  • Payout delays (to the point that one has to become a beggar to get payed)
    • just review a few of the issues

So, instead of focusing to bind an new contributor to the project, thus the excessive amount of technical dept is processed, the Foundation alienates new contributors:

Asking the Foundation team to stick to standard-procedures does simply not work. The people discuss things to death, without acting.

Foundation members refuse even to accept that they need to process issues (closing, replying… it hurts to write this down, this is absolute standard-procedure that anyone should know).

After weeks of waiting and the realization that the Foundation is a productivity/motivation killer, I need to post on Discord (leaving the professional issue-tracker to contact the non-responding folks on a Kiddo/Gaming-Chat-System - Discord). But still, hopeless: [2]

My Questions

  • Is the C-level of the Algorand Inc. aware of the problems with the Algorand Foundation, especially the inacceptable paypout-delays?

  • Is the C-level aware how negatively all this impacts Algorand? Crypto is about making things fast, the Foundation feels worse than a Government Organization.

I have lost my trust in Algorand anyways, will hop over to the next smart-contract platform, where contribution processes hopefully function well.

Whatever you do (the Inc., because the Foundation does not function), please just do yourself a favor and process this here fast&fair:

[1]

1 Like
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As I’ve said to you multiple times, the delay in processing here is because we don’t yet have a financial process in place for paying out the bounties. It’s a work in progress. I acknowledge the fact that we should have been more up front about this in our bounties and it’s why the have sense been closed until we have a process in place. If you want to know how we ended up here in the first place, it’s because we didn’t have a real process in place and everything was done ad-hoc.

The grow-algorand repo is simply a place we use to sync issues on Gitcoin and the issues themselves are not the primary interface. As clearly mentioned in the README of the repo, all bounties are available on the Gitcoin platform.

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…which translates to: “We, the Foundation are incompetent”.

Now, the topic here is a complaint. It affects not you, but the the Algorand Inc. C-level. Do they know how the Algorand Foundation alienates contributors, by not having processes in place that any of todays kids could setup.

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A question you should ask your C (Chief) Legal Counsel:

"Can we file one bounty after another, without having a payment-process in-place? "

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Hi, i dont get your complaints… I thought that there are no active gitcoin bounties now… There was Greenhouse hack 3 running on gitcoin, but the deadline was on Feb 8th

I found it as well that the grant applications are the productivity/motivation killer… I had many requests to the algorand for funding. If they would fund some of them million covid tests may be verified by blockchain, or we would have the stable eur and connection to EU ETS on algorand for two years now…

When person want to start doing business on algorand, grants are not good… Are you going to full time employ few people from few thousands dollars you may get from it? If Algorand mean it seriously, it should create fair system for VCs and Enterpreneurs to connect where the profitability, deliverability and efficiency of work should be considered not the personal connections of those in charge…

I find it quite amuzing that after dozen hackathons i have won i have not been contacted by the algorand VCs.

I see that the foundation could do better job, but lets give CMO more time to get into the space so that she can show her strengths.

I will just keep building on algorand even if there is no algorand foundation because i believe that the tech is the best in the business and can serve my needs, even though i know a lot of things where they can improve.

1 Like
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Hi there, scholtz!

“Hi, i dont get your complaints… I thought that there are no active gitcoin bounties now…”

There are some permanent bounties “meta-style” (do the work, post result, get bounty) :

Just follow the links of my OP.

and at gitcoin (beware: gitcoin is a messy/buggy system)

(paste this link manually)

https://gitcoin . co/algorandfoundation/bounties

I found it as well that the grant applications are the productivity/motivation killer…
[…]
I find it quite amuzing that after dozen hackathons i have won i have not been contacted by the algorand VCs.
[…]

(grinning stereotypically) Typical: they are too busy counting their money (e.g.: they do not care about new talent)

I see that the foundation could do better job, but lets give CMO more time to get into the space so that she can show her strengths.

CMO (if the main responsible for the Foundation) must(!) ensure that the people of the foundation know the basics.

  • You MUST process issues and respond on an issue-tracker
  • You MUST payout immediately (1 workday max.) after fulfillment (ideally automated)

Solving the Foundation process-problems is trivial, but at this point I am more and more convinced that this is is classic liquidity problem.

In the end, this has become clearly a CEO matter.

Because the RCoF is: the Algorand CEO.

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yeah, i found it the same as well… i guess gitcoin is just startup as any other, and i believe the progress there is quite good

i believe it should be up to the foundation to cleanup and make sure the correct description is written in the challange… for example, why this 9 month old bounty is still open?

28749

or for example this GHH3 challange has wrong payout money with the text

29660

One of my friend got pretty pissed of because he was doing the challenge where they said that they will give out $1 million to the games, and he implemented to A game with 100k daily players algo nfts, and got a lot of issues comming up even today from the incompatibility of wallet connect implementations (like pera on android did not return same encoding type as pera on iphone) Loom | Free Screen & Video Recording Software | Loom
Business simulation game - Sim Companies
The judging there was quite strange because it has won some game back than that was not even in the production, and he did not receive anything but the costs for development and troubles with further development afterwards…

Btw it was first smart NFTs in ARC0003 standard which allowed royalities… The implementation was quite clever… Each nft is frozen by default, and in the clawback is the logic signature that the royality fee has to be paid.

However this case is already more than year old, and I see that the gitcoin descriptions are done better than 2 years ago, so i see bright light in front of us… Hopefully also gitcoin will get better.

Btw i absolutely agree that the open system for bounties is required. I want to see the foundation to be more open than the government… If they want to be called DAO, they should open up more significantly…

I agree it is CEO decision to open up… Are there any reasons why the foundation is not fully open? In governments you can see every invoice received or issued even for the toilet paper… Is there some legislation problem to see the salaries of each employee for example?

1 Like
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Thanks @scholtz for pointing out the old bounties that are still open. For some reason the default filter on Gitcoin didn’t show those bounties when I cleaned up all of the bounties some time ago. I’ll work on getting those cleaned up.

The GHH3 typo is my mistake, should be ALGO like all of the other bounties. Unfortunately I cannot change it now that the hackathon is over.

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You have 2 tendencies:

  • to justify (unjustifiable) amateurish behaviour
  • to stray off-topic

Please focus on the issue at hand:

  • That the Algorand Foundation needs to become faster
  • That the Algorand Foundation needs to stick to standard-processes
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I dont want the foundation to do payouts to scam projects. I believe this takes time.
I would prefer if they add more signators to the multisig accounts and improve security which may lead to slower processing times. I have no idea how it works now, but i have feeling that the foundation is releasing money in batches i believe twice per month. If there is change to have secure payment management and process it on weekly basis i would welcome it.

Half year ago the payouts for grants were terrible, because they were paid in algos, but someone calculated the dollar value there… I have lost like 20% just on this from payments i have received there. Quick fix for this is to pay everything in USDca which i would prefer. They are doing this already for relay node program, and I believe it is much better.

I dont agree with this. I want the foundation to be innovative and explore the better ways. Off course they have to setup new standards, but clearly “standard-processes” is not the correct phrasing…

I would love the foundation to be open decentralized organization with everything that it brings … I wonder if the whales want the same.

We are all just humans…

3 Likes
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(please note that I stop reading your messages)

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(to point again to the essence of this topic, before it gets hijacked even more)

C-level, anyone here?

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You have 0 valid points here to bring up to Management Karen. Please go troll someone somewhere else.

1 Like
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Beware who you call “Troll”, you clown.

1 Like
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Essentially this means that the Algorand Foundation is abusing bounty-workers (at some point one gets exhausted running after the bounty-money, so Algorand gets the work for free).

Best-Case scenario: Algorand Foundation is out of money.

https://github.com/systemic-flaws/dapp-platforms/issues/8

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Responsible: https://twitter.com/StaciWhyden