xGov#199 - AWallet - Retroactive

This frustration did not arise in a vacuum Ludo.
So far, you have gotten the following proposals through xGov:

—10,000A for A-Wallet UX improvements and 2FA accounts
—32,000A for liquidity for your own token. (Vote Coin)
—100,000A for an “invoicing service”
—60,000A for a “payment scheduler”
—300,000A for a clAMM DEX
—15,000A for a meetup
—16,000A for an “introduction” video for your VoteCoin token
—16,000A for an “introduction” video for your ASA Gold token.
—36,912A as retroactive grants for A-Wallet from this round
—148,999A for an on-chain “identity” solution from this round

In total, that’s 734,911A.

The decision to ask for liquidity for your own token was shocking, as was your insistence after the fact that it be paid. You found a loophole and exploited it for the benefit of yourself and the VoteCoin holders. But that’s not something that has been forgotten.

Equally questionable were the asks for two videos for two of your projects at 16,000A each. People were similarly upset at Pact-Fi’s request (and apparent self-passing) for marketing funds. It smacks of shameless self-enrichment at the expense of the wider ecosystem. It was particularly bad here with your asks since the websites for these projects already had videos.

Then there is the issue of the “meetup.” Aside from there being tons of AF sponsored events, this sort of thing naturally raise eyebrows because they can easily be used for abuse/misuse of funds. That’s not to say it’s your intention, but it’s just another questionable ask. It didn’t help that in early discussions about the topics for discussion, you indicated in the Algorand Discord that the wallet you would be introducing people to was going to be A-Wallet, notwithstanding the fact it has hardly any use in the ecosystem and is not nearly as beginner friendly as things like Pera and DeFly. (I’m glad that it appears other wallets were discussed, but it’s again just another example of concerning proposals/action).

All four of these proposals would now not be possible under the new xGov rules. But, the community can’t help but wonder why it is that you seem to be the heart of so many necessary rule changes.

And, when rule changes were proposed to limit xGov to only one prospective project per proposer per round, you basically indicated you would try to evade those rules by creating companies to submit different proposals.

So, is it any wonder that your other work is going to fall under scrutiny?

And, when we look at what is provided, it does not seem like it’s designed to get used nor does it seem like much care is put into making that happen.

For example, 100,000A for an “invoicing service.” That’s an incredible sum for something so simple. And, when one goes to the site, it is underwhelming. It fails to render on mobile, but it seems like little more than a frontend that has some drop downs and text inputs that a user selects to generate an invoice. There are fields that I can’t input (issuer and receiver) beyond the default names you have. Nothing seems to auto populate/update, so I have to do math to arrive at a final bill after inputting discounts, taxes, etc. It also didn’t do anything, as far as I could tell, to make proper conversions between Algo and USD. I don’t know though, because I couldn’t even actually generate an invoice because I get an error.

Then there is the 60,000A “payment scheduler”. Again, it renders terribly on mobile but it seems to be a module where the user has to figure out how to construct a transaction from a bunch of logical operators and then it generates code that the user must then run on their machine. No average person is going to use this.

Then there is the clAMM. You got that passed then immediately requested approval for milestone 3 before milestone 2 was delivered (which wasn’t permitted under xGov rules). When that wasn’t approved (because it didn’t comply with the rules) you didn’t resubmit it after tendering milestone 2. Instead, you decided to instead propose an entirely new venture (the “identity” solution).

And again, the milestone 2 delivery was not something readily usable by the community. There was no frontend where it could be tested. It was apparently just code where each LP is a separate smart contract for a cpAMM between a bounded range. But, there is no aggregation whereby each of these disparate cpAMM smart contracts are automatically recognized and traded through, which is what you really need to convert multiple separate smart contracts into something resembling a functional DEX.

As a result, you have developed a reputation for abusing the xGov process to engage in grant farming. It’s great that you do some other things in the eco, but this reputation did not spring from nowhere. And, it will persist, so long as these products remain unused/unusable.

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