Posting here to quote / comment. By @loredanacirstea
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I’m getting on a plane so won’t be able to comment more until later. Thank you @loredanacirstea for writing this, I think it brings up a number of important issues.
Note that @jpitts and I reached out and offered to help fund travel expenses, but Loredana, as she explains, wanted to stick to her principles of active support to earn her spot. I don’t think it was long enough, but that’s one of the many issues with EF organizing DevCon last minute for a conf of this size, and not paying speaker travel expenses.
More later!
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Why 3 days? 3 days should be enough for an interesting project to gather attention and to go somewhat viral. There was also a deadline on September 1st, for submitting workshop presentations. I wanted to leave enough time in case another workshop would be given my spot, especially considering the Berlin Blockchain Week & ETHBerlin events.
- Your progress was actually pretty good for 3 days imo but is a terribly unrealistic period of time to fundraise. These things usually take afew weeks to a whole month. Fundraising is a lot of talking to people to then convince them to have you talk to other people (decision makers).
Another answer is: Where can we go to ask for funds for a project that wants to benefit Ethereum and not only a specific project? Our projects were created with the scope of enhancing interoperability between ecosystem projects. All of our efforts go into this direction. If the Ethereum community did not see value in them after all our demos and articles, it is highly unlikely that we would receive proper funding for the right reasons, even if we would spend our time applying left & right.
Did you manage to contact Moloch DAO? This seems like the exact sort of initiative to take up. Do you know anyone who is in the DAO?
Pipeline was created in an attempt to interconnect and make the projects collaborate with each other. I have presented Pipeline multiple times, including at EthCC Paris. Until now, there was no project interested in having its contracts represented in our database, so people or other projects can use them independently. None of the people that knew about Pipeline truly wanted to collaborate. Some expressed interest. Some mentioned integrating Pipeline into their product but offered no real developer support. Some wanted to hire me, but there was no action from their part to collaborate after it was clear that the IP would not be theirs.
I wouldn’t blame the people at these organizations, a lot of them are simply just trying to do their job. Not everyone in their job is able to perform as well as identify opportunities and have the understanding/belief to pursue them. Not a lot of people know how to help others!
This is expected capitalist behavior, with which I would not disagree in the context of our current society. But Ethereum promised to be different.
The Ethereum ecosystem is full of noise with very little signal. Coordinating parties in working together or collaboration is a uphillbattle for most organizations.
No one told us it was a bad idea. Some gave good feedback. Some attacked our incipient implementation without having an intention to collaborate and help us improve. From all the people that, for some reason liked or shared dType & Alias ideas, nobody had the intent to act and collaborate on ideas, implementation, adoption.
Don’t expect collaboration to happen organically. No one is entitled to attention nor time. Often, coordinating, getting feedback and pushing an idea out there, is a back breaking effort - thankless almost every time. I would say get used to it and keep on trucking if you really care about it. This is at least my reality having had coordinated a buncha stuff before.
But yes, this problem on a ecosystem level can definitely be solved / improved.
And if no one is interested, it is a good signal in terms of market viability. Maybe people just don’t need it.
I am trying to figure out the reasons why Pipeline & dType are not truly appreciated. Given a community that respects the above principles and therefore acts in the best interest of Ethereum, one would expect that novel ideas or effort would be noticed and appreciated through some form of support — collaboration on ideas & implementation, grants, exposure, etc.
This is a good point.
If the fault is mine, then the Ethereum community as a whole has a fault too: it is not capable of giving truthful, technically sound criticism.
This is indeed needed.
You can deny me the money, but at least show respect for my time and technical effort.
Often times, it is not about directly disrespecting someone’s time and effort directly as a conscious decision but rather out of a lack of operating capacity.
But Ethereum remains mostly a collection of enclave projects, each following their own personal interest. If a developer wants to interconnect multiple projects, said developer needs to know each project’s custom APIs and ABIs after looking through pages of documentation. This is not scalable and will not amount to global infrastructure and general machine readability. Ethereum projects are making the same mistake that Web2 did.
If Ethereum cannot acknowledge better design solutions and integrate them, they are in the same position as Bitcoin is with Ethereum: not recognizing a superior solution — which is a morally and intellectually corrupt point of view. One such example is Libra/Move’s resources and typed bytecode, which attested the need for rich types inside the EVM — and it gave me confirmation that the dType project is valid and needed.
- 100
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These things usually take afew weeks to a whole month. Fundraising is a lot of talking to people to then convince them to have you talk to other people (decision makers).
Did you manage to contact Moloch DAO? This seems like the exact sort of initiative to take up. Do you know anyone who is in the DAO?
This is exactly why I will not receive any grants now. If the grants in the Ethereum community are based on networking and backdoor deals instead of principles, ideas and tech, it is incorrect to receive them.
And this exact way of thinking is what broke the community already.
Don’t expect collaboration to happen organically. No one is entitled to attention nor time.
In this community, people who build and come with new ideas are entitled to attention and time if their work has value. My purpose is getting clear feedback to see if Pipeline and dType indeed have value in other people’s eyes.
Often, coordinating, getting feedback and pushing an idea out there, is a back breaking effort - thankless almost every time. I would say get used to it and keep on trucking if you really care about it. This is at least my reality having had coordinated a buncha stuff before.
I have done a backbreaking effort already and I did not say I would stop. I spent my money on the EthCC trip, so I can present Pipeline publicly - it has been 5 months since then. And > 1 year since I started presenting.
And if no one is interested, it is a good signal in terms of market viability. Maybe people just don’t need it.
Yes, I said this is a valid conclusion. Then, people telling me that Pipeline is important are not honest.
But what happens if Pipeline and dType (or very similar projects from other people) will have success, or will be treated as important and supported? What would be the conclusions? What will you do with your above words?
My point is: you are in charge of a DAO with funds that are not yours, that should be supporting valuable projects for Ethereum. If it is proven that you are not capable to evaluate the importance of a project, you do not deserve to be part of that DAO, so I will expect you to be fired from the DAO. Therefore, I will not receive any money from the ecosystem unless you are fired. Because you are inciting other foundations / DAOs to not do their duty.
Often times, it is not about directly disrespecting someone’s time and effort directly as a conscious decision but rather out of a lack of operating capacity.
No, it is disrespecting someone’s time. If you don’t have a public deadline of when to expect a response, it is disrespectful.
Hey @loredanacirstea I am just popping it to say two small things.
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Please do not get discouraged. Be open and above all patient and sources of funding will definitely be found.
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Regarding the networking and backroom deals comment. Put that way it does sound in a negative light but … for anything to do with funding (or well anything in general) you end up dealing with people. It won’t ever be machines only but humans who make the decisions. Even DAOs are comprised of people.
So some networking, some politics, some diplomacy is always required. For all our fancy tech in Ethereum one of the biggest problems we are facing is that of governance. And governance is a fancy word for what in the “real world” they call politics.
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No, its just how the DAO works. You write up a proposal and get the attention of a member. There are well over 30+ members who are mostly publically identified. I ask if you know anyone bc, if so did you directly ask for help? You need to help yourself.
We directly disagree on this then. “new ideas” and “value” are subjective and viewpoints that shouldn’t be forced on others.
Actions speak louder than words. Surely this shouldn’t be a surprise.
lol