Disclosure: I'm a core co-founder, and an Engineering lead.
I hope my opinion is worth something, as I've borne a significant burden of work since before launch; interfacing with all departments to help ideate, coordinate, build and test the core KlimaDAO products, while hiring and leading the frontend/web3 team. In October 2021, KlimaDAO presented an ambitious vision to the world. People loved it, and threw millions of dollars at it. Now, the ultimate responsibility falls on me and my fellow builders to turn this vision into code. A shrinking market-cap, external competition, and this brief moment in the limelight creates a sense of immediacy and pressure that I don't think outsiders can fully appreciate. We shipped a lot already, but we need to keep the pace.
I think this proposal is a great step for the DAO and I fully support it.
I should first say I appreciate the concerns of our very vocal contributors. Accountability, transparency, decentralization are important. It’s easy for me to take these things for granted— I’m just here for the carbon. So I’m glad these complaints are being surfaced now and I’m taking them to heart. Reading the discussions has already shifted my perspective quite a bit.
But I am still surprised and confused by the very emotional and reactionary responses and ultimatums given by a few contributors over the last few days. It seems to me that they either: A. misunderstand the KIP... B. entered this arena with a serious mismatch of values and priorities... or - C. Are letting emotions get the best of them. Probably some combination of the above? Not to mention some missteps of our own.
The way I see it, this KIP does a great job of formalizing the structure that has already emerged organically. This KIP is a small, but important step towards accountability, transparency, decentralization! We can’t relegate ourselves without first formalizing what our powers and responsibilities are. To call this a ‘power grab’ and ‘step towards centralization’ is a complete mis-read of both the KIP and the status-quo. I’ve tried to take some of the slippery-slope arguments and ‘what-if’s to heart but they are wholly unconvincing.
Our current working model, and the one outlined in this doc, are not perfect. Perfect is the enemy of good. I worry that only those who have shipped high-impact products under pressure can really understand this. Too much of the discussions are driven by a desire for perfection and idealism. Perfect governance, ideal democracy, perfect transparency. All nice-to-haves, all wholly impractical at this early stage. We can achieve them in due time.
For these reasons I am also thrilled at the addition of a working group who can hopefully weigh my productivity concerns while still ensuring progress towards decentralization and governance to the satisfaction of all investors. A flood of good suggestions and ideas have poured over the last few days. We should take time to weigh them all, and iterate, without getting mad at the Operations team for not adopting them right here and now in this KIP.
Last point. My eyes have been opened: I would have hoped that Core had earned more respect and trust from the community by this point. I see, every day, across dozens of calls and chatrooms, how insanely brilliant, ambitious, and hard working the founders, core & leads are. I’m so humbled to even have seat next to them. But the tone in discord and in this forum seems to be largely of suspicion or skepticism towards core. It’s clear we need to do better to show our work and values to the rest of the world and earn more of your trust. Much easier said than done, but we can try!