TLDR: Mission 70 unfairly cuts funding for long-term builders while failing to address node provider abuse and real sources of inflation.
How it impacts me personally
Myself and our team have been building enterprise-level, complex software for the past five years with no help from the foundation. Zero grants, zero support.
At the same time, we were using the interest to provide liquidity and support as many other projects as possible, doing everything we possibly could to help the ecosystem because we believed in it.
Our software now provides the necessary architecture that was missing, so interesting products can finally be built on the IC.
Simplified Mission 70 means an instant, non-negotiable 37% cut in funds.
Dfinity spent 300,000 ICP to buy into WTN. They gave countless free cycles to help Hot or Not and promoted terrible products like Estate DAO, Fuel EV, and BoomDAO.
Yet when we asked for help with Toko, nothing.
When we post our latest updates, they are met with deafening silence from the foundation. It feels like they want builders to fail, and this latest change makes that outcome even more likely.
A common misconception is we have never shipped a product. See what you can already do on Toko. Look at IcyDB and Canic, we would love the foundation to perform an audit of our code. It really is pretty remarkable!
But surely the maturity rewards are the problem?
There has been a narrative spun to Dom and others that the root cause of inflation is neuron stakers. This narrative is coming from within the Zurich office, where Enzo and Leo have been building Waterneuron and Yusan. Is that not a conflict of interest for a non-profit?
I have seen this play out on weekly Dfinity calls, with Kyle Langham presenting completely inaccurate statistics that supported Enzo and Leo’s narrative, yet made no sense.
Waterneuron have been advocating for shorter max staking times so they can onboard more people. This is what they have been lobbying for from inside the foundation.
There have been many accusations that it is actually Adam and I that are causing the price to go down. This is ludicrous. Yes we have had to sell some interest to fund development, but we have always tried to keep this to a minimum. The small amounts we sell is not enough to change the price.
Do you really want to know how much impact our selling has had? We sold 40,000 ICP to pay for a month’s development and it did not change the price on Kraken by even a single pixel.
So who is selling, and where does the ICP come from?
There is some sell pressure from the foundation itself, which also has bills to pay. However, the amount minted and paid to node providers is astronomical.
There are two issues:
- Who the node providers are
- How they get paid
Neither of these is addressed in Mission 70.
Who the node providers are
I uncovered many individuals breaking the node provider agreements they signed, yet there is zero accountability. At least 20 node providers are blatant shell companies, with company registration agents listed as the UBOs.
In addition to those we simply cannot identify, there are individuals who knowingly defrauded the Neurons Fund, people who control over 200 nodes, and people we can prove are actively manipulating the price.
What does Dfinity do?
They launch a laughable KYC audit, which is equivalent to asking a criminal whether they committed a crime. If they deny it, that is the end of it. “They said they are innocent, so they must be. Job done.”
We have proof that David Fisher’s addresses are holding millions of unstaked ICP, income from many node providers that is sent to Coinbase like clockwork each month.
We proved he funded Enzo and Leo’s winning bids in the silent auction, an auction where Leo and Enzo lied about the source of funds. It is also mighty co-incidental that the winners of the silent auction also happen to be physically in the same office.
What happened when this was revealed? Nothing happened to Leo and Enzo despite lying and David had to sell his less profitable nodes to his mates at Parafi.
We also proved David was funding Waterneuron and had set up a Swiss business with Enzo and Leo. David is not the only bad actor, but what is the point of continuing to expose them all? Nothing changes.
Not all node providers are bad. Gen 1 providers went through rigorous KYC and took a leap of faith to support the IC. Unfortunately, they are the only ones affected by Mission 70.
The swamp only really entered the node provider game after the proposal passed to reduce the maximum number of nodes from 72 to 48. This forced original providers to sell their excess nodes, or in the case of MI Servers, to set up a shell company in your brother’s neighbour’s name. Hi Krista Mehr of 100 Count Holdings.
How do node providers get paid?
This is the elephant in the room. Contrary to popular belief, node providers are not paid in ICP. They are paid using the 30-day moving average price of ICP in Special Drawing Rights, an international reserve asset created by the IMF.
They are incentivized to keep ICP prices low, because lower prices mean higher rewards.
On top of that, node providers receive a geographical multiplier and a bonus for their first five nodes. This is why you see providers who have completely gamed the system for maximum rewards, such as George, Tina, and Geeta.
If Mission 70 truly wanted to address inflation, this is where changes should have been made. Investigate shell companies, penalize abuse, pay providers in ICP. There are so many low-hanging fruits.
Instead, Gen 2 providers get a pat on the back.
So what now?
I get it. Dom has sold out to VCs to fund Caffeine and build a treasury. Who cares if Coinbase ends up owning the IC? If the price goes up, we all win, right?
Why worry about the core supporters who stood by Dfinity for years? They can have an NFT and maybe a t-shirt. That should keep them quiet.
What about people building? Who cares right? Caffeine will build everything as long as they swipe that credit card and only want to make tennis booking apps.
I do not know whether Mission 70 can still be tweaked. In its current form, it seems badly thought out.
After everything we have been through, all the support we have given, and the effort that went into presenting evidence, this feels like a knife in the back. I would rather put my energy into positive things like building, but we may reach a point where we have no choice but to pursue legal action simply to survive.
It is deeply disappointing. The IC had so much promise. It is still technologically the best, but it could have been so much more. The price is being manipulated by a small handful of people (some of whom may have been named above). It has been artificially held back by people who want to cheat and lie their way to a bigger stake holding and there doesn’t seem to be any effort to combat this.