(I typed this on my phone during my break so forgive me if there are any typos or formatting issues, I’ll review when I get home)
Firstly, I want to thank you for your more verbose answer, as it gives me an opportunity to clarify things and answer questions that others may also have, and I welcome this and your input as always in the Algorand space. I’m going to touch on a few key statements, some I do think are inflammatory but I’m sure this was not your intention.
I will say that I feel you are making contradicting and incorrect statements in some places in your response, some of them are valid, some come off a bit speculative and perhaps not backed by much but assumption — but this is partially my fault for not perpetuating enough context in the space, although I do think I spent a lot of time hosting X spaces and making twitter posts in the past discussing and showcasing updates, as well as what comprises Algo.fun and AVM Email, as well as what happened with the Gainify team (I posted my story a few comments above for more context)
First, algo.fun of which you never completed or launched does the exact same thing that Haystack just launched.
Algofun and Haystack are not the exact same thing, if you mean the Algofun launchpad and Haystack’s launchpad are the same thing, this is still incorrect. Although the Algofun’s launchpad is also reverse compatible with existing liquidity providers, the launchpad is closely tied to its own DEX among many other features, some I can’t verify as I have not tried Haystack’s launchpad, to allow new functionality with our own token standards.
You can read more about Algo.fun, including but not limited to the launchpad, here: https://docs.algo.fun/
They were each created with their own unique visions in mind. Even if you are pointing at two different platforms and claiming they are similar at surface-level that is irrelevant to its inherent value— that’s like saying Asalytic and Algogems, or Pera Explorer & Allo are the exact same thing, so one of them should not be recognized for funding opportunities.
I’ll also note that obviously these two projects are in different stages of development, and one is in production.
“You probably didn’t know that because you’re not in the community anymore”
Being on Twitter does not define my involvement in the community. Twitter is a cesspool and I should not need to participate on a social media platform to be considered an Algorand community member. The Algorand community extends beyond twitter.
There is a subreddit and discord (as well as this forum which I am moreso a spectator for the most part) that I chime into, discontinuing use of twitter is not a disqualifying factor as to whether or not I am a community member. But to answer your question, I heard of the Haystack launchpad beta a week or two ago, this was and is not a deterrent for us in proceeding with Algo.fun or submitting this proposal.
“half-a$$ utility”
To be fair, it is not entirely clear you have the information available to certainly make this assumption, and I am not so sure you have researched into the platform’s documentation to justify saying this so confidently. If you are meaning to say that the Algofun launchpad specifically is not live, you are correct but again I think you are mincing words here.
We stand by the quality of our developments to Algo.fun and AVM Email, and although we do accept ownership for previous oversights [See Gainify story above] that is not representative of what we have built so far and are continuing to develop. These two platforms are our passion-projects we pour our hearts and souls into, we hold them, uniquely to other projects mentioned, to an extremely high standard, and this should be understandable.
Some other things I mentioned earlier in this comment should also resonate here. I will again recommend this link to Algofun docs for more context: https://docs.algo.fun/
“email avm. A project you delayed at the last minute and when finally launched no one took notice other than another grifter in the space that abused it and used it to try to impersonate and blackmail people.”
AVM Email — we delayed the launch by a week or two, this is a very normal occurrence for new platforms and I’m not sure why this is a huge concern — some new products do this intentionally to build hype, although this was not our reason for doing so.
Contrary to your statement, we feel people did take notice and there was notable but not extraordinary usage / revenue from the platform.
Although the current AVM Email community is small, I assure you it is not one, or even a handful of people that back or invested into the project, admittedly its usage is not ground-breaking for TPS or anything, but this is also expected when our chain has its lower humps of activity. AVM email is the sister platform to Algo.fun and revenues from AVM email are forwarded to Algo.fun — a lot of people root to support AVM Email, and are looking forward to its success, as they have seen proceeds from it as I stated in my proposal.
Admittedly we wanted to foster a decentralized approach, so we did not gatekeep, monitor, or micromanage server & email creations. I do, however, apologize for what happened to you uniquely. I am not sure what relationship you had with the particular individual I know you are referring to, but unfortunately my understanding is that they created a server on behalf of your IGA project — although I sympathize you cannot truly blame me for not locking a server name for any one person from being purchased by others.
A whitelisting process for existing projects was just never on our docket, although it is a process that I’ve seen be used before, but we had announced and warned about this weeks before our launch. This wasn’t the day we launched, or even on Day 2 — the platform was live for at least a week before this person strolled by and minted a server for your project, this is not us dropping the ball as a platform IMHO.
If you did not see any urgency in creating it yourself for your project and now in hindsight are upset that someone else did it for you (From what I’ve seen they were coming at this from a positive place and are invested in your project, and only retaliated when certain things were expressed to him from your end), I am sorry to say that it was not our responsibility, however servers are transferable should this person ever decide to list it on the marketplace.
“Third, just because you and other “developers” and or “business partners” made terrible business decisions and planning doesn’t mean you should come on here asking for pity and money because you guys wasted your time.”
I don’t know what to say to this honestly, community demands help and that we involve ourselves and then turns the other cheek when we ask for the same. Whether you feel the proposal itself could have been avoided by building not 1, but 2 extremely successful platforms and then therefore not needing to open-source it… ? I don’t really know what to do with this comment. It seems to be a jab at the Gainify fall through and how that could have been coordinated better but this is not the reality and of course in hindsight this is quite obvious, no?
“Fourth, you recently applied for a grant, received the funds and disappeared.Then a week ago decide to post to the account you received funding for for the first time in 2 months right as you put out this proposal. Incredible!”
I didn’t receive the funds and disappear, this is an extreme exaggeration and has been discussed twice already. I have no reason to disable the AF Wallet Watcher script and respective AF Wallet Watcher twitter account, it costs nothing to run and I actually think it’s pretty neat.
When I disabled my personal account on twitter, I publicly asked that if anyone noticed anything off with the AF Wallet watcher to just send me a message and I’d get it back up and running. I also started a new software engineer job in January that has kept me extremely busy.
No one said anything — I had no idea it was even offline. I am not on twitter because as I mentioned earlier it is a cesspool of nonsense and extremely toxic for the mind. I understand that this is a personal preference and not favorable in moments where there is downtime. However if you read to the end of this section I do propose a solution.
It was argued that it’s “not our job to let you know”; I am not going to login to Twitter every morning to authenticate the bot is running, as xGov proposals are not conditional on proactive commitments like that — I did that as a courtesy, and I expected that if people valued the account that they would return that courtesy and just let me know that it went offline and I could have turned it back on with minimal effort, it is not disruptive to me in any way to reach out and I encourage this so we can all persist the AF Watcher use-case together and uniformly.
Instead, somehow through active voices in the spaces, it became some sort of scandalous act, this is why I don’t participate on twitter anymore. Anyways, the bot has been back online since last I checked, and only should have been down for a week or two because of a server shutdown due to billing issues. I actually planned on putting together a discord bot version of the watcher later today as a compromise so that we can have a dedicated channel to discuss its effectiveness and reach me directly, as well as a summary of any missed transaction notifications in the last two weeks or so.
Fifth, I’m not taking away from anything youve done in the past with Algorand and your contributions, but im sure not okay with you and your buddies syphoning funds from the ecosystem for something no one wants or asked for, especially considering the fact that your more recent actions have shown that youre not here to help and support the growth of Algorand.
Thank you for the initial comment here although it took a quick downturn afterwards. We are not siphoning funds, you can agree with the proposal or disagree with it — disagreeing with it does not mean the proposer is just trying to siphon funds, there are completely valid works and efforts that were made.
To be fair you cannot speak for the entire ecosystem and claim no one wants or asked for these things — I can think of 200 people that did, many of them demanded it, some of them performed daily checkins, and a decent amount that are still present. I would hope that this is reflected during the voting process and not in a singular comment.
I hope some of my previous explanations clears up that I do support Algorand, I thought this was a wild accusation initially to be honest with you.
Sixth, yes there are a lot of b/s proposals this time around.
I have not had a chance to look too deeply into other proposals, hopefully it’s not too bad — vibe coding has been wreaking havoc everywhere I turn so I’m not surprised if there’s a ton of random stuff up there. Algo.fun and AVM Email have history here, that I know for sure.
“Lastly, this proposal is no different than the VC’s that dumped everything on us during the vesting period. More grifting…”
I have no comment on the VC thing, Algorand has seen its share of nonsense in that department — but I think we need to be more careful as a whole, and not just you, even myself, as to what we label as grifting. Most of the time it is not an objective discernment, and more attached to sentiment. Again, I think we are all guilty of this in some way, shape or form.
Lastly, I thank you for taking the time to read this and for making these statements, I am a huge advocate for myself, my team, and my efforts — even if you don’t find yourself absorbing all of it (which is understandable given the length of this comment and would be impressive otherwise) it is never a bad thing to put these things out there. I get some self-reflection, you get some perspective, everyone gets context — all-around positive.
