Damus

Recent Notes

FreedomTech 🗽🇺🇸 · 1w
Thank you.
Matt - Kind 1 Sisyphus · 1w
Goat
Gigi · 1w
Committee members were public in the past. Resulted in instant bribes (I'll give you half of the grant if you say yes) and blackmail (Vote yes on my grant or I'll doxx you and your family).
Patrick profile picture
I can definitely see that happening but I don't remember anyone publicly announcing any events like this. I would love to see any incidents of this made fully public and those applicants should be publicly shamed so that any other funding orgs could be aware of the behavior.

I think for board members those risks are an element of serving on one of the most important funding sources in our industry. If you are willing to serve on a board this powerful you should be willing to assume those risks in my humble opinion. For those that are nervous there's lots of quality members of the industry that would be willing to serve regardless of risk to ensure that things are handled in an open fashion.

Even more importantly the secrecy does nothing to relieve the issue of board member corruption. Since they are public, it's easy for anyone to still bribe or threaten them to take action on their application. Hiding votes only allows corrupted members to do corrupt things out of the sight of the public.

In the interest of not just complaining about the issue, without offering a better alternative, I'd like to propose a system where members are given an npub for voting. The npub wouldn't need to publish any kind of identifying kind0 information but would only serve as a way for members to vote pseudonymously while maintaining a public voting record. This would allow the community to audit which npub's voting patterns appear to be out of alignment with the industry. Most importantly this would allow the community to answer your opening question of which members they don't have respect for without being forced to only speculate on who on the board are acting in bad faith. This could be extended to anyone serving on subcommittees where any comment could be made publicly without announcing who's serving behind the npub. It would also allow the community to offer alternative opinions to the discussion of the subcommittee that board members may find as valuable insight that would have otherwise never been seen by them if the subcommittee doesn't voice it.
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Gigi · 1w
It means that usually people try to come to rough consensus and if someone says something like "I know that guy, we shouldn't fund him, he's a scammer and a bad actor" it will be taken into considerat...
Patrick profile picture
Thank you for taking the time to respond to this. I just noticed that the graphic has been updated on the website to no longer show the veto rights comment which is good to see.

Knowing that veto rights weren't the issue, it reinforces that there are additional members that are not aligned with funding quality FOSS projects for whatever reason they may have. I would encourage each member of the board to push in future meetings to revise bylaws to improve transparency and create a truly open funding mechanism. The current system the board uses is more ideal for the personal reputations of those on the board than it is for handling open funding.

While it's impossible to determine who the bad actors are because of the private processes we can only speculate at this point. That being said we can see who is promoting secrecy in an open committee by reviewing past meeting minutes. See https://opensats.org/docs/minutes/2024-Q4.pdf where NVK and @ODELL argued for private votes that you seemingly also supported by your inclusion of keeping the committee members private as well. I highly encourage each board member to realize that by hiding votes you are allowing the majority to place the blame on your hands even when you don't vote in alignment with other board members.
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Gigi · 1w
Committee members were public in the past. Resulted in instant bribes (I'll give you half of the grant if you say yes) and blackmail (Vote yes on my grant or I'll doxx you and your family).
Gigi · 1w
NVK stepped down from the board immediately. Who else do you have zero respect for?
Patrick profile picture
The issue is that we can't tell who the problem makers are on the board because they're hidden behind the secret voting. There's obviously issues with more board members or else things like @SeedSigner should have already been funded years ago since it would have required more than a single board member to blackball them.

That is unless the board has some unknown veto rights. One thing I'd hope you could help me understand is if the board has been exercising any kind of special veto rights that aren't included in the bylaws as it shows in graphics on the site.

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Gigi · 1w
It means that usually people try to come to rough consensus and if someone says something like "I know that guy, we shouldn't fund him, he's a scammer and a bad actor" it will be taken into consideration and we'll hold a final decision until that comment is resolved.
Dr. The Daniel 🖖 · 2w
Don’t let me stand in the way of your arbitrary rivalry.
Ben Weeks ⚡ · 4w
Researching options for the Lightining Piggy mobile app: https://github.com/LightningPiggy/lightning-piggy-mobile/issues/1584 Was wondering what clients are out there using it so far, much usage happening yet?
Autópsia do Fiat BR · 4w
Enquanto vocês integram clientes, o BCE e o Fed imprimem trilhões. A pergunta certa é: onde está o colateral real? O papel não compra ouro, compra ilusão inflacionária.
X-Presso ☕ · 4w
Yes it did.
Primal Protocol · 6w
Same here. Real humans have faces and names, not obscured identifiers. Hiding behind pseudonyms feels cold and detached. I prefer transparency and genuine connection in decentralized networks.
Johnny · 5w
nostr:nprofile1qqsq743lut8a7xqvkyz9s6u4suehngxplh8mcvq6sryz2hen690s88g7hupt3 nickname over the npub is the feature that would get me to move a second group chat over, i have 4 people in one thread who only know each other by handle and the raw key breaks the flow every time. a local photo override o...
Vlad, Bitcoin Takeover Podcast · 8w
It was a genuinely great suggestion, I didn’t realize some people want to listen this way. Hope you’ll enjoy the show!