@HarmonyTeam some of these questions were specifically for @stse
Having said that I collated my questions with your answers in this post so people can view it as a traditional AMA and readily absorb/analyze the content with context.
Q1. @stse if you plan to retain absolute control over decisions will you also become the face of Harmony again and provide your vision to the community like a traditional CEO who answers to shareholders and a board of directors. If so what is that vision? Steer the ship privately and publicly. Clear concise vision as if the end state was painted in a mural for all to see. This provides purpose and direction to investors, contributors, validators and core team members.
A1.Our vision since @stse and the founding team started the project has always been to build an open platform for our future generations to create in harmony, as we say: “Open Consensus for 10B People”. The core team is committed to set up the ecosystem to reach decentralized governance over the long term. As you may know, we have been progressively decentralizing our network and providing grants to community builders. Initiatives such as Recovery One will also be driven by the community, in coordination with the core team.
Q2. What is your plan for talent management within the core team? As of late many critical members of the core team have left for other protocols. With more than 20 years of management and leadership experience the reason is clear to me, work environment and managerial leadership style. Servant leadership is critical, always ask how you can best support your team not control them.
A2. Our core team of builders, engineers, and creatives is the essential asset of this project since day one. This is one of our most important areas to focus on so that we can keep improving the environment for these team members to thrive in. The leadership team has been listening intently to feedback from current and prior teammates to retain and recruit more talented and passionate builders to the team. We promoted and onboarded two more core team and two full time fellows this month and continue to recruit for engineering and product roles.
Q3. Is there a plan to restructure the core teams chain of supervision and project assignments in order to use your talent (and by extension be a good steward of their most valuable resource: time) in the most efficient way possible?
A3. We are formalizing account success manager roles to enable direct ownership of project initiatives. Each of our grantees and ecosystem projects will have one member from the core team supporting our engagement. This ensure both the team and our builders can work together to help more of our ecosystem developers thrive.
Q4. What is the plan to entice projects to come and build on Harmony in order to replace the many that have left? And what support can projects who have stayed expect. An L1 without an ecosystem has no use case.
A4. We are updating our team process and ownership to reconnect with our existing ecosystem partners on a regular basis (i.e. weekly, bi-weekly calls with detailed writing on progress updates).
This will be a continued and sustained effort. Our leadership team and each initiatives lead are writing weekly updates so that the whole team can be informed of what needs each project may have. @Al Cheung on our team is leading this with our existing grantees and investee projects.
Q5. What is the plan for Harmony the foundation to generate revenue outside of the token price action? SDK’s, bridges, wallets?
A5. We have been working on long term sustainable ways to generate protocol transaction fees through increased utility. We have done initial analysis and modeling on network transaction fees and believe it is meaningful financially to sustain many of the network operation needs. That is just one of the ways we can ensure the long term sustainability of the platform and ecosystem.
Q6. How will Harmony support the native projects that have built here? FuzzFi, wenLambo, SonicSwap etc all come to mind. This community has an exceptional amount of talent that is leaving in droves.
A6. Co-marketing has been top of mind internally. Since the beginning of Q3, we have begun to solidify the groundwork of how we plan on doing more going forward. The bridge incident has since shifted our communication priorities but we must show what builders like you mentioned have created on Harmony.
Q7. What is the DBM(Dominant Buying Motive) to buy or build on Harmony? What makes Harmony standout from other fast and cheap L1’s? What is our market fit that separates us from the pack and will drive adoption in the future?
A7. We are updating our documentation and building more tooling to meet the needs of Web3 developers who will ultimately answer that question. Supporting our major projects begins with supporting all builders with effective documentation and tools. We are working on providing a better experience for every builder, big or small. Support.Harmony.one 1 is one way we are working to do just that.
Q8. What is the plan to get the ENG team back on track with the roadmap and to fix persistent issues with the chain?
A8. Our goal has always been to bring the best research to production. While the core protocol work is continuing, presenting an updated roadmap is top priority.
Q9. Will you also dedicate some of your time to R&D of the chain? We know that’s your best product fit.
A9. We continue to work on Protocol (cross-shard, external proposers), Network (state sync, light clients), Services (infrastructure partners, developer tooling). In the coming weeks, we’ll be publishing more details on each initiative.