Concerns About Harmony's Future

Community
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I wanted to stop by, make sure everyone knows we’re reading this thread, and offer a few points I’m hoping will help as we continue this conversation. There are multiple sides to a discussion and I hope to provide another to absorb and consider here.

Everything I say below comes from a desire to help as many teams from our ecosystem as possible. Also, please note the Harmony team is here to make sure our ecosystem partners and teams are receiving the help they need, within reason and a level of fairness.

Our community and ecosystem are everything, and I hope we all try keeping this in mind as we continue this discussion. That said, allow me to offer a few points:

  • We have a handful of grant types within our $300MM ecosystem growth program, with the most popular being Launch Grant; an equity-free (ie. no strings attached) method of helping teams start their project and launch on Harmony.

    • Launch grants, which Cosmic Universe received, are not investment vehicles. This is purely meant to provide a boost to teams who need a bit of extra help bringing their vision to fruition with zero strings attached.

    • Milestones are pre-defined and agreed upon in advance of approval. These milestones are rarely customized and, when they are, it’s for projects that struggle to fit into the milestones due to the nature of their product. For example, one milestone adjustment we made was for MotoDB, a project manufacturing hardware that plugs into cars for data collection and mining.

Why not customize milestones?
Customizing milestones creates an incredible administrative burden and creates an unsustainable support model. Keeping track and guiding all our grantees is hard enough, and made more difficult with varying milestone.

But yes, we’ve done this a handful of times before, and perhaps there’s room for this here for the CU team. See more below.

Project-X

Our Project-X program was an experiment in attracting promising teams at EthDenver to Harmony while injecting money into the project in exchange for equity. These are not grants. That said, and like any experiment, we learned some lessons here. One lesson learned is that we should have been more communicative about Project-X, but like most lessons our goal is to learn and adapt from them.

I understand some of the concerns mentioned here. At the same time, we cannot react to every “we’re the next big thing” by providing money. Note that I’m a fan of CU and strongly support what the team is aiming to accomplish. Though please remember a Launch Grant is not meant to be an investment or a vehicle to fund growth or later stages.

Launch Grant is “We see you’re creating something that can contribute to our ecosystem. Here’s an equity-free $50,000 USD for launching on Harmony.” We also help with marketing efforts and networking teams with other contacts in the ecosystem. That’s a Launch Grant - no more, no less. But we could do a better job at communicating this (see below).

Next Steps

First I want to say that I would like to continue this discussion with the CU team and make sure they know we’re here. At the same time, please see it from our perspective as well: a project agreed to an equity free grant, hasn’t met half the milestones agreed upon, and are now requesting for more money.

Does this seem like a reasonable ask while viewing it from that perspective?

This is meant to provide another perspective, but I want to make sure we have a path forward. We don’t want Project-X to be the only method for teams to raise additional capital to fund their product.

1 - [New] Harmony Ventures

We created the Harmony Ventures program to help our ecosystem teams with obtaining additional funding beyond our equity-free grants. We can help and guide you through this process.

Here’s a short snippet about the program:

Harmony ecosystem builders have the opportunity to join Harmony Venture Network. This is a new concept where Harmony Hackathon Winners and Harmony Ecosystem Fund grant recipients have the opportunity to grow to the next level by presenting their vision, latest roadmaps and developments, to an audience of strategic investors.

2 - Adjustment of Milestones

I would like to open the discussion to adjusting the milestones for the $50K launch grant.

To the CU team: Can you share what you have in mind in terms of milestone adjustments?

3 - Investments

As we set out in our ecosystem fund guidelines in harmony.one/apply, Harmony will co-invest in teams and grantees who secure an outside lead investor.

“We also offer follow-on investments; but, at the moment, you must have an outside, lead investor for us to match the funding terms.”

We will invest in tokens, though not equity and we ask for an external institutional lead investor (not friends and family or a launchpad).

“Tokens of each investment are on-chain and semi-liquid.”

We hope to see our ecosystem project teams grow and flourish, and we believe all projects should consider additional investors beyond Harmony. We should not be considered the only or even primary funding source as you scale your project as that is not sustainable for you nor scalable for us to grow the entire ecosystem.

4 - Clarification on Launch Grants

I think perhaps there’s some misunderstanding on the purpose and expectations of launch grants, and I think we (Harmony) can do a better job at communicating this to potential grantees. The reply above from Ed Norris is sort of confirmation. We’ll look at ways to make this more clear.

We’re here to help our ecosystem partners and project teams, and I hope the fact we’ve been so hands on with grantees and transparent here on talk.harmony goes to support this. Not everything we will do as a team will be perfect; we’re all only human. Our decisions will disappoint some while exciting and pleasing others. So long as we keep an open dialog, we can learn from each other, try to understand one another, and find a path forward.

Thank you everyone and I’m looking forward to more replies.

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Very appreciated on the detailed response. I hope that CU was incorrect in being ignored or not responded to. Obviously there is no excuse for lack of communication and a one-on-one conversation would have prevented the initial post. No one should ever be ignored assuming the complaint is valid.

As an investor and someone who has grown technology businesses, I can’t get past the BAYC marketing move. I literally thought it was a joke as I felt embarrassed for the team - may as well could have shown up driving lambos like in the movie dumb and dumber - a hallow flex. Investors want to see money spent on practical technology-driven marketing, not feeling states and money flex. Practical marketing vs. novelty marketing is critical.

I think everyone is so passionate about Harmony because of what it can be. I can’t imagine the amount of things going on and lack of resources. I think everyone wants to see corporate leadership and example setting foundational moves that others inspire to. No more BAYC - PLEASE. Elon sent his TESLA into space on a rocket he created. This is the flex the team can make, but we need the rocketship.

Also, please please address the FUD on the RPC issues. The weekly meetings gloss this over as if it’s a non-issue which it may be. It feels like 14 out of 17 on the priority list.

Also 2 (sorry), take these posts from a source of love and desire for the project. I can’t imagine the pressure going on, everything is in the spirit of positivity and desire for improvement.

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I think this is a very respectable reply, thank you Daniel. Although this does not address other concerns. This was not all about funding for projects, it’s clear that all the voices from the Harmony Community were not heard. This is more about transparency and communication from the Harmony Team as well on their actions.

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Just do your thing, complete your build, release and prove yourself. You’re the leader of your project.

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yo need to grail harderrrrrr!! :muscle:

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Totally agree

Just to echo, we all love Harmony and want to help see this blockchain thrive. As an investor of something that is supposed to be decentralized, it becomes painful to see a small group of people making huge decisions (BAYC marketing, grant approvals, etc.) I would love to see Harmony provide clearer communication and more opportunites for the community to help govern decisions so they align with what users desire.

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I can feel the frustration you’re having bro, honestly, I can understand that this is no easy task to address or even have to deal with including your team. Hope you’re able to resolve this solution, and be able to express yourself to the Harmony team and that the support is equally reciprocated, I know this community loves your project, so it would suck to see you go. Seems like you’ve been doing so much, and the work doesn’t go unnoticed!

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Agreed!
@wizzardblizzard just keep your head down and keep on building. I believe in you and the team behind CU. :hammer_and_wrench:

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@wizzardblizzard let’s be real, if cu didn’t exclude the majority of the community through its whitelist more people would care about the project and situation. Anyone with any concern will be a tiny echo chamber of whitelisters.

Any exudus due to DFk will simply create an opportunity for others, Harmony is where DFK made it big (without a grant! shocking i know…) and others will as well. Or DFK going cross chain may introduce more to harmony. Either way, it’s a non issue.

If cu, a massive MMORPG is contingent on a tiny grant, than maybe cu should not have been promising that without the finances to back it up.

The 3D NFT collection… although that’s great for NFT holders, are needed for the actual game anyways…

1000’s of free completed stream (or otherwise) games have far outdone CU’s accomplishments, and done so without any funding or hand holding whatsoever, so maybe just produce something significant first. what does it matter how cu feels harmony team treats them? Just like cu’s whitelist, you made promises to this community, and we all know how you never go back on promises…

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As a Harmony investor myself. These issues you raise are concerning that Harmony isn’t treating projects on Harmony with equality, However, and this is my personal input to your project and you can take it for what it is worth, which is just an opinion. During the launch of the land plots for your project, there was a limit placed on new investors with the use of a whitelist. This whitelist, was given preference over any other new investor into your project.

This is a concern for me personally, “A New Investor”, and most likely the Harmony team. Self reflection is a critical part of understanding how one is perceived by others. Did the whitelist event cause this sort of perception for your project, would be the first thing I would ask. Although I agree with rewarding early investors, the degree to which it was done left virtually no opportunity for new investors to get in on ground level prices. The other project you mentioned, made it available to EVERYONE. That in itself is the fundamental difference between the two. I will say, that I’m a fan of 3D MMORPG, but was turned off by not being afforded the opportunity at purchasing plots early on. I missed the NFT launch for characters, but did not want to miss the opportunity to own a plot or two.

When asking in the forum (correction Discord General channel), I was told I had to wait 24 hrs to be given the chance. By the time I got back to it, they were all gone and would have been forced to buy on secondary markets at inflated prices. So what you see as unfair, I see a potential issue with fairness to the Harmony community as a whole, when considering the way the release of plots of land were whitelisted. To make the matter even worse, it was limited to the first 1000 OGs that applied, creating yet another barrier to entry into your project even for the original investors.

With that being said, I do agree that your project deserves a fair chance at funds from the Harmony team, but your project also needs to do some assessment as to whether the process of releasing to the Harmony community as a whole is fair.

This is my input on this. Take it for what its worth, which isn’t much, cause I’m a nobody.

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Ugh I feel the frustration we are having. This pains to the core specially since this is something I believe in, but coming from the community post, I feel the same way – there isn’t much growth here at Harmony. I am personally starting to look at other chains. Polygon has been doing great things I must say, perhaps we can take a look over that direction. What does the community thinks of this ?

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I heard you and it’s important to talk about these topics!!

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I understand the frustration, I have received a grant on the day it started to crash and the value pretty much evaporate since then. I was coding and not paying attention to the state of the market.
I think the lesson for me was that harmony grants should not be the only source of funding, its nothing but a small boost, an incentive to use this network, but that’s it.
You will need to find the funding the traditional way like all gaming companies or find VCs or sell something , try to ride the Metaverse hype, whatever it is, you will need to do it yourself, the Harmony team will not hold your hand or provide a safety net.

Maybe it’s time to start selling t-shirts?

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You’re introducing FUD into the economy you’re building your game in? Talk about shooting yourself in the foot.

Take this viewpoint: You got a grant of FREE MONEY from a set of investors. You have provided nothing in return (yet) then you publicly drag their names through the mud because they didn’t give you more money??

You are poisoning the well not only for yourself, but for others who are building and want to build in this space. Get out of here with your negativity and build a business plan like every other business out there. If you’re in trouble with your game due to cost/timeframes/etc… whose fault is that? It’s certainly not Harmony’s and absolutely not mine. But, here you are, crapping on the ecosystem I’M building in and expect me to sit here quietly and watch you do it? No way.

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The bottom line is Harmony doesn’t deserve projects like CU and DFK. The core team does nothing to retain their services. A large portion of the community blindly defends them without looking into the matter and labels any criticism as fud.

It’s one thing for them not to fund certain DAOS bc quite frankly, they have done nothing to deserve funding, but when you have a project that’s taken the initiative to fund theirselves to this point and you can’t give them more than $10k? It’s embarrassing. It shows how out of touch the core team is with reality. Just like they lost Ragnarok, they will lose countless other projects. I hate to say it, but you will save a lot of time and you will get much more support by looking elsewhere.

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Hi, first of all, props to you and all the CU team for trying to create a new game, it’s people like you who are making the Harmony One ecosystem grow.

The idea of “developing a 3D open-world fantasy MMORPG built using Unreal Engine 4” : I saw this claimed hundreds of times on so many ICO since 2016, on so many blockchains, and you know what? None of those Unreal Engine 4, blockchain 3D mmorpg has ever delivered.

Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying that you’re lying or that you’re scamming people for selling nft of a project that has no business plan, except relying on Harmony’s funds, and with this kind of unrealistic goal, you seem very sincere, but even for a multi-billion backed capital gaming companies with strong background, solid experience and hundreds of millions for development, it’s barely reachable and I don’t even talk about the proper blockchain integration and maintenance aspect.

I feel like you’re making excuses, making a way out, blaming this on the harmony one team for not giving you the 250k. Just continue to develop, reach the milestones, deliver, I wish all the success to CU, cheers.

P.S. The title of your post should be “Concerns about the Cosmic Universe’s future”

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I can relate to the general frustration as well however I wake up every morning for the past few months and remind myself OMG I have been given 10K to build something. I use this in conversations with friends or others online to promote Harmony :blue_heart:. All say what is the catch and I say to them nothing just do the work and someone believes in me.

Harmony Grants is an unbelievable concept that will propel Harmony to the universe however for this to happen requires some management.

I understand the feeling of others getting more funds and I have plenty of experience working in non-crypto projects having the same issues.
I though am confused as well to an extent as to how to make a small budget work within guidelines.
In occasions I might need to be more creative but the Harmony guidelines prevent me to do so, although I understand they are there to prevent rugs.

Because we are building an ecosystem rather than just a tech company to make money, all need to read docs and proposals with a degree of emotional intelligence. What I mean is we need to read between the lines sometimes and understand the writer and how that person, team and/ or project thinks and has the potential to grow and add to the ecosystem.

When I write I know sometimes I confuse people but I have to scale back the overexplaining as it becomes boring. Then on the other hand many times people don’t read they just scan.

Guilty your truly :nerd_face: but I know that and I make an effort. The worst thing is when people read what they want to hear. That is a problem :triumph:

I had to explain many times that my project is operational just it is not user friendly although I thought it was self-expletory having spent days wringing the proposal.

I understand that whoever reads anything I write, reads many other Docs and they have to skip sections.

However, on one occasion a reader (not a core team member an appointed helper - a very lovely person) says to me - you need to have Telegram and Discord set up first before you can ask for funding. At that point I was like WTF (in my brain :laughing: lol) I spent days writings this, the links are at the bottom and members already signed up. I had to say something to him, he apologised for all good!

If too many applications is a problem and it is too much work, Harmony needs to delegate more. I know to onboard anyone requires to be trusted so it is a challenge. Reading with emotional intelligence that is developed by practice I think can speed things up.

On a project related note: - I personally always have the same problem I know how to build a spaceship, I have built a spaceship before but I have the same problem I got no fuel and everyone is asking me to prove that it flies first. :rocket: :rocket:

It’s like planting a tree in the desert and then saying oh it’s the tree’s fault that it could not find water.

In an ecosystem/ project energy flows that may be water, nutrients, fuel, money, participation, talent, available time etc. The source of that energy can be a closed-loop thus defining a process. however, external interactions are required to build an ecosystem of “processes” that are interconnected via a management system.

Anyway, the main issue in many projects is money and comms.
I got people interested onboard The Harmony Pay DAO. I know that within 3-6 max months 2-3 $mil is achievable but I cannot find devs that can do 6 weeks work because there is not enough to pay them.

I try to be as entrepreneurial as possible. I got 20K business loan and put it in the Harmony Ecosystem. I also make some NFTs.

I had to take some profits out to pay bills but in general prices of tokens are going down and APRs are going down as well. That blows the idea of personally receiving an income and also having spare to fund the project out of the window.

I am not complaining I know setting up a business is challenging. What I am trying to say is that I got a hint of feeling that the ecosystem is not stable and/or may not performing well.

So, I decided to help the ecosystem (Harmony) as much as I can.

What is happening right now (complaints, some dissatisfactions, arguments, etc) I was anticipating that will happen I know about it and have seen it before. Just I could not find anywhere to discuss those challenges before they happened.

There are plenty of social studies out there. Since we are building an ecosystem, social and cultural development I think should be part of Harmony.

Hint: let’s start with the Stakeholder theory by Dr Freeman.

I see things as parallel processes and projects that with good management can make the whole ecosystem grow.

Just read an article today that scientists found that even the human brain has a super neuron. Does that make the brain a centralised system? IMO No!
There is a structure thought.

We are not ants nor bees we are humans. So, our ecosystems will be different and more complex.

DAOs require to be owed by the community which is ideal to run an organisation. However structure is required and leadership. Please do not confuse leadership with a boss

We need to decide what we mean by decentralisation because to some means I’m a dev, I do whatever I like and work whenever I like and when I finish a project (not very well) I get the money. Then I disappear for 2.5 months in the juggle close to a beach party all day and eat fish, eggs and veg grown locally living the organic life. Then come back and ask for more money because I run out Errm NO!!

True story btw!!

This is a cultural problem and we will be finding it in front of us constantly. How do we manage that, how do we work together as a community to cater for different individuals?

There is not a single answer, however, there are tools and operations not all perfect but we can make them better by using them or even develop new ones.

Once I was told, “We don’t pay for ideas”. Hmm well, this is a bit of a double-edged sword. I was reading an article on Medium and the guy said he was giving his ideas for free and was not appreciated and he was struggling to make any income. Now he charges $500 per h for giving ideas min $5500 per project and now inundated and can’t catch up with requests.

I don’t say Harmony has to pay for ideas but we need to set up somewhere that we can discuss anything nonmatter how crazy that may be. Somewhere that possibly feasible solution might pop up.

E.g. I keep toying with ideas of Spared Spectrum Frequency Hopping that mobile networks work offering security and relative reliability. I am thinking how about to use the maths from that and develop a Spread Shard Hopping Blocks network (SSHB) that will increase the network capacity speed and security.

I might be talking crap however this might trigger something in someone out there with deeper mathematical knowledge and come up with a project and a practical solution.

IMO here is an ecosystem that works well. From that crazy ideas space, my idea resulted in a project then the project team invites me to be part of them to help with other creative and possibly business development and marketing solutions. Basically, shows that someone’s ideas are appreciated and offer them the opportunity using their skills to participate. This I believe can elevate major dissatisfactions such as arguments whose ideas or work was. Can this be Tokenised?

By the way, If the above idea triggers something cool just say Hi and thanks. If you build a multimillion :money_mouth_face: :kissing: company a donation in form of a 6 bed House and an Aston Martin will be appreciated LOL :laughing: :laughing:.

On a more practical level, in the comments I read about the APEs and Harmony is using the Bored Ape Yacht Club to attract ETH devs. Even if I don’t understand something I try not to dismiss it, creativity, business opportunities and development exist in many places.

Personally, I can’t get excited by APEs well I can’t even get excited by DFK either, however, DFK has a utility and a business that I use every day and there is a community out there growing the ecosystem.

Though I have to ask, why use apes from another network to showcase Harmony. Why don’t we make Harmony so that people want to come to? Create a marketing strategy and projects that will attract rather than using something that might be useful on eth but so far, I don’t see any utility in Harmony.

I am happy to work on business development. It can be a very simple project at least to start with. Anyway, I will soon be putting out there a proposal for a London event and a co-op team project and the main focus will be to onboard non-crypto/ web3 crowds onto NFT and recruit devs.

I think we need something as simple as how to program or learn programming page written by a novice enthusiast, which I am happy to set up. I am also happy to read proposals and write tech, projects, event briefs, etc.

Ok, I am creating a job for myself here lol :laughing:. Happy to discuss building this spaceship! :blue_heart:

When we do events, I think they have to have very basic entry-level information and a wow factor. In between, we can have deeper tech chats and investment opportunities.

There is more to it but requires further discussion and work.

Sometimes I do think are we not thinking big enough. Why crypto dot com didn’t use Harmony for their Defi network. Should someone/ we /I have a go bringing a case in front of them or should we do something that they will come and ask for Harmony? I got plenty of ideas swimming in my head with feasible projects attached to them.

Regarding the DAO’s it is very cumbersome atm to follow the guidelines and achieve targets. I am telling you if we use those guidelines to form the UK DAO it will not fly.

We need to be light adaptive and agile. Yes, I understand the issue of security and money is coming free from Harmony but if the guidelines could kill a DAO, what’s the point.

I think DAOs should be run like pure agile R&D departments at least for now until they get established. There are rules there are guidelines for R&D departments and there are team leaders but all work is based on collaboration that is paid.

They also make decisions based on evidence and experimental results and maybe some voting.

I really feel for the CDAO they are really bogged down with admin and at the same time try to engage with the community.

I understand that Harmony tries to prevent silos and cronyism in DAOs but can you imagine working your @££ off on a community DAO project, say an event and then when it comes to implementing it you lose the vote and now you have to spend all your time writing documents so someone can pick the project up? Anyway, I might have the wrong end of the stick regarding DAO’s however we seriously need to look at them and offer a more adaptive per project/ region approach.

I better finish here.

I understand the Harmony Core Team is overwelled with project proposals so let’s see how we can help.

To the Harmony Team please read between the lines, developing emotional intelligence takes practise but saves time.

To the participants/ applicants be patient. I fight and resist talking to a core team member unless I have something serious to ask or discuss. Usually send your questions and wait for 48h. I go and do something else so I stop getting into a paranoid state. Then send a polite reminder. Maybe in the meantime, you might find a solution.

Challenges and weakness as well as poor decisions will always be there we need to create an environment that we freely discussing them and converting them to opportunities, development and growth.

PS1: ZPK OMG this must happen!!! :blue_heart: :blue_heart:

PS2:Project X cool idea next time even better :ok_hand:

PS3: Some say Fix your RPC. People!! read between the lines Harmony needs help on this. How about some heavy weigh projects offer to contribute to pay for some heavy weight devs.

PS4: Have read every single reply, some many times

PS5: is this the latest play station lost track sorry just to chill a bit :sunglasses: :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I can appreciate the hard work and effort that goes into the massive undertaking of creating an MMORPG. I understand and hear many in the community voicing concerns over DAO support. The Harmony team definitely has a big job ahead of it between stabilizing performance, managing DAO/community support, and ramping up marketing and we can only hope they are up to the task. I am fully invested in this ecosystem and continue to believe in its long term potential despite short term challenges.

I would like to voice my concerns however, over the fact that any developer with previous experience would proceed with the massive undertaking of developing a full scale mmorpg on UE4 for blockchain with no secured funding except 2D public avatar sales and banking on a larger than average ask for a grant from Harmony to make it possible. Combine this with the fact that CU whitelist was criticized for exclusivity and initial landmint had to be scrapped and redone. As a developer, the funding and integrity of your project is your number one concern and if you decide to take on such a massive project, you should not rely on an outsized grant approval to execute effectively on established goals.

I can agree with the portion of your sentiment that outlines necessary improvements for the Harmony team that aline with much of what the community is voicing it’s concern over. I cannot agree with you lumping in the funding/development struggles your personal project has had when that is a clear area that as a developer/founder/owner/investor, you clearly are responsible for. Also, if you are comparing the VC pockets of Avalanche to the Harmony grant approval system you are either unaware of how completely unfair that comparison is or being disingenuous in attempt to garner a considerably larger sum than other projects from the program. I hope your project is extremely successful and flourishes hand in hand with the Harmony team and community but please don’t distract from the real issues in the community with your individual project’s considerably large funding concerns.

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I stopped reading after the second repetition of we only got 10k. You talk as if you’re entitled to money! you’re a big boy, go raise further funding from alternative avenues. Since when did business depend on handouts?

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Strongly endorse this. Harmony has an incredible opportunity with fertile development and a fast chain, but the business decisions and enterprise issues have left me wondering if I don’t need to diversify more into other chains.

Flu’s involvement doing biz dev or any project/chain coordination for Harmony core would alleviate a lot of my concerns.

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