After much consideration and contemplation concerning both the current and future state of Harmony ONE, I’ve decided to at least ask my fellow community members their thoughts concerning Harmony leadership. This is not an easy topic and may ruffle some feathers which I understand. This is not FUD, I’m asking a hard question. If you have thoughts about this please reply and vote on the poll if I can figure out how to create one.
So I ask you all, does Harmony need new leadership? At this point I’m talking about Stephen and Li. I have been in the Harmony space for over 2 years and am quite familiar with them. I own a very considerable amount of ONE and am actually worried about the future of my investment with this blockchain. Here’s why.
Everything seemed fine in my opinion since I first bought in, for a couple of years. But at some point something changed, shifting Harmony from technical-focused to where we are at now. I’m very concerned about this shift and from reading the community sentiment on the various social media platforms I can see I am not alone.
I can mention many things but I’ll focus on a few:
A. Network - The tech isn’t operating at optimum efficiency. I can go on forever about RPCs, latency, internal leader nodes, lack of cross-sharding communication, hideous explorer, lackluster bridges, etc. The point is ALL of these issues exist today. Tech doesn’t appear to be the primary focus and I think we are seeing the result of that now. From an investor’s point of view this is scary.
B. BAYC - Doesn’t represent the community at large and not a good thing to flaunt in front of your community during a market down-trend and with a network that isn’t running optimally. The reasoning behind the purchase wasn’t initially explained so we the community formed our own narrative. Once that happens it’s not likely that mindset can be changed.
C. 10k DAOs. Honestly that isn’t even possible at any time in the present or near future. And judging the community sentiment it definitely shouldn’t be any of the focus. It’s not why we are here now as a community; it’s an utopian pipe dream that may have merit in the future but shouldn’t be the focus. Build the chain into a L1 powerhouse before we worry about social impact.
D. Core team size - It’s too small to effectively whip this network into shape, expand tech abilities, build partnerships, attract big investors, etc. From what I can tell (and I could be wrong) core team members have too many additional duties that prevent them from performing their primary function effectively. I see many of them with their hands in multiple areas and this concerns me. The quickest way to lose a team is to understaff and overtask. Harmony has the smallest team of L1s that I’m aware of, and this is simply not sustainable. The core team is full of rockstars, I’d like to keep them on board and not burn them out.
These are just a few things out of the problems I’m seeing the community address. They must not be ignored. They can’t be ignored. This is where I believe Stephen and Li should be held accountable and now I question whether this chain is in good hands or not. We the community keep this chain alive and I don’t think they relate to that at all.
Stephen has been mostly silent through this past couple months of the community sentiment turning sour. Li has made several statements that seem to sort-of tell the community what they want to hear but I think they are shallow at best. Look at the 10X/2X document and you can see Li hasn’t changed his view on DAOs at all, even though the community is shouting at the top of its lungs that DAOs are NOT what we want. Both share some sort of vision that doesn’t speak to the community at all. Their vision seems to be flashy buzzwords (DAOs, Metaverse, etc) mixed in with a very far-fetched futuristic idea of Harmony. Stephen doesn’t seem to want to budge from much of anything; 10K DAOs, Metaverse, our very outdated website. I almost at this point feel like it doesn’t matter what the community or anyone else thinks, it’s his way or nothing. If you ask me that’s about as centralized as you can get.
To wrap this up, I believe the PRESENT is much more important than any utopian dreams and futuristic visions. If the team isn’t being given the tools, time, or support from the top to put Harmony on the map because its tech shines above all, then maybe a change in leadership is necessary to secure the future. The community needs individuals leading the chain who put stock in community sentiment, have realistic visions, and the ability to shift direction if it’s obvious that a course correction is needed. I’m not sold any more that this is the state we are in now. I will attach a poll and even though I don’t know anything about on-chain voting methods, this may be something to consider depending on poll results.
I guess it boils down to whether you trust the current leadership or not. If I’m wrong for questioning this show me I’m wrong. Tell me why you have faith still. I need to hear it and so do many others on the verge of leaving; and it’s not solely because of market trend. We are down more than most other L1s, ask yourself why.