Does Harmony need new leadership?

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.

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Im going to be honest.

I have 0 beef with the core team, but something within it needs to change considering that while cutting funding on DAOs seems to have been somewhat done, low value projects still aren’t being rejected, the BAYC thing still hasnt been retracted,grants program still needs to be worked on, etc.
that said, i also remember harmony being somewhere around the top 60 by market cap and top 10 (or 11) by TVL.
currently, on coingecko, its 98th my market cap and defillama says its 22th by TVL, this indicates something (besides the bear market trend) and that is that a lot of capital has been leaving the chain.

In order to counter that issue, we should support native projects that have been bringing value to the network (top 10 in defillama would be a nice thing to look into for that), along a proper marketing push, the phrase ‘‘any marketing is good marketing’’ can hardly apply.

Not to mention that besides the RPCs, more forms of infrastructure need support, the granary was going to first launch on harmony but ended doing it on ftm due to the inability to host a subgraph in harmony (which is possible in ftm)
but afaik, flu, the one who started the granary, also works in harmony and i believe the granary will expand to harmony ONCE it has the required infrastructure.

That said, its also necessary to stop supporting sunny and sunny related projects, we all know she is farming grants for the sake of it.

I remember that for a while, aave v3 launching in harmony would attract lots of capital into the chain, but it didnt, its currently just whales farming the incentives for depositing ONE (no incentives for any other markets).
What i do hope is that the situation can get turned upside down to allow harmony to succeed, it has some pretty good scalability but being lackluster on every other area has resulted on the mess we are witnessing, and a bear market has only made it more severe.

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Does Harmony need new leadership?
  • YES
  • NO

0 voters

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I’d say not for now , the team should focus on fixing the tech and trying to make a HARDCORE push to increase TVL and activity in the network , let’s see what they have to say in the ofsite meeting that’s coming up soon but if there isn’t any changes that actually matter it will be concerning.

P.S : Oh yeah , Li if you’re reading this , your vision about DAOs is romanticized to say it in a nice way , shift away from this <3

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Be careful what you wish because you will get it and then you will not like it.

Let me start with that sentence and I will try and be as brief as possible here as the subject is very big and complex. I will try and pass my knowledge having run and worked with public organisations and NGOs. Also, have a Tech background

The Market is bleeding like mad and there was an article predicting that bleed will happen a few months ago I shared it here but it didn’t seem to make any dent. The analysis in the article also mentioned good tech, adoption and real-life utility will eventually work and the best blockchains will emerge.

A) One of the components for the success of Harmony of course is tech and must be working flawlessly like 1wallet, RPC inter shard comms and a few other things.

However perfect tech will not guarantee network success. It is like having a Bugatti engine with the best tech but in a tin craply designed box and no tyres. You can’t drive it and it looks crap – no utility, no authentic pleasure or driving experience

B) BAYC
Why such a fuss for nothing.
I generally do not see the appeal of those apes but then again, I don’t see the appeal of many things in general and on the WEB3 I don’t find interesting pixelated GameFi, I really find it boring apart from Mars Colony. But then again that is my personal opinion. The Game industry is huge and I can see the value of GameFi. So, despite my personal feeling I 100% support them.
So my opinion gives it up with your opinions about BAYC. Harmony bought them for us to use. Let’s do something with them. Don’t expect Harmony to find all solutions for us.
Let’s open a BAYC crypto café in London or make a game like Donkey Kong meets the Apes, etch just thinking out loud, so many other options.
Let’s be creative

C) 10K DAOS
First of all it sounds a lot but not impossible. The delivery is complex and it will need a lot of tech development, tech that we need to invent because it does not exist.
At the moment, I believe Hybrid Centralised -Decentralised DAOs are possible. I know there are silo problems but voting every 3 months detracts from actually running a DAO.
It is very complex to run DAOs as we are going into socioeconomic spaces and it is something humans have tried for thousands of years so don’t expect things to happen overnight.
However, can you see what Harmony core team is trying to do?
In a nutshell
They say we give you money to pursue your passions and make sure you create a utility for Harmony
Yes bad actors yes woke greenwashing etc I agree let’s make sure those are minimised
Let’s invent how DAOs can function.
Let’s use them to create utility and adoption, don’t chase metrics just create utility and build side tech.
I am trying to do that in 3 different projects
Project RnD type
Business led by DAO type
and finally, a full-on passion lets make things happen failure is not an option type

These are only 3 types, go and invent more. Aim for decentralisation as a long-term goal
In the short term
Bring adoption
Create utility
develop side tech on Harmony
adapt existing Invent new socioeconomic environments
Make businesses

I can write a thesis here so I stop for now.

Crypto is not just tech is an evolution

D) This links with DAOs. It seems the community does not understand what the Harmony core team is trying to do. They want DAOs to take responsibility for building the network and not the core team.
However, I said it many months ago the basic barrier to that is people’s perceptions and education ( I don’t mean academic but rather willingness to be open-minded and take ownership). I had that problem with the NGO I had set up and run for 10ys.

If the core team becomes bigger then it becomes a company then there are more issues as we end up running a centralised company.
A perfect example is Crypto dot com
So IMO the necessary evil is to run Harmony with a hybrid company like centralised operations with DeFi and hybrid DAOs.
Something like Crypto dot com. If you see how they run they are not any better than Harmony. They just have a good at the moment central core and great marketing (events F1, sports VISA card etc). I think we can do better than that.

I suggest to grow the core team which has to include a multi-disciplinary range of people. Also grow local teams not DAOs but prospective to be DAOs.
I am trying to do this for the UK but in a way that grows to a Harmony UK flat hierarchy type of company. It is not a perfect scenario but think like Alexander the Great and the Romans with their local independent operations. Not perfect I know and they failed in the end however we aim for a better ecosystem. And the keyword is ECOSYSTEM.

A lot to write and analyse here. In simple terms, adopt a Crypto dot com idea but make it better with local operations aim for decentralisation in the long run and invent tech on the way they can deliver decentralisation. Be adaptive and agile, and create an agile framework of operations.
Some positive FUD about DAOs, please!! DAOs can bring utility and adoption for example an artist collective can bring hundreds if not thousands onboard and in parallel invent tech that helps IP and distribution. So, keep an open mind people because if you get what you think you want now most likely it will not work out to be what you want.

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@drspinosa - Only responsible answer so far. I hope you post this on reddit where most of this is spiralling from.

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I got into ONE after learning about DFK. The fast speed and cheap fees helped introduce me to the benefits of ONE quickly but it’s starting to look like a zoo.

There are so many comments of people saying the exact same thing. If this is all supposed to be ‘harmonious’ and daos are supposed to be what holders and people want then harmony is doing a horrible job imo

Reading from their 1x 2x 10x stuff, it seems that many on the team are clearly aware of community sentiment and know that DAO’s and misfocused/ delayed development (btc bridge anyone?)

Beyond that reading this '10x empathy (10X Empathy in Harmony) in harmony, the part about “ego is the enemy”. Maybe Li needs to look into those words more seriously. Tons of people (cough cough the whole community) questioning the direction of DAOs and yet he is never able to admit any fault or realize that he should listen to the community

My own 2 cents:

-Stop focusing on DAO’s especially funding shady ones. Grants should be MUCH more focused on gamefi because that’s where your competitive advantage is! I read some harmony rep telling that story about how if all these people bring $500 each then it equals x new money into the ecosystem… well that is ALREADY happening with gamefi, people are putting money into projects like dfk without ever knowing what harmony was before and that money is now ‘sticky’ money in the system

-focus on the TECH. That is what made ONE good, and its falling apart due to an inability to focus on this as a top priority. I don’t know too much about this so please I’d love for someone to explain, but when I look at the launch dates and weekly updates (Launch Dates & Weekly Updates) so many of these next milestones are months ago.

I think its SO blatantly clear if one focuses on sharding and gamefi they have a road to success but for some reason even after all the success gamefi brought them, they decide to pump more money in shady DAOs than nurture their planted seeds

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as this further happens.
ONE already dipped below the top 100 in coingecko.

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