Dear Community, @Grace @tabear @marianeu @frnvpr @David_NEAR
As this formal complaint was made against me, it is important for me to clarify some important points. First of all, I appreciate the opportunity that Isa is giving me to explain myself. In second place, I would like to ask for public forgiveness for voting against Gambiarra entering the Council of the Creatives. It was not politically adequate and it caused more harm than good inside the community. So it was a mistake, and I am sorry for that.
However, as there were some reasons for voting like this, it is important that I talk about them, in order for the community to understand my actions. I was a council member of Gambiarra DAO and I was the person who tried to bring Gambiarra DAO to the Creatives Council. I thought Gambiarra should be there because it represents a collective with more than 170 Brazilian artists.
But as soon as I left the council, in the first meeting, with around 4 people from the 16 members from Gambiarra DAO at that time, Dazo - one of these 4 people - brought a proposal to enlarge the period for people to be council from 3 to 6 months, and Isa on telegram suggested that we also voted a 6 month reelection period. As soon as I saw that, I made another proposal for that period to be 3 months, as we had agreed before, and I added a possibility of reelection, because Dazo already told me that he was interested in continuing in the council. Both proposals failed in astrodao (Six month: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-81 Three months: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-82), but that was a first red flag for me. There were 2 more red flags that made me leave Gambiarra, and I will talk about them now.
About the second red flag: Gambiarra has a marketing team that submits projects to the Marketing DAO, in order to get resources to Gambiarra Marketing activities. So far so good. But someone from the Design Guild (that Isa wrongly called Mktdao) offered us to make an entire design project for our Guild. I told this person that I imagined that we would love it and I was invited to the Design Guild discord. When I brought the news to Gambiarra DAO, the marketing team was not happy and told me they already are a marketing team and they don’t need the Design Guild. I told them that the Design Guild would not be a competitor and that, if we do not like it, we could not use the products that they would be going to produce. I also told them that the Design Guild receives from NEAR to do this job, so we would not have to pay anything nor stop paying our marketing team (that has other functions beyond design). Gambiarra’s marketing team refused help from the Design Guild. I could not see a good reason to not use the free help offered by the Design Guild. That was the second red flag.
The third red flag happened with Mintbase. Maria, from Mintbase, offered us a channel on Mintbase discord channel. She even made a poll to know if we want the channel, and that poll had only positive votes, no vote against it. Then, again, Gambiarra marketing team spoke against the channel, and I had to remember that a channel in a server like Mintbase is marketing for us, a place to shill etc. Again, I could not understand the resistance of the marketing team to join forces with others that want to help.
After these 3 red flags, I decided that I could not be a part of Gambiarra, neither as a member, because to be in a DAO is to be responsible for the DAO’s actions, and I did not want to be responsible for what was being suggested by these flags.
In that time, I had already left the council. Isa did not tell you, but I left the council because Tabea told me that it is not morally right to be in more than one DAO that is a member of the Creatives Council, since it defeats the idea of decentralization. So I left Gambiarra council in the middle of the month because Gambiarra was accepted in the Creatives Council and I am also a council member from Metaverse DAO, which is a member of the Creatives Council. I explained that for all the members of the DAO and they voted on the proposal to remove me from council.
In this time, March 17th, I had already received my payout for council work. But when Dazo asked me to return half of the resources paid, I gave the treasury back 250 DAI, given the council payment is 500 usd, as requested in our funding proposal ([APPROVED] Gambiarra DAO Funding for March 2022). Dazo argued that I was paid in near and that I should give near back to the treasury, and given the near high, it would be more than 250 usd in near that I would have to pay. So I did not accept it. He argued that we had a conversion rate to pay people, and that is right. We made a conversion rate, in order for us to have how to pay people when near drops. And this conversion rate is being used by Dazo to make me pay more than what is due. As this is a debateful issue, I prefer to listen to the moderators’ opinions concerning this matter.
About the exclusion of the telegram group, only the DAO telegram was excluded, but for a mistake. But Isa is wrong in saying I excluded the general one, because you all can see that it is here: Telegram: Join Group Chat). So maybe Isa is misinformed. She said I excluded and restored the community group, but it seems to me that this is technically impossible (I don’t know about the telegram functions).
We should also be clear about how the phone call that Isa is talking about happened. She called me when I was sleeping, asking if her party was going to happen. I told her that everything will continue the same and that the party would go on. She asked me about some minting problem in Gambiarra’s Mintbase store (that I had passed to gambiarra’s new wallet) and I told her I don’t know why the problem was happening. She also asked me why I left Gambiarra, and I told her I was ashamed of Gambiarra’s behaviour concerning the red flags (in that time, I did not use the term “red flag” ), and that I prefer to not be associated with them.
“Cid restored the gambit-only community group but did not return possession of the wallet to the councils, and two o’clock in the afternoon the store no longer had storage for the arts to be minted. He knew there would be an important event, he couldn’t just disappear and leave everyone in the lurch, even more so after he had excluded the groups and caused such turmoil.”
I quoted Isa above because I have some explanation to do. First of all, on the day of the party, she was the producer, not me; we were paying someone to do this in order to give us time to make other things. So I don’t understand why Isa is complaining that I was not producing the event that was part of her project. It is not the role of a council member to be present in every project submitted to the DAO. Besides that, I was not council from Gambiarra anymore, neither a member, so I was not paying attention to the Gambiarra community on telegram. At the time, none of us knew that Gambiarra was having storage issues. People were not able to mint, and as I had just passed the store to Gambiarra’s new wallet, I thought that may be some error because of this. So I told her I did not know how to solve this problem and told her to ask Gambiarra to talk to Mintbase on telegram. Blu then, in Gambiarra’s telegram group, told us he had sent 1 near to the store and the problem disappeared: so we THEN knew it was a storage issue. I’ve then sent all the resources from the preview Gambiarra’s wallets to the new wallet created by the DAO.
Now about the wallets. I made a post in the forum about it here: [INFORMATION] Giving the seed phrase from the wallets to Gambiarra DAO. But our problem is that Gambiarra DAO is worried that I will die or disappear and the wallet will become inaccessible, and I am worried that I will always know the seed phrase of this wallet (or at least it will always be possible to say that I know the seed phrase) and could then always be held accountable for anything that happens in these wallets. So we are in a problem that I don’t know how to solve. I really want to pass the wallets to them, but there is this responsibility issue that I don’t know how to solve. I suggested to use a bot to send them the resources as soon as they get to the wallet, but they refused this option. If the moderators have already passed through some situation like ours, I ask you to help us to get out of the conflict.
Now about the problem of incompatibility between being in the Gambiarra council and in the Metaverse DAO, I talked to Isa the same thing that Tabea told me: that we should preserve decentralization and we should not have a member of DAO in 2 or more DAOs in the Creatives council. So, the same way I left Gambiarra DAO to stay only in the Metaverse DAO, I told Isa that she could not be in 2 DAOs in the Creatives council, and that she must choose between being a council of Gambiarra or being a member of Metaverse DAO. I told her that by being a member of Metaverse DAO she has voting power, and that by being council on Gambiarra DAO too. I also told her I could not decide for Metaverse DAO and that I would take this to the council. She said she had to accept the council job from Gambiarra because of the resources that were double the amount she receives by producing the parties, and I assured her that even if she were not a member from Metaverse DAO anymore, she could keep building her parties and her project. She said she was ok, if the council thus decided. In the end, she ended up not being council from Gambiarra, but she was a member, so she would have voting power in both DAOs, which defeats decentralization. And defeats it in an interesting way, because at Gambiarra the members vote before the council, so the members can decide any matter without the council. So when we decided that Isa must not be a member anymore, we were protecting decentralization. And, as we told her she could keep building her parties, I simply do not understand how I was harming her.
And Isa is talking about Rafaela and John without knowing the story and also showing that she does not know much about the life of Metaverse DAO. First of all, Rafaela works with Metaverse DAO way before Isa came working with us. Rafaela knows everything that happens on Metaverse DAO, given she is the person diagramming the magazine and seeing the content we were producing. Beyond that, Rafaela has wonderful design and organizational capabilities, fantastic for council members. Concerning John, he himself asked to not be part of Metaverse DAO while he was passing through some known problems in the ecosystem. This was announced in the community telegram, but maybe Isa did not see. Beyond that, everybody can see that Rafaela was not voted only for me, but also for Gus. So it was not my decision, but the decision of the council - unless Isa is going to argue again that I am a manipulator and nobody has any autonomy at all (this argument would not be good, because Rafaela worked with Gus before in another DAO). Contrary to what Isa seems to think, I believe people are autonomous and that we should help them to get knowledge. Before leaving the council, I tried to teach the interested members how to make CFCs (Isa is included in that class), in order for them to know how to do an important part of what is to be a council member from the creatives: to vote by using CFCs. You can see these CFCs in the failed proposals on Gambiarra Astrodao. I taught them, but after I left they did not even vote on the CFCs (https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals?status=failed). I think that I always explained everything to everybody. If you go to our community telegram to see the links, you will see how many explanatory links about NEAR I sent there, how I tried to pass the knowledge I had to everybody. I feel it is unfair to say that I try to manipulate the members.
“Cid removed me as a member, without even communicating me, without checking if I had become council, blackmailed me and fulfilled. And then he created a CFC to vote no against Gambiarra for the entrance of Creatives council, he knew that I would be against this injustice, I would not vote for it, and this CFC was rejected. Not satisfied he went and created another CFC with the same purpose and got it approved.”
Here Isa talks again about what she does not know. Becopro and Rafaela downvoted the proposal because they thought that to vote NO they needed to downvote. I then explained that there is a code to downvote, but that they should vote yes if they want the code to be approved. Of course I told my reasons to Becopro and Rafaela, but they voted for themselves, for their own reasons. But all of our reasons could be summarized as: lack of internal organization. But as we talked in the beginning, now we see it was a mistake to downvote, and that we could just not vote, and that would be better for the community as a whole. One of the most important things here, I believe, is to leave the conflict behind, for us to be able to work again. As NEAR etiquette asks us, we should try to not escalate the conflict. I made a mistake by voting no on Gambiarra’s proposal to enter the Creatives, and I am here to publicly say that and ask you for forgiveness. That is my way to reduce the conflict. I cannot change my vote, but I would if I could. What I can do now is to vote for Gambiarra’s funding, if the proposal is accepted by the moderators, and try not to disturb your activities.
Now, about land. Isa forgot to talk about what Gambiarra was talking about when I suggested my land to be rented. We were talking about many exhibitions that Gambiarra was making, like Mintbase Sunday, Gambiarra Kids, collective exhibitions to the artists, individual ones, and possibly the Feminu International exhibition. Than I suggested to use my land as a headquarter for Gambiarra. I rented my highest property for Gambiarra, in order to build something big for the artists. I told Isa to talk to Gus and ask him how much he would ask for the building. He generally asks 500 usd for building, and I generally ask 500 usd for renting (I’d like to remember now that normal rent of 1h is at least 50 usd; so 10 hours would be 500 usd, what we were charging for the entire month). This time, he asked 400 in order for Isa to earn 100 usd too. Thus, it was a project of 1,000 usd. Unfortunately, the DAO decided that it would not fund projects higher than 500 usd, in order for more projects to get funding. That was not my decision, but from many other people. As 1,000 usd project would not be funded, I just submitted the rent of my land and told people that I would build a gallery for free. Isa is complaining about the gallery, but I made it just like Ghini asked me: glass walls, stairs, floors. I have to remind you that I was not paid to build, but just for renting the land. The building was free, in order for us to start building our HQ.
I think Isa did not understand my point. I told her to split the project in building and renting as different things. But I told her she had to be in the meeting to talk about her project, to defend her project. She was not in the meeting, so she couldn’t decide. Other people defended their own projects, and some projects were elected to be fulfilled. I defended the rent, and people voted for it. When I told her what happened, she blamed me.
“I wrote the project, presented the proposal on the forum, presented the project in the group, everything was fine, and people liked it despite the cost.”
I ask you to imagine this situation: I ask Isa to write a project and then I try to remove her project from the pool… Does this make any sense at all? What happened was that there were 3 projects costing 1,000 usd and other projects costing 500 usd. So 3 projects would take a large part of the budget, given 1,500 is payment for the council, and there would be only 1 project of 500 usd to be funded. The majority of people prefered to make more projects with a smaller value instead of making few large and expensive projects (this is another 1,000 usd project that was rejected at the same time: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-53). I remember that I told people that maybe, when we move from our tier, we would be able to fund larger projects. And it was at that time that I started to ask the Creatives about the tier system, which I know that it is freezed for now. So, of course people liked the project despite the cost. I liked it too; I asked her to write it. And we all liked the other projects of 1,000 usd. We just decided there were no resources for that. I remember that I also told Isa that she could try to get resources on the Metaverse DAO, through the Metacoin and Decentralized Project, and build the project with less resources. She never did it.
“@blusw came in and questioned, because it was still the end of the month, how people were voting on projects for the following month without at least having received all the proposals.”
This is a tricky point, because Ghini had her project approved at February 28th (https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-48), and Natasha Cremonese at March 1st (https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-52), however my rent was only approved at March 4th, not the end of the month, as you can see here: https://app.astrodao.com/dao/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near/proposals/gambiarra-dao.sputnik-dao.near-49. So people were voting on many projects at the end of the month, and my own rent was one of the last to be approved.
“In other words, he manipulated the vote on Saturday night, on the most important holiday in Brazil, so no one would be paying attention on their cell phones that day”.
Isa forgot to tell you that, because of COVID, the Carnival was moved from its original date, at least in Rio de Janeiro. And she also forgot to tell you that I was in the hospital during the entire time of the Carnival. So it is pretty hard to attribute to a person in the hospital, who just made a biopsy to analyse cancer and was taking 7 days of antibiotics in the veins, that was manipulating people. I had no strength even to manipulate myself. Even after returning from hospital, I went to Cryptovoxels to make what I promised. And I went there with Ghini, who was going to be the curator, to know what she would like. She told me that she wanted some floors and glass walls, because she wanted to build internal and external exhibitions. I did just like Ghini asked me. I even put the works in the exhibition on the second floor, but I was waiting for the curator to tell me what she would like more. Ghini was super tired because the Feminu exhibition had just finished and it took a lot of effort from her, and she needed to rest. Unfortunately, before we had a chance to develop the building even more, we had the issues that made me leave Gambiarra.
I can see that Isa is pretty upset with me, and not just her, but other people too. I am really deeply sorry if I was rude to anyone, it was really not my intention; and I am working in nonviolent communication (NVC). All I want is to get back to my work and for you all to get back to your work. The most important thing is to build the projects, reports, and grow the community. I made a mistake in this process of growing the community, at Gambiarra voting. I admit my mistake. I would be very grateful if you could forgive my actions, after this public apologies.
Kind regards