Announcing the initial set of endorsed delegates

Ecosystem Governance
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Hi everyone,

Thank you all for your patience these last few weeks as we reviewed all of the delegate proposal applications, conducted due diligence, and set up the screening committee. Thank you especially to everyone who applied to be a delegate, and to the rest of the screening committee for helping review the proposals. Without further ado I’m excited to announce our initial committee of 11 endorsed delegates:

I’ll be reaching out to these delegates in the coming days to onboard them and to begin bootstrapping the governance process. As a reminder, participation in House of Stake is permissionless. You do not need to be a delegate to participate in voting, and you do not need to delegate your veNEAR to one of the endorsed delegates to vote. The delegate system exists to make governance more efficient and to save everyday network users the time and effort required to participate in day-to-day governance. Also, we’ll very likely seek to expand the set of delegates in the not-too-distant future, but we wanted to keep the initial set of delegates small.

See the comprehensive governance proposal for more information on the role of delegates in governance. In the rest of this post, I’ll attempt to explain our rationale for having chosen this set of delegates.

We used several criteria in the selection process, primarily reputation, NEAR alignment, and likelihood of success as a delegate, in addition of course to the contents of the delegate proposal applications. No one of these factors was considered all-important, and the other goal was to choose a balanced set of delegates with a diverse set of perspectives. On the one hand, we wanted to make sure that the committee was composed primarily of NEAR-aligned OGs, who have spent meaningful time contributing to the NEAR ecosystem. On the other hand, we recognize that other ecosystems have governance that’s far more mature, and we wanted to make sure we invited multiple delegates with deep experience participating in these more mature governance systems, so that we can learn from them. Hopefully you’ll agree that both perspectives are well represented on the committee.

We also wanted to make sure that we have representation from diverse constituencies, including builders, community builders, operators, those with experience in governance, finance, and economics, etc. We wanted to make sure that the committee consists primarily of individuals, but we also made room for a number of organizations that have a proven track record of contributing to NEAR and elsewhere. We wanted to include folks who were involved in NDC and could help us avoid some of its mistakes, but we also wanted a clean slate, so most of the delegates have no prior involvement in NEAR governance.

Finally, geographic diversity matters as well: we’re excited to have active participation from communities in East Asia, Europe, and Latin America, in addition to North America.

Please join me in congratulating and welcoming our initial committee of delegates. Expect to hear more here soon on next steps, including defining the initial scope of governance and what the initial proposals will look like.

Lane

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Congrats to all participants and winners :trophy: and long life to Near Community

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Congratulations to everyone, no doubt with all the selections.

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James worked with Cameron at NEAR NYC. Yuen moderates the “dead” chats of Near Protocol at NF for $4,500 a month together with four other mods, with no single ROI report, and is part of multiple DAOs within the ecosystem. Seems his election is illegitimate since three members of the screening committee are representatives of NF (3 of 5), creating a direct conflict of interest. The only truly independent candidates are Alan and Charles Garrett, who have no experience in governance, and to some extent, Slime, who previously received financial support from NF.

Aurora Labs, which claimed extensive experience in governance, deceived people with VOTE tokens and seemed to conduct discussions on governance proposals outside the governance forum. It seemingly secured its position only because Ilya and Alex have been friends since childhood. Aurora also got a seat on the Infrastructure Committee and the Events Committee. What’s next? A seat on the NEAR Board?

Cameron (Banyan Collective) allegedly received millions of dollars from the NF fund to develop NEAR USA, about which nothing is known to this day. He is also rumored to have spent hundreds of thousands of NF dollars on the PotLock platform, from which funds were siphoned off by sybils with no benefit to the ecosystem. Additionally, he made numerous attempts to extract money from NDC and the Light Wave project for his initiatives, such as BAF, continuously taking different positions to secure funding.

Currently, he appears to serve as the BD and media representative for Near AI, which, over a year, has shown no results capable of impacting the market, as reflected in the NEAR price. Out of the promised “trillion” agents, only around 600 have been launched, with 99% of them being test cases.

NearWeek has effectively monopolized NEAR’s media space, receiving funding without competition. The selection of NearWeek is also illegitimate since they work for NF. Their activities are entirely dependent on the foundation, and they promote NF’s agenda, making them neither neutral nor objective.

Tanelabs, Areta, and 404 are entities that primarily serve the interests of large VCs.

It seems that Ilya not only demonstrates a lack of management skills but also appears to fear independent candidates, blocking the participation of individuals like Blaze, who fought against VC NF and nepotism in the ecosystem. Thanks to Blaze, NEAR experienced a resurgence, and the token reached its local ATH. However, the entire governance structure of NF is now just an example of nepotism. Almost the same people hold key positions in the Infrastructure and Events Committees, show no public results, and yet continue to approve and spend massive amounts of money with no ROI reports.

The number of active developers in the NEAR ecosystem is steadily declining, as confirmed by the Electric Capital report. However, NF continues to finance Ilya’s friend Vlad Frolov (Near DevHub) with endless grants despite the project’s obvious stagnation.

Ilya unilaterally changed the tokenomics, completely removing community grants (17.2%) under the justification of negative ROI. However, despite this reasoning, throughout Ilya’s tenure at NF, not a single public report has been provided regarding the use of NF funds, nor a single document detailing ROI and investment directions. Unlike Marieke, who fought inefficiency in the ecosystem by cutting unnecessary expenses, she was simply removed from her position as NF CEO—probably for doing so. I saw some discussions suggesting that the current beneficiaries sitting on committees were involved in her dismissal from NF.

A key point is that Ilya and his fund, Black Dragon, actively invest in new projects, but Ilya himself does not invest in NEAR—there is no public information about any such investment. People around NF do not believe in NEAR themselves. They sell off their unlocked tokens on exchanges every month, which can be easily verified using the Pikespeak app.

Meanwhile, projects that NF initially committed to supporting, such as Near Neat, are simply being erased without any stated reason. How can such things happen without the knowledge of NF’s top leadership? This raises further questions about the decision-making process within the foundation and whether key figures are deliberately allowing—or even orchestrating—such removals.

The logical purpose of this governance system was to eliminate favoritism and significantly limit the influence of Ilya and the foundation. However, in reality, the complete opposite has happened—there has been an increase in centralization. Six out of 11 candidates are directly connected to NF, work for the foundation, or are interdependent (54%). Three candidates represent large investors (27%), and only two independent candidates remain in the process.

By community members, this is yet another piece of evidence of Ilya Polosukhin’s fear and complete inability to manage the NEAR Foundation. He does not have an MBA degree; he is simply a good developer, ex-Google, and a good founder, but that is not enough to lead a top blockchain ecosystem. It should be managed by a professional with proven success and experience.

In Web2, a company’s share price is the key KPI for CEOs and C-level staff. When did NEAR reach its ATH? Only during the time of Marieke and NDC. After their departure, the project started to decline. Now, the NEAR ecosystem is almost dead, and along with it, the community has essentially ceased to exist.

Blaze, sorry to all of us that we were blind.

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Hi Watsica, lets talk more if you are ok with it in telegram. Want to understand the painpoints and things in NEAR that you would like to see developed and worked on in Q2. Seems like we both joined NEAR at almost the same time.

I want to get discussions going and see how things can be improved on and since you are a NEAR OG, you would be a treasury trove of feedback and ideas on what the ideal NEAR ecosystem would be. I cannot promise a change with a snap of a finger but I can work with community and members to get things funded and worked on at least.

I know I might just be a moderator in NF atm but I am also a degen, trador, content creator, marketer, meme coin lover, founder, alpha hunter, dao member, community manager, BD, community member and NEARian like every other community member. I started as a community member and just slowly built myself up and connected with all the amazing people here.

If you do have time and are ok with chatting more, please dm me on TG at @Yuensid and lets gets things rolling. I want to keep NEAR moving and developing with the community since ive always consider NEAR my home chain. I do considered myself independent outside of my role of the community moderator role since im always chatting with founders and projects in NEAR to see where alignment can happen.

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Hello. Another corruption is coming out again. Of course, you wrote beautifully about the criteria by which you chose the winners, but I will tell you by what real criteria this happened. This is the choice of your friends, good acquaintances and all other close ones, and all the other participants will go purely for the sake of numbers for the report at the end of the competition. I think that the result of this competition has already been decided in advance. Nothing changes in NEAR, and everything is stable there.:joy::joy:

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I can’t agree more.
Thank you to bring Truth to community.
This will change nothing as this is already biased

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Tane was approched by NF and/or Gautlent to take part of this.

The choice was already done

Best shit ever

@lane Waiting your answer …

Areta didn’t make address in the timing, but was selected…

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I haven’t seen public info regarding this statement but more importantly, I don’t see why that’s an issue. A lot of the prospective candidates reached out to Lane and others at NF before applying to understand how the framework works.

Lane on numerous occasions has encouraged people to reach out if they want to have a chat or even discuss about their application.

Twisting the narrative on good intentions doesn’t help :folded_hands:

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Gauntlet has worked with many of these organizations before and introduced us to many of them. The idea from the beginning was to work with professionals who have governance experience from other ecosystems, as I wrote above.

We ended up selecting some and not others. Honestly I’m not sure why this is interesting.

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I observe a concerning trend that seems to indicate corporatist practices within the ecosystem, where only trusted individuals and close associates occupy leadership and management positions. We must remember that NF is a foundation, and I don’t know of any foundations with large financial volumes that operate in a truly decentralized manner, much less where distant people or those with conflicting views work effectively together.

Personally, I can no longer see the NEAR ecosystem as genuinely decentralized governance. Many individuals struggle to manage their own resources, let alone manage a foundation’s funds from anonymous profiles without KYC, representing communities with little transparency. Therefore, it’s not surprising that people within close circles are controlling the funds.

It’s evident that NEAR maintains privileged relationships primarily with members from Europe and North America, which demonstrates the absence of global decentralization. If we conducted a demographic analysis, classifying users by continental regions, it would become clear that the management is not geographically diverse.

The NEAR ecosystem seems to be in decline, with the progressive departure of various artists, developers, and users. I don’t oppose professionals being compensated for their work in the blockchain sector. I had the opportunity to work in the ecosystem while resources were available for the Creative DAO, which functioned as a gateway for many users. I’ve always advocated that the Dev DAO and Creative DAO should work together, as they create real experiences introducing people to Web3.

However, I notice that many professionals hired by NF seem complacent, doing only the minimum necessary, without presenting innovative ideas or creative strategies to facilitate the transition from Web2 to Web3. It surprises me to see that some elected North American representatives have never sought strategic partnerships with influential figures like Snoop Dogg, who has invested significantly in the Web3 space. Anyone familiar with the sector recognizes this artist’s relevance to the ecosystem.

In summary, I feel that my opinions and suggestions are not truly considered in this environment.

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Look, I understand your frustration and know that whatever I say might not change much. But from my perspective, I don’t think this is a case of corruption - it seems more like an issue of organizing what isn’t clear to everyone yet.

We should be happy that people are working and earning money, right? Celebrate abundance instead of scarcity. Web3 is all about financial abundance at the end.

Throwing tomatoes and booing won’t get us anywhere. Maybe it’s better to ask the winners for concrete actions to revive the community’s spirit and heat up the market again.

I don’t want to take sides or defend anyone here, because what happens in the ecosystem is too complex - it has multiple layers, multiple dimensions. I can see many things clearly, but I keep them to myself. Maybe I just enjoy understanding these complex structures.

I personally met some of the people you mentioned at NEAR events and think it’s unfair to label some as corrupt, even knowing that some of them probably wouldn’t have the slightest empathy for me.

It’s time to roll up our sleeves and work to make things right, instead of just criticizing and returning to digital feudalism. Let’s see what this new management can deliver.

We need lucky and hardworking not Near ecosystem with xenophobie.

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The results from previous initiatives speak for themselves.

Now is the time to earn the trust of the community.

I hope Gauntlet will prioritize real builders who have delivered dapps with active users.

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