Whats Really Happening on Terra

There is no rest for the wicked

I have been a Lunatic in the Terra community for a long time. I fell in love so much so that I actually quit my job to come build in this ecosystem.

However, now being on the “inside” as a builder I have access to information that most everyone in the community does not have access to. Lately I can’t shake this feeling that the issues are growing and need to be addressed publicly so people can see things for what they are.. But I can’t post from my main account regarding these issues for fear of disturbing the status quo.

I’m writing this article to hopefully bring some attention to the issues that I am seeing behind the scenes on Terra.

TFL Support, Compensation, Purpose

I won’t say if I am a part of TFL or not, but I can say that I have had direct connections with many people who are. I will call out the issues I see, and then propose some solutions for them.

TFL has become extremely foggy from what it seems. People do not seem motivated, things that should take a couple days take weeks. I think this is due to a number of factors I will outline below:

1. Teams: The teams that TFL (Do) is assembling are not organically formed teams full of A players. Instead they are quickly assembled batches of young people who are told to go off on their own and be entrepreneurs and lead these protocols to greatness.. It unfortunately does not work like that. Firstly only a tiny microcosm of the population is suited to be entrepreneurs, and worse yet gathering a team together who have not formed organically diminishes likelihood of success by a significant magnitude.
2. Decentralized Command: Do seems to be failing to decentralize his command. He assembles the teams around him (grabs people for Pylon and Valkyrie and tells them to start working on those projects), but he has no time to actually micro manage the projects. I think Do is stuck between a rock and a hard place here.. However, he should be hiring VPs underneath him who can actually help micro manage projects until they are confident they have the right people on the teams, and they are in a position to spin off and become independent. Pylon for example was supposed to spin off and become its own project, but it failed at this and Do & company had to pull them back under the wing of TFL. On the community AMA that Do did about how to improve Pylon, the Pylon team said “we need more resources”, a true entrepreneur has no such outlet to go to someone and say “in order to be successful we need more resources from you”.
3. Compensation: I have heard restlessly about the poor level of compensation that TFL gives employees. This is beyond confusing to me.. Do is one of the richest people in Korea, strikes me that he would want to compensate his people extremely well. Instead I hear stories of people getting robbed of their tokens (never receiving what they were promised). And it is all held under the shadows as if these individuals spoke out against the almighty Do Kwon they would be publicly shamed in the community they have come to love. I can speak their truths for them through this channel.. It’s complete bullshit, and I wonder how much of this contributes to point number 1.
4. Culture: I’m not sure if it’s the nature of remote work for the TFL organization, but almost top to bottom we have issues communicating with these people. It seems that for every issue the entire TFL team leans back to “we can’t support in that way because thats up to the projects” they seem to wash their hands entirely of getting involved in supporting projects. It’s amazing that a nascent ecosystem like Terra has convinced themselves that they don’t need to do anything to support projects. What I actually think it is is pure laziness. People just not wanting to do much and receive that so-so pay check from old TFL. (I know these are harsh words, but it’s the harsh reality from my POV). Go back to points 2 & 3 for datapoints on why this may be happening.

Solutions:

Now that I have called out some of the major issues from my POV let me explain some of my thoughts on what to do / what the solutions might be.

1. Wake up call: There is a lott of slack it seems in TFL right now. People are more than comfortable doing nothing to support projects, and generally these people at TFL seem to have no fear that a project will go above them directly to Do and complain (I think this is because they threaten the weight of TFL, and feel if a project does that they will simply blacklist that project from their support — which keep in mind there is no support). I believe part of this also is that people do not view their jobs as being setup to support projects — this is another area of rationalization. I believe a lot of TFLs job at this point should be to support projects in small ways where they can. Instead there is a “not my job, and if you go to my boss directly you’ll never get an ounce of support from us” culture.. Well guess what.. Fuck that, I’ll write this article instead.
2. Get the right people: Hiring at all levels right now seems to be a lot for TFL.. Maybe try getting some more diversity? Bring in some people from different backgrounds. Pay them really well to get them in the door. Don’t shove General Managers in front of the community before you are 110% sure they are the right leader for the project.
3. Support the fucking projects building: Your current culture is “not my job, there are 1000 projects building you are nothing but one of those! Why should I waste my time?” Wrong answer.. You need to help people, if it is not clear to your employees that this is part of their jobs, make it clear and publicly state to the community of builders that if there is an issue, they should reach out to you directly (Do I am talking to you). If you are not staffed appropriately to support, guess what — hire some more people. We are far from Terra being a totally independent L1, so better scale up to support on this journey.
4. Reset expectations for investors in the eco-fund: It is not enough to just write seed checks to projects to later dump on Retail, we need Investors to use the products people build. You have a role in setting the stage for that, do not wash your hands of this.

Conclusion Dear Terra: I believe in you. I believe in the future of decentralized money. Do not give up on your L1 future, push harder to become a blockchain where people spend their time and dollars in the future. Right now there are a lotttt of issues (outlined from my POV above). I do not think this is too far gone, but these things are like cysts.. they will only get worse over time.

Cheers to everyone in this community. I sincerely appreciate all of you..

• Regards