It is truly sad to see words like ‘community’ and ‘DAO’ being weaponized to serve an agenda.
When I started at Badger 3 years ago, this place looked a lot different. Some of the people who are actively engaging in this discourse had yet to find their way into the Badger ecosystem as contributors. Coming off the tail end of DeFi Summer, there was a mix of excitement and chaos as the project worked to find its footing and capitalize on a successful launch. As I am sure we all can relate, building the financial tools to power a financial revolution isn’t easy, especially while attempting to follow a rule book for operating that has yet to be written. Almost like building the plane while it’s taking off - a potentially overused metaphor, I know.
It was a bumpy ride in the beginning. I personally witnessed many people come and go on their own accord for various reasons. DeFi startups are certainly not for the faint of heart. But a peculiar thing happens when the going gets tough and things start to take a turn for the worse. A once-vibrant community has a habit of dissipating, and over time, you start to learn more about people and their motives for being there in the first place. This, of course, leaves room for a growing divide where perception and reality are no longer aligned. Suddenly the battle we were once fighting together is now being waged against one another.
Having spent time in person with a number of the people actively waging this unfortunate campaign against the association, I am both shocked and appalled at the level of misinformation being shared and the disrespectful way in which it is being communicated. Nothing but respect and compassion has been shown to them thus far, and this is a gross overreaction and completely unwarranted. The blatant attempts to bulldoze any and all responses to their criticism is far from productive. As someone who has been present through the toughest of challenges and witnessed the constant evolution and progression towards something better, I can say with unwavering confidence that I do not share the opinions of these outlier council members and do not believe their rhetoric to be an accurate representation of the community and what it stands for.
On to the catalyst for this discussion - Discord.
Since its inception, the BadgerDAO Discord has been overseen by individual community members - not the association. Marketing, communications and support have always been closely intertwined and as such I, as an individual contributor and community member, have been actively involved in upgrading and evolving the infrastructure to provide a more optimal UX and a more efficient support system for users. As of today, there are a total of 5 individuals with admin privileges for the server, including myself and support.
In my experience, Discord was not built for DeFi. As with many things in our shared space, we have not opted to use the right tools across the board. The simple fact that we agreed to share the most complex technical information via a platform that, up until recently, only allowed you to share 280 characters at a time is truly unbelievable. But alas, here we are.
As part of our active and ongoing efforts to upgrade security measures across both tech and operations, service providers across web2, web3, and marketing conducted the first of many Incident Response drills with GreyCastle. The intention was to simulate a number of scenarios that would pressure-test our existing response plan in order to identify potential areas for improvement and strengthen our approach. In doing so, it became clear that the best course of action was to consolidate channels of communication, move support infrastructure to a more reliable and secure platform, and attempt to minimize outstanding security liabilities.
After much due diligence to ensure a proper transition of all relevant services, a transition plan for deprecating the Discord was put in place. To reiterate, the intention behind this was nothing more than to ensure the well-being of our community members and to fortify our security infrastructure based on knowledge gathered from working with trusted partners in this space. To imply otherwise is simply not true.
At the time of this post, the BadgerDAO Discord has 7,888 VERIFIED members. At best, this represents 25% of the total number of $BADGER token holders, assuming each member possesses a wallet with some amount of tokens in it. For comparison, the Badger and eBTC Twitter accounts combined have more than 50,000 followers.
Furthermore, to interact with Badger on Discord, you must create an account, profile, and pass verification, at which point you then need to navigate your way to the correct channel in order to voice your concerns or feedback. In a space where UX is so far from where it needs to be, maintaining this server for the purposes outlined by these outliers is not safe or productive.
Clearly, governance was not hindered, as evident in this post and my ability to respond to it. Both @1500Badger and @FreddyTheFilosopher maintain admin rights here and have the ability to conduct business as usual without issue.
I’ll end on this - I fear this unfortunately has little to do with the deprecation of the Badger chat room and believe this to be a malicious act on behalf of a group of people under the guise of helping token holders and speaking up for the community. To imply the association and the service providers it employs are in any way working against the growth and well-being of this project is a direct attack on our collective future and any success we can hope to see moving forward.
