Why I'm Voting NO on Proposal DAO Community and Project Manager

With things heating up in the crypto world and for the vast amount I have invested into the game (still small compared to some) I want to be a little more vocal about things going on. I feel there needs to be as apparently no one was holding the company accountable when funds where being blown through.

My overall vision of Splinterlands is a fun game but also one that takes sales, sponsorships and other aspects of the marketing and fund raising and start splitting that up more between the company and the game assets. I personally feel there is no reason why the company shouldn't be able to mainly survive and grow from pack sales and then also fees generated from the market. I feel they got way too ahead of themselves and took on too much of which we still have nothing to show for it. That would be Land, Tower Defense and GLX. Now yes all good projects I feel but the issue is pretty much two - three years later from pack sales there's NOTHING we can do with any of these still. That's pretty wild and I fully understand why the community would be upset about it as I am.

Aside from being upset however I very rarely let emotions cloud my judgement and so when I step back and look at the recent changes it feels like Splinterlands is back on track. That was until this proposal.... Let me explain.

The Proposal

You can read the details of it here SPS Governance Proposal - Hire Clayboyn as DAO community and Project Manager

Here are the very general and bullet point information I got out of this post and my thoughts on it. Of course I might have missed something so please drop it in the comments and let's talk about it. If it's something major I can also update this post.

• Hire Clayboyn as community and project manager for $60,000/ year or $5,000 a month paid out in USDT from the DAO.
• At any time Clayboyn can remove himself from the project and would no longer be paid
• At any time the community to push a Governance proposal to fire them.

The main responsibilities would be they would oversee the DAO and community and relay information back to the team based on feedback and proposals being submitted. They would also work on trying to get Market maker or Exchange listings with the DAO, create Splinterlands tournaments, social media promotion and moderate the discord channel.

My feedback on that....

• Tournaments seem crazy abused by a select few people that just constantly win. Unless there was a major shake up with more even playing fields to me tournaments are a massive emission of SPS tokens that should be reduce or at least far fewer and make a big deal about it like a big production. Something like smaller tournaments that qualify people and then have a big event and use that as promotion.

If anything a better option would be to allow others to come in to sponsor a tournament and depending on how much they sponsor in determines how much of a bonus of SPS is added to their tournament. This would create value instead of yet another exit of value out of the systems and sps to a select few. For example if WOO wanted to do a tournament they could pay $500 which would put 15k value of SPS behind their tournament they are running and social media posts about it. or some type of mix up like that.

• I think the community itself does a find job at social media promotion and I'm not a fan of these constant giveaways and really hope we don't start doing streams again with giveaways. Another massive emission for very little results.

My biggest feedback and issue I have with this however. AND LET ME BE CLEAR I AM ALL FOR THE DAO BEING USED TO HIRE PEOPLE AND HELP THE COMPANY LIKE A EQUAL PARTNERSHIP. Is that we know nothing about this person at least many of us don't. I would much rather pay the company and the company make that decision but then also it needs to be super transparent to the DAO (SPS holders) what's being done and performance.

Another big one for me is a huge massive security risk it brings to the DAO. At least in theory it feels like it would now directly involve the hiring of someone so if anything where to ever happen it opens the DAO open to lawsuit etc. If you're a lawyer I'd love to hear your honest feedback on this but it seems like if we paid the company and then the company did it then it wouldn't directly involve the DAO and put it at risk.

To me 60k for this seems overkill and honestly you could pay someone far less to do the basics like tournaments, community connection /feedback and relaying that information to the company as that's the ONLY things I see that have value out of this list. It's clear this company way overspent their budget before and I think we need to be a lot more strategic with funds. If it's not making more money then it's paying out then remove it or fix it.

Where I'm coming from. I run a company myself but I also have helped countless startups go from ground floor barely making it to multi million dollar companies. One of the most important factors in that was keeping expenses minimal and reviewed at all times. If it's not making money or enough money for the time and funds used then it's time to ditch it for something else.

With this proposal I see us going right back down that expense rabbit hole. Those funds would be better off simply burning SPS and trying to increase the price as price action matters greatly in this crypto world.

We need to start being smarter with funds and start returning those funds back into the game. A vast majority of people play and buy splinterlands assets because they pretty much expect the values to go up. It's honestly no different then when you go out and buy baseball cards, pokemon cards and other game style cards. You buy them to play or you like them but also you have a feeling it's going to be worth more later down the line.

That's my two cents on why I'll be voting NO on this proposal. Let me know your thoughts, counters and if you'll be voting yes I'm interested to hear why as I'm very open to hearing other sides and there are times where that information will sway my vote as it could have been something I missed or didn't think about.

Disclaimer: This post is not in any way meant to attack anyone person or individual and are simply my thoughts and opinions on the information I currently am aware of. Running a business is hard and the more you remove emotions and make cold calculated decisions the better off you'll be.