The Social Consequences of Constant Criticism

Reads a tweet from his good friend northpool, who after two years of work and sacrifice is thinking of leaving the Cardano community for good, exhausted by being told the constitution is crap.

There is a limit to how much abuse someone can take, and criticism is fine but for the love of God come up with an alternative instead of just claiming you would have done it better.

It is not healthy to take people working since 2018 through all the ups and downs and criticize their work again and again until they see no value in staying.

Defends the constitution as written not by amateurs but by people who wrote constitutions for nation states, 1,800 people from 50 countries, a consensus document with ambiguity left in on purpose.

Says if you criticize you have an obligation to present a superior alternative and let it compete, because every human endeavor has a flaw and fixating on the 0.1 percent ignores the gold medal.

His anger at the lack of unity among the core entities was because he knew the conflict would spill over onto the volunteers who devoted their lives for two years.

You just saw the consequences: a seven-year friend bowing out because his sacrifices meant nothing to those who criticize, and naked unrelenting criticism destroys value rather than producing it.

The only way a decentralized government works is to let alternatives compete and be voted on, and never beat down the people putting in the work until they quit.

In February 2025 he will talk about the roadmap that many feel will leapfrog the competition and match Solana while keeping principles, from the partner chain to Bitcoin OS and Bitcoin DeFi.

Says the budget is a pie with slices to discuss for value and inclusion, but warns many will bikeshed and nitpick small details while gumming up the process as the industry moves forward.

There is a constructive way to engage: give people the benefit of the doubt, ask clarifying questions, and accept that some things will just fail, like Walmart tolerating theft yet staying profitable.

You have loss prevention, audit, and oversight, but if you obsess only on what could go wrong you never focus on where you want to go and how to get there.

Calls it fantasy to demand a company receiving a grant put its entire books on a blockchain, asking if that standard applies to Globant, Modus Create, or Microsoft, who would have to rebuild their financial systems.

You should expect value, audit that value was delivered, and have recourse if not, but reaching into a grantee and demanding its whole business be subject to community oversight is absurd.

Overreaching demands on grantees are the canary in the coal mine, and DReps and constitutional committee members must decide what type of ecosystem to be and what behavior to tolerate.

He is pissed that good friends who fought shoulder to shoulder are being burned out, and turns to those pumping leaked intersect budgets on Twitter, asking what they hope to achieve.

Leaking intermediate work products as if already decided creates a false reality that people met in a dark room to decide who gets paid, which makes AMAs and governance pointless.

The terror of spreadsheets means people must check everything 45 ways before speaking, so there must be a period to brainstorm and assemble a package, and leaking intermediate forms is shameful.

There is no budget until the DReps decide it, and criticizing DReps for getting together as some exclusive Bilderberg event is wrong since the people voted them their power.

Asks who pays for DReps to meet in person, noting he paid over five million dollars out of his own pocket for the Voltaire workstream in 2024 and there is no approved funding.

Forcing everyone to meet publicly turns it into grandstanding, like a senate hearing where no real business is done, just political posturing and shame.

Mocks the demand that even a person with 0.00001 percent delegation who registered yesterday must be included or someone is excluded, calling it absolute madness that needs a step back.

Either the ecosystem follows a considered, deliberate, systematic way through this or it descends into chaos, and only the deliberate path converges to something of value.

Looks for canaries in a social process: when good people leave you know you are doing something wrong, and asks when someone who gave ten years finally gets the benefit of the doubt.

Social systems require acknowledging that some people are not bad actors, and treating everyone as the enemy who withdraws from the emotional bank account will burn the ecosystem to the ground.

The world is low trust and social media rewards naked criticism over collaboration, so Cardano can be different only if the community and DReps choose it to be.

Twitter can never be reality and bringing people together in person changes the dynamic, which is why the heavy lifting on the constitution happened at physical workshops, not on social media.

He is trying hard to bring people together, and the community must understand tradeoffs always exist, since wanting Ouroboros, Peras, and Leios all at once has real costs.

A feature written as a CIP in 2025 still needs every client to catch up in a multi-client environment of Haskell, Go, TypeScript, and Rust, so you cannot just hard fork.

Asks whether you want fast features in market as soon as possible or the resilience of multi-client diversity, and whether you are prepared to spend the money to build all clients at once.

A constructive process gets people talking and backfills the when, how, and strategy together, while a destructive one throws out fantasy budget numbers and tears down other processes.

It takes courage to put dirty laundry in the open rather than hide conflict inside foundations like Tezos, Algorand, Polkadot, or Ethereum, and confronting it is Cardano's USP.

Greatness comes from the integrity to be honest and the courage to be disliked while still getting along, and though some people will be lost, he believes the best days are ahead.

Calls on every DRep to decide and on the community to pause before liking and retweeting, warning that certain entities in the ecosystem aim to derail processes and grab power.

He judges everyone by what they do and admits he could be wrong about intentions, but if he sees good people ground up and thrown away he will make a video to say their work was valued.

Shares his thesis about humanity, that people are basically good and want to make the world better, and says he views Cardano optimistically rather than cynically.

The core entities now work for the DReps, who must step up, make their own videos, and be held accountable by the people who delegated to them.

Warns that an ecosystem that only protests becomes the 4chan of crypto, citing Ethereum Classic existing only to defy Vitalik Buterin and Bitcoin SV existing only to defy a founder.

Cardano's story is not yet written and the crossroads not yet met, and what it means to build here will be answered by the actions and collaborations people choose today.

Closes with a farewell to northpool, calling him a good man he loved working with, and toasts to better days.