Hello Everyone,
The ChainAnalysis Ref 1065 is about to pass in less than 6 days. Obviously, the community is against this. So for those who haven't voted against this. This is your best chance to turn things around. If you have already voted, make some noise on Twitter to get the attention of the people in charge of Polkadot to vote against it. If this ref passes, it will cost the treasury over 6 million USD. This will be another waste of treasury funds without any real strategy or accountability.
This isn't the first time the ChainAnalysis team are requesting funds from the treasury. They say they provide Anti-Money Laundering and Know-Your-Customer compliance services. The thing is, as far as I know, the regulators are not asking for these services from Polkadot. To date as the SEC has declared Polkadot a software and not a security. These laws generally apply to Wealth Managers and Broker/Dealers. On top of that, the regulators are not asking for these services from Polkadot, Web3, or Parity. On top of that the original ref 684: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/684 ended with a NAY vote because they failed to convince anyone that this service is mandatory or necessary.
So, instead of taking the loss gracefully and with dignity. ChainAnalysis went on to create ref: 785: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/785 . This time on the Root Track which costs 100k DOT as a decision deposit to create. It is generally implied that they had help from the whales to go this route (potentially from Giotto DF). The Root Track is usually used by the Polkadot developers to make runtime changes etc. Most people are not aware of this track, and from my understanding, on this track, DVs cannot use their delegated votes. So a ref canceller was used to stop this ref.
Having learned nothing. They still came back again demanding 6 million USD while barely changing anything from their original ref. Don't forget that their solution is proprietary and not open source. So should they leave or we have a fallout, we lose the code base and would have no alternatives. There are alternative solutions being developed by the Polkadot ecosystem that are open source. But, the whales would rather keep pushing ChainAnalysis.
You can vote here: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/1065
If you are feeling disheartened about the chances of beating the whales. Please see the recent examples of the Polkadot community beating the whales:
Shutting down the Marketing Bounty: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/920#CNjCm02X0vkczcDR3XHo
Shutting down DED Marketing: https://polkadot.polkassembly.io/referenda/834
So please make your voice heard. Anyone please chime in if I missed anything, or got something wrong. The ChainAnalysis people have been at this game for a while now, and it's hard for me to keep track of everything they have been up to. But, they are suspect if you ask me.