Prestel & Partners: Family Office & Investor Conference Series for Polkadot

Medium Spender
1mo ago
17 Comments
Rejected
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185KUSDC
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Decision28d
Confirmation4d
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41.9%Aye
50.0%Threshold
58.1%Nay
Aye
21.16MDOT
Nay
29.33MDOT
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Support0.30%
4.59MDOT
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1.52BDOT
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Dear Event Bounty Curators and @anamarie_com - I find your post here incredibly misleading and politically biased, hence I have to respond. You did state in your initial response (as well as in verbal feedback) that you rejected this because something similar was previously rejected in OpenGov. I believe this is circular logic, which would defeat the purpose of the bounty. The EB should be able to make its assessments independently of OpenGov and of political biases, but apparently this is not the case.

It is true that in your initial response you have also mentioned other reasons for rejecting it, but these have since been dispelled. Nonetheless you keep repeating them here. Let me address them one by one:

Vienna CEE Wealth Summit: The post-event report for this “proof-of-concept” conference has been submitted to the EB (although admittedly with a delay — apologies for that). The inclusion of Christoph, Tommi and Nathalie as speakers at this event should illustrate that we are striving for inclusive representation of the ecosystem, not just HIC.

This is an HIC event: This criticism would have been justified against Ref 731, but we have since made major adjustments. We have very clearly stated that we will involve other ecosystem agents (ambassadors, projects, and other ecosystem funds) in these events, but you keep ignoring that point. HIC here acts as the event's organiser, not the beneficiary. It is like saying WebZero benefitted more than Polkadot from organising Sub0 — clearly a ridiculous statement.

HIC is a profit driven entity, hence you should fund it yourself Yes, we are a profit driven entity, and we won’t apologise for that. So is literally any other company in the world. But we are also a Polkadot ecosystem fund, and every dollar raised at these investor conferences, will get reinvested into the Polkadot ecosystem. What exactly is bad about that?

You should scale it down: We just did! We scaled it down from 1m to 185k, and from 20+ events to 5 events. We just did the CEE Wealth Summit as a proof of concept, and it was a resounding success. To push us to reduce it even further to one event would be self-defeating, I don’t think 5 events (by a single organiser) are too much of a risk. We need some predictability to plan and execute these events.

This is a broad discretionary budget: The budget breakdown has been clearly stated in the table, as such it is not discretionary (again, this would have been a fair criticism of 731, but not of this proposal). It is true that the speaker selection has not been finalised yet, but it’s also a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem, we can’t finalise the list of speakers before we know whether the budget gets approved. I also strongly disagree with your statement that “speaker selection should fall under the EB’s oversight”. I don’t think that the bounty curators should have a monopoly on deciding who gets to speak on behalf of Polkadot.

We are unsure about Riyadh as one of the locations: This is a particularly strange argument in my opinion. Riyadh is a major financial hub for capital allocators, and the Saudis have been actively investing in Web3. Animoca Brands just raise 50m there, as one of many examples. It is not the easiest market to penetrate, but with this particular conference we have a good opportunity. We also already have two Saudi investors in Fund I, and we want to scale that. To ignore Saudi Arabia when raising capital for Polkadot, would be a rather obvious mistake.

In summary, I am disappointed by the EB’s rejection of the proposal – the reasons provided are weak, outdated or outright false. This is why we’re now back to OpenGov.

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I think this is a positive move.

Representatives from Integrated Fund, Web3 Foundation, Parity and Polkadot Ecosystem, as a group, explained to family fund managers the opportunities contained in the blockchain, especially the Polkadot ecosystem.

Such activities provide family fund managers with a "comprehensive perspective."

Representatives from each industry can amplify the advantages of Polkadot from the perspective of capital, the perspective of blockchain technology development, the perspective of web3 development trends, and the perspective of mutual support and cooperation between Polkadot parachains during the event.

The team who put forward this proposal has a clear goal and accurately sees the opportunity.
So i am supporting.

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Bros are hustling to get a Polkadot-native VC fund flying. 185k USD can do lots here. Aye.

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I appreciate the idea but you guys should have put something (Money) to organize all this work until the last report for better engagement.

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It's a bit disappointing to see that @🍀 Lucky Friday - OpenGov 🍀 is repeating claims that have been dispelled multiple times.

  1. We HAVE done a POC (the CEE Wealth Summit), which was a big success. All the information about it is out there (check our X account). Now is not the time to do another POC, but to scale it. (And btw, this proposal here is already a 5x+ reduction from the initial budget is once again ignored)
  2. HIC is taking the lead on this, but other ecosystem fund will be invited to come along as well. We stated that very clearly multiple times. Lucky Friday is misleadingly repeating the claim that this is a HIC event only. We act as the organiser here, not the beneficiary.
  3. As for RISK SHARING, I don't understand how you can claim that we are not taking any risk, launching a Polkadot-only VC Fund, and trying to raise money from external investors for Polkadot. In this event series we will promote POLKADOT, so I don't think it's unreasonable that the treasury is paying for the sponsorship. Would you also say that WebZero is not doing enough risk sharing when they organised Sub0 and have the treasury pay for it? As a side note, we do not ask for any compensation for time and effort in organising the series (in contrast to almost all other event organisers).

Anyways, I don't want to get caught up in all the details, but if Lucky Friday really fails to see how this proposal benefits Polkadot, I don't know what else to say.

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Super Initiative! Voted Aye

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@🍀 Lucky Friday - OpenGov 🍀 Lucky Friday can't see the forest for all the trees. They say it is a well known fact that teams in the Polkadot ecosystem have a hard time attracting outside capital, but when someone is trying to change that (by bringing more capital into the ecosystem), they vote against it. We also never hid the fact that we hope to gain something from this fund - after all we're not running a charity. No ecosystem agent who creates value should do so without compensation. But our approach is that we want to only get compensated via carry IF we successfully raise capital and manage to generate a profit - not directly from the the treasury. I thought LF who always emphasised risk sharing would appreciate that, but somehow they always find new reasons to be against it again.

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Recommend undecided voters (as well as voters who voted NAY) to watch me on AAG last week discussing this proposal: https://www.youtube.com/live/o3C2nxIZM0A?si=kEWUbe178iL0YgVG&t=6016

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We voted against this before asking for this to be scaled down. This is now a very reasonable ask for a highly engaged leader of the ecosystem for 2025, any further scaling down is unnecessary.

2025 is going to be a great year for Polkadot Hub + Cloud, lets support them with this level of resource and hope they can demonstrate scaling by Summer!

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Dear @Max_HIC ,

Thank you for your proposal. Our vote on this proposal is AYE.

The Medium Spender track requires a 50% quorum and simple majority according to our voting policy. This proposal has received six aye and zero nay votes from ten members, with one member abstaining. Below is a summary of our members' comments:

The referendum received strong support, with members emphasizing the importance of attracting new and long-term investors to the Polkadot ecosystem. Supporters praised the proposal's alignment with the ecosystem's needs, the team's responsiveness to feedback, and their active representation at events. While one member abstained due to insufficient expertise, they acknowledged the team's dedication. Some suggested incorporating marketing and sales into the fund's operational costs to enhance its impact.

The full discussion, along with individual members' votes and comments, can be found in our internal voting.

Kind regards,

Permanence DAO

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