Ascendio Canceled and A Farewell from @minexpert

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After the Grin period, where I spent most of my effort and energy thinking about it for about 4 years, I would like to write a farewell message back. Although I have given so much for this community, I m sad not getting anything from it. Maybe dozens of minds have discovered this thanks to my contributions but that doesn’t really matter anymore.

I never thought of leaving it and I wanted to do one last job and create the Ascendio effect and present the Grin book to the community. My offer was simple. I offered €20k for 9-15 months of full-time work. I said that I want to receive 25% as a upfront payment and when i finish the book if it deserve, i can get rest of payment. Also, i said that they can present this idea to the community and if there is a high vote, I can get the rest of payment. Lastly, i said that if i don’t do the job well or if can’t get vote i don’t want to take rest of the payment.

In return for all this, I was going to make sure that every individual who reads the book somehow falls under the Grin spell because I thought we have a spell which we just didn’t articulate it enough till now.

Despite these offers, Grin CC said that if the voting is accepted they can support this book with a total payment of 3000€ and 10%-20% upfront that is 300-600€ upfront payment. I can’t explain that how is a disappointment by a community member like me to hear this.

However, I respect every opinion and I am not angry because I cannot manage something that is not mine. Just, I’m offended to see what they’ve done to me while I’ve done so much for this community. Therefore, I want to say goodbye to you all. Although I spent 4 years on this, all this was my choice and I was always happy with it.

From now on I prefer to remain invisible like Ignotus. I wish all you guys everything in your life to be as you wish.(although sometimes it doesn’t happen to me)

Minexpert - Cihat M. Ozturk

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Just for transparency, let me paste the offer made by the Community Council below. As Community Council we are no supposed to spend large amounts on education and outreach, not in the order of 20k$. So the offer below is the offer that we found was the max that we could offer using public funds, while stretching the spending guidelines for these funds.

It is unfortunate, but understandable that @minexpert did not accept this offer.
Writing a book costs a lot of time and money. And as we clearly communication to him in our discussion, we do not think that this offer matches the value of project Ascendio, the offer matches the maximum we think we can contribute using public funds. Full time funding for writing books is not something the Community Council can and should be funding, not even if Ignotus would have asked for it himself would this change. This offer was only made because we like @minexpert and we like the work he has done for Grin.

######################################
THE CC OFFER FOR PROJECT ASCENDIO:

- 42000 Grin of which 10%-20% will be paid upfront
- Support for a public fundraiser to get additional funding from donations using the forum and the two newsletters.
What kind of donations people will make is up to them, either upfront or upon completion. Optionally we could say donations above a certain threshold will receive a physical copy upon completion. This might be more work, but we can support and I think it might boost the amount we can raise.
- Our condition for this donation is that the book will upon completion, or after a certain time period (e.g. 1 year) will be published as fully Open Source book on Github. Meaning that anyone can reuse the knowledge for whatever purpose.
- Optionally we will provide additional funding to print a first batch of physical copies, this needs further discussion though.

###############################

Just to explain again our reasoning. We know this is not the offer you are searching for, it might not be enough to allow you to write this book and we certainly do not think our offer matches the value your book would provide to the community.
The offer we make is simply the best offer we can make using public funds within the objective of education, marketing and outreach.

Whether this offer is feasible or not to allow you to work on your book will also largely depend on how much community members are willing to chip in and make donations. By giving you our full backing as well as this offer, I think more people might be willing to to make donations and support your cause.
It is up to you to decide whether you want us to make this offer public to the community for voting after which we will proceed with the additional donation based fundraiser. Donations will only be cashed if you think the total amount is enough to support your work.

We also completely understand if the offer we make you is not workable for you. The offer presented to you is the best and only offer we can provide. We hope this works for you and that together we can help realize this grin book since we are all hungry to see more of your works.

:point_up:The above was the offer that was made.

If we do not see you around anymore @minexpert, I want to thank you for all your contributions to the project. And who knows, maybe we do will see you around at some point.

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I’m glad! Spending that much on education, before the UX is improved, would indeed be a mistake.

Someone can totally write a book in their spare time and simply charge for the final product.

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Thank you for all the energy you’ve put into Grin. I don’t think you should take it personal, the project is at a certain stage and people have different opinion on what the next good move is. Wish you all the best on your next journey and hope to see you back some time!

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thank you for your contribution and I honestly think that you should have take the offer and adapt your effort. that would be a better solution imo. you already wrote a lot of good articles and I even think that if you compile the existing content, and complete it would have make a great little book we can be proud of.

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No. The mindset against to me is not the main creators of Grin. If they were here, the situation would be different. Currently, there are sleazy people who with his later authority, speak in a way that belittles Ignotus and also a group of adulatory person around them.

The quality is so low that they dare to offer me $300 upfront pay for this work. Also they indicate this with the amount of Grin and try to hide how low it is. That’s the mentality against me.

The real first Grin creators and community guess when the Grin will act and therefore they are not here. I discovered this with time and so Ascendio was something I designed to speed up this process and inform current&new community about this and more than this. However for “no decentralized administration and no public vote”, I won’t do anything more and I don’t need this help. One day, I will write this book without any help and just for Grin.

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This bitterness is out of line, honestly. Your writing is all over the place. If you need to hire someone to clean it up for you, that’s on you.

Wasn’t the original creator of Grin disappointed in other people trying to be paid for further developing Grin? Pretty sure I read that somewhere, but maybe I’m mistaken.

Also, if you believed in Grin, why would you be upset about being paid in Grin (even if the token is currently down right now)?

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We should have learned by now that publicly attacking people who have invested a lot of their time to help grin is not a good way to express your disagreement. People have different views on what grin should currently prioritize with the small budget that it has and we should all respect everyone’s opinion and not call people sleazy or be guessing what original creators of Grin would do in this case. That being said, thanks for all the hard work you’ve done for grin and i wish you all the best

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It is a pity we will never see the public fundraiser. It is impossible to know how much would be raised with it, but I think in combination with physical books for donations for each 50$, It think we might have raised quite a bit.

In terms of value, this offer was in the making longer than the current price, so the temporarily low value was not the initially intended amount. But hey, we are not gone change such a beautiful number of 42.000.
Good luck on your next endeavor and hope to see you around sometime.

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Thanks for your contributions for Grin and being around :slightly_smiling_face:

Academic, reference textbooks are not authored for financial gain but prestige because it takes a huge amount of effort and price tag x amount does not cover it. I read this somewhere online, quoted by an academician and I agree %100 percent. Once I worked on preparing an academic conference’s textbook with Adobe Indesign, we just collected papers/presentations of participants and it took substantial time just to edit content.

By the way, in my opinion Grin has really well prepared documentation on official site both for newcomers and advanced users. I use it a lot, thanks @Paouky :grinning:

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Thank you for all of your time and contributions. We all wish igno didn’t leave when they did.

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It was a true pleasure and honor, @minexpert. I see your point and I respect it, but I do hope to see you around again someday.

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I feel the need to make a final statement as I feel misunderstood by the community.

So far, along with the articles I’ve written, I’ve seen something significant about the people whose minds I’ve touched. These people think that Grin is valuable at first, but because they do not have full knowledge of it, they lose their trust and leave Grin one by one. The rest are either those who only know their features, or those who are waiting for a hope. Even though most of the people who are active here have enough information about Grin but they definitely do not have complete information about it. Unfortunately, where there is no knowledge, no opinion is true. That’s why we occasionally come across people on the forum who criticize monetary policy, make fun of Grin’s depreciation, say we need to do something new. Although the majority of those who do this have heard this sentence, “Designed for the decades to come, not just for tomorrow. To be used by anyone, anywhere.”, they do not actually understand what is being said.

I was able to realize all this because I thought a lot about these while writing articles, and I was able to observe it because I am one of the people who bring “Grin” information to people the most. After realizing the problem at our hand, I thought about what to do about it, found it and shared it with you.

My goal was making a book with many of Grin’s features. While doing this, I would want to compare Grin to cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Monero, Zcash, Ethereum and Dogecoin and show everyone how high the value of monetary policy is. I was going to explain the technical information in language that anyone could understand, and I would explain that the Grin wasn’t perfect, but that it was invaluable for providing privacy with such lightness. I was going to show that it was the balance point in secrecy, justice, monetary policy, and many other issues. I would explain that it is not intended as a money making tool, but can also perhaps be a money-saving and value-preserving tool. I was going to make the information permanent forever by placing dozens of new visuals that will be engraved in people’s minds.

If I had succeeded in doing these things, only some of which I have described, I would be able to reverse the “lost” situation on Grin till now. That’s why I named it “Ascendio”. Besides the loss that will stop with the dissemination of information, I predicted that software developers/people to do new work would gather around the project. Also, although it was not my intention to attract investors, I thought this book would attract investors as well as new people who would support the community fund.

Even though I told Grin CC about this many times, they preferred to look at the subject from a single point of view. “Everything will be within the boundaries of Grin CC”

According to game theory, for a work to be successful, all players must benefit from that work. If I had succeeded in what I said, this book would have been worth more than I wanted, and according to game theory, both me, the community, and the CC would have won. However, without thinking about game theory, they offered a cynical money to someone like me who has never had any money making goals before and has only done a lot of work voluntarily. My reaction was somewhat harsh because of this. If I had accepted this money and done this job, rest assured, everyone would have won except me but game theory prevented this from happening.

Keep in mind that donations to Grin were made to move Grin in a good direction. The current CC did not exist at that time and these donations were not made to them. However, as it can be seen, Grin’s progress in the good direction is hindered because CC does not know the rules, game theory and does not think about the person in front of it. Right now, the vast majority are not aware of this situation because I see that more people are on CC’s side than the number of people who are on my side. Unfortunately, I must say that if this management system and this mentality continue, both CC and those around it will lose according to game theory. Similarly, I warned the pool.always.vip

You will lose according to game theory.

and said that they would lose according to game theory. What I said came true and they started to lose. Therefore, I warn you as well, and before I leave I would like to give a few recommendations.

  • Instead of supporting Grin CC, set up a mechanism that controls it.

  • Have the community vote on some ideas instead of CC’s. In fact, both the public and the CC can vote together.

  • For ideas on certain topics, get comments from experts in the community.

  • Never support them just for your own benefit.

Do not forget that there is a team front of you, whose knowledge of how much is unknown and which subsequently took over the fund. If you support this blindly, you and CC will lose together.

Finally, you will definitely see me again one day. We’ll probably be talking about this book that day. Goodbye.

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I get the idea, but because the role of the Grin CC is not to attract investors, this argument is not important in this specific context, nor is it even something that should be taken into account when making a decision.

Me, personally, I would not have accepted the offer as it was done either. I really do understand. I, personally, would have offered a little bit more and all in advance of whatever was offered.

But I too, personally, do not see how donating 100% of the requested amount is not outside the limits of the Grin CC. I think there is a general misconception about what it means to have a request approved. When a request is approved what is being said is closer to: “we are supporting the person doing the work,” rather than saying: “we are investing this amount to fund that work.”. But, everything must be done within the boundaries of the Grin CC and the spending guidelines. So, if anyone disagrees with the spending guidelines they are free to open a Pull Request, add an item to the agenda and share their arguments. I would like to read what else the CC could have done according to the rules.

I would like to personally ask you @minexpert please, do not take this as an attack to you or the importance of your work and contributions, because is not, it is actually far from that. Unfortunately, our community is not large enough to fund the project through direct donations from its members and Grin CC’s responsibilities are reduced to other efforts.

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