As the one who brought up this topic and suggested the refund request, I think it’s worth giving a little context:
The main issue was the missing meeting notes that allow transparency for the community to follow the progress over time, the GK role was abandoned immediately after this funding request without any progress report or follow-up.
I’ll break it down so the community and the CC members can follow the timeline and make a decision, let’s start with the basic facts:
- 2022-12-06 - The last record of the CC Meeting notes, done by @Cobragrin as part of his tasks [link].
- 2022-12-20 - At the CC Meeting as part of a discussion regarding @Cobragrin funding request, the CC decided to split the GK tasks and the meetings notes assigned to @satoshocrat. The meeting notes of this meeting were never published but @Cobragrin posted the notes from this meeting voluntarily about few days ago [link].
- 2022-12-22 - @Anynomous responded to the funding request in this post and suggested the changes above. @satoshocrat approved the changes and funding was approved later.
- 2023-04-19 - I asked in the Telegram group about the meeting notes of the last meetings, I tagged @Cobragrin and @satoshocrat as the funded GK and asked for their help to find it. @Cobragrin referred me to this funding request and then I realized that the funded tasks were never done or even started.
- 2023-04-20 - I tagged the GK again and asked @Cobragrin to add “follow-up” topics about missing CC meeting notes and the other tasks to the agenda of the next CC meeting [link].
- 2023-04-23 - I raised the issue with one of the members of the CC. At this point I suggested asking for a refund and calling it a “misunderstanding” to avoid public drama and keep if friendly.
- 2023-04-25 - I joined the CC meeting to bring this issue and I suggested to request a refund, @Cobragrin confirmed that he will be able to complete the missing meeting notes.
Personal opinion:
I have nothing personal against anyone involved and my thoughts below are currently referring to this particular funding request, my motivation behind this reply is to make sure that the funds are used in the best way that benefits the community and are not wasted.
I’ll use @davidtavarez words because he explained it better than I can:
The funds should go to support the Community that improves the Grin ecosystem by supporting contributors, and the CC should try to keep contributors motivated to continue to devote time and effort to Grin, but the current behavior is causing just the opposite.
I also mentioned the lack of accountability, no one takes responsibility for anything, and now we have reached this point where the CC does not even care about honoring payments …
The quotes above referred to the delays in payments for some funded tasks but I think it is also relevant to responsibility when the funded tasks are abandoned.
Some extra points to make it clear why I insist on the refund request:
- This is the simplest solution, we have @Cobragrin as a GK who has proven himself capable to handling all his tasks and he confirmed that he would be able to complete the missing meeting notes.
- None of the CC members who approved this funding never noticed it for 3 months. 5/6 of the CC members are volunteers and what exactly is the responsibilities are is still not clear. “Option B” requires time and resources that clearly cannot be provided [link].
- This is not the first time that GK receives funding and the tasks were not completed [link].
- It’s been 10 days since I tagged @satoshocrat for the first time to find out about the missing notes, I asked @davidtavarez and some other community members to try to contact him before posting this comment, the CC members tagged him in the last CC meeting and so far since bringing this issue no one has been able to get a response even though it is online and active daily.
I’m not sure if we’ll really be able to get a refund, but just making an official request by the CC is “drawing a line” that we will not accept it for the third time and the funds can’t be abused, again.