Ambassador Program / Dual Roles

General
41

I have already been invited to be an ambassador for several Polkadot parachains and I have always declined them all! I am 100% committed to Astar and the community in general (and especially to the Portuguese language - Brazil, my native language). I have already had the opportunity to apply and be an ambassador for several dApps but I promptly declined or reconsidered the invitation because I clearly see a conflict of interest in several topics.

Whether we like it or not, ambassadors’ speeches carry weight and some community members take this as an endorsement - projects that use this (even indirectly) end up benefiting from it.

I believe that those who talk and take care of everything, in fact talk and take care of nothing. Focus and commitment are always the key to the community’s success. I am reporting my personal experience and the way I acted in these situations to demonstrate my support for this topic.

4 Likes
42

@FFR23, what do you propose as a solution to this problem?

Personally I see that we have 3 important points to improve:

  1. Do we allow or not the dual ambassador in the Astar program?
  2. If yes, establish measures to determine if the ambassador’s participation in the Astar agent program and other general ambassador program has any conflict of interest.
  3. What will be the explicit rules to avoid the inappropriate benefit of an ambassador’s word for the benefit of other projects or dApps?

To this third point I emphasize what @pitcoin777 says here.

1 Like
43

@Juminstock

A ‘Conflict of Interest Policy’ needs to be established first of all and all Astar ambassadors need to agree and abide by it.

Searching “Conflict of Interest Policy” online yields many example policies that could be leveraged here and tailored to our specific environment, including;

  • Determining what an actual, perceived and potential conflict of interest looks like.
  • Different examples.
  • Outlining the reputational damage that could happen to Astar network if an ambassador were to breach this policy.
  • Why we need to mitigate these risks.
  • The outcome if an ambassador was found to be in breach of this policy.
  1. Do we allow or not the dual ambassador in the Astar program?

From the feedback in this thread, there seems to be 2 categories of dual ambassadors:

A: Those that receive payment / financial incentives in some form from representing a dApp staking project.

B: Those that don’t receive any payment whatsoever from representing a dApp staking project.

In my opinion, category A should not be allowed as this is a clear breach of conflict of interest.
Category B is fine but ambassadors should self disclose what projects they represent. Maybe adding a footer / disclaimer note to each of their messages in this forum for full transparency. I would even go as far as to say the disclaimer should be present on ambassador X / Twitter profiles and Discord / Telegram accounts so that the community outside of this forum is also aware (and where the large bulk of reputational damage would take place).

These are just my brief suggestions and i think we need full community / ambassador / core team input for agreement and additional comments / suggestions.

This is a key policy and should not be defined by any one person.

1 Like
44

I have a slightly different perspective on what you’re proposing, primarily because the “A” scenario you mention can be broken down into several branches.

What I suggest is that we could present the “A” scenario in four ways:

  1. Where the Astar agent is an ambassador for a project in the dApp Staking program and receives rewards in the native token of that project.
  2. Where the Astar agent is an ambassador for a project that is NOT in the dApp Staking program but does belong to the Astar ecosystem and receives rewards in the native token of that project.
  3. Where the Astar agent is an ambassador for a project that is NOT in the dApp Staking program but does belong to the Astar ecosystem and receives rewards in $ASTR/SDN.
  4. Where the Astar agent is an ambassador for a project that is in the dApp Staking program and receives rewards in $ASTR/SDN.

Personally, I believe the first three scenarios can be problematic and generate a high probability of a conflict of interest. However, with the fourth scenario, I am in favor of allowing it, for many reasons, but I will mention three important ones:

  1. It uses the $ASTR/SDN token, which means the project motivates its users to buy, trade, and use the native tokens of our network, ultimately benefiting the ecosystem.
  2. It belongs to the dApp Staking program, indicating that the rewards do not come out of nowhere but from a proven mechanism backed by the Astar team.
  3. The fact that it belongs to the dApp Staking program means it presented information regarding the project, providing an initial filter and, in turn, a level of trust (which can clearly be lost, but it establishes initial contact).

I must again note that these are my thoughts as I also support the Lucky dApp as a social media manager, but I try to remain as neutral as possible.

I am not in favor of simply saying “DUAL AMBASSADORSHIP IS NOT ALLOWED” because there are many nuances, many scenarios, and many ways to handle the same point. What I do support is saying “an Astar agent should not receive rewards from the native token of a project that belongs to the Astar ecosystem” because that clearly creates conflicts of interest.

@FFR23, let’s continue with this constructive conversation.

1 Like
45

Not agree at all on this point. $Astr is the only and real incentive. Not other tokens, nfts or other… and that’s exactly what leads to the problems described above. I also find it absurd to think that the network benefits from this… what about the individual payments received from a probably corrupt ambassadors?

We do not trust many ambassadors. They have repeatedly shown that they are hostile for personal principles and not close to the idea of ​​decentralization. If you believe that ambassadors should be paid for filtering work (not requested by anyone) make a proposal on this. Currently it is the most wrong and far from giving them this filtering power.
Our story speaks of a very clear event that was not resolved in the best way really due to the wrong principles of some people, could our team think that our idea of ​​development could be competitive against the interests in other dapps of some people?
This happens because as said several times the incentives are present and rule the game.
At the same time, we bet with anyone that if we could go back a few months, after what was said, written and I dare say shocked by our team, many of the same people who rowed against us, would prefer to have had us help even just to avoid all the controversy and above all because it would have cost everyone something close to 0.

So either you put clear rules and above all where the conflict of interest must not even be hypothesized or it is better to avoid talking about these things and continue to lead the game as it is now.

46

How much are the ambassadors getting paid that they have to comply with so many rules?

1 Like
47

@Juminstock I also want to ask you a personal question, since you are involved in the Lucky team. As always, see this as the simplest example to do.
I hope you can be honest in answering.

I already tell you that we respect everyone’s work, over the years we have collaborated with different entities and if it had been possible, we would have been happy to collaborate with you too.

But in your opinion as an Ambassador, given that for 3 months the difference in staking collected between AoC and Lucky was a few hundred thousand astars, while what was collected in terms of rewards, we are talking about 12 times greater (12 times compared to almost 0), and given that TODAY there is a documented development for both teams, do you think that the filtering work and approach to the problems encountered was fair for both teams? How much does the presence of staking rewards affect the very existence of the dapp and how much would it affect aoc?

Honestly, even if we are talking about different things, don’t you think that in terms of work done and above all innovation (what astar should look for) our team has definitely done much more than the lucky team? How much did the filter of 20 ambassadors influence the decision to support your team or not adequately support mine?
For us, a lot. If bluez marketplace in one day makes +20 million in staking, in one or a few tranches, while we have to struggle “and do more marketing” (one of the phrases that we really didn’t digest, not because it’s wrong but because it was inserted in the wrong context), don’t you think it’s because one of the team members is also an ambassador and highly regarded, with important influences? It’s not true that what counts is only how much is collected by the stakers, it’s true only to the extent that you talk about figures that are very far from each other. As an Ambassador, it would be right for you to quantify the work done.

SFY has created a game with 21 different smart contracts, using 7 innovative standards and creating one of the few nfts games that do not involve a simple token-gate. Also add to it the first evolutionary 3d collection with the continuation of the game, ever created in the world.

There was everything, the skills and the confidence from the astar community that sfy had carried out the work with professionalism.
How is it possible to arrive at a situation like this if not because of corruptible points in this system? Do you really think that dapp staking is the result exclusively of decentralized choices?
Decentralization always leads to the same conclusion, opting for the best for the ecosystem.
We have received more compliments for our work, than support, how is this possible.
A woke principle has been established that will not do good for the developer ecosystem.

A few months ago we acted on impulse and anger and we still apologize if through our words we have offended you.
We have had empathy from you after that episode and we hope to continue receiving it. We are not earning anything from our current activity here, we are providing ideas for free. We are not aiming for any slice of the pie that is even worth the time wasted.

1 Like
48

You said you don’t trust many ambassadors. However, almost all of the ambassadors here have been contributing to this ecosystem for at least two years. I’m not sure how many people you were referring to when you said you don’t trust them, but I’m starting to think the purpose here is different.

To confirm this, you can ask the community through a survey.

1 Like
49

What purposes do we have?

We said we don’t trust many Ambassadors, we didn’t say all of them. We have mentioned you several times in our posts in the past and confirmed your support for AoC. The fact that voting and discussions are always done by the same people is a centralizing point of this system. Don’t feel attacked by what we write, we don’t get into the discussion you had in the past with @FFR23 and honestly we know nothing about it and we don’t want to know anything about it. it doesn’t concern us.

About the dual role, however, we bring our experience as an example. Don’t try to manipulate our words. our team has been mathematically discouraged from being present here for more than a year. Many Ambassadors are Ambassadors and work here also because they have had their own incentives to do so. Right or wrong, if the work of Ambassadors is considered important for the network, could we vote for their compensation?

We don’t like that in many cases the compensation comes to them at the expense of other teams who should only be supported based on their work and not based on how much they are friends with the latter. Let’s hope we were clear this time.

50

Hello @SFY_Labs, thank you for your questions in this discussion. While I would love to continue this conversation and answer all the questions you’ve asked me, I don’t think it’s appropriate for this thread since, as the title clearly states, we are discussing the issue with dual ambassadors. Let’s please keep the conversation focused solely on the conflict of interest and other problems that may arise from this topic.

But, please don’t take it the wrong way—I really must emphasize that everything you wrote makes sense to me. As you rightly mentioned, we must learn from past mistakes and make the Astar protocol a more organic and evolving ecosystem. I am fully aware of the incredible work that SBY Labs is doing, and I am deeply grateful for your continued contributions to this forum with your questions and insights. We need more people like you who offer different opinions and challenge the majority, as these discussions often lead to important changes.

Thank you, SBY Labs! Let’s continue with the main topic of this conversation: dual ambassadors.

2 Likes
51

Not exactly. Not all projects on Astar use the $ASTR/SDN token. It’s not mandatory; each project can launch its own token, and there’s no problem with that. However, if an ambassador receives compensation in that new token, they will NOT be directly contributing to the growth of the ecosystem.

I support you on this point: when incentives are involved, it becomes an issue—they could influence whether a dApp gets approved or not. However, how would you manage this? What do you propose?

1 Like
52

It is much more ethical to do it this way:

Ambassadors receive rewards for their contribution. Set a fixed limit of rewards as payment, set a limit of 20 total Ambassadors ( practically the amount that operate actively on this forum now…) and create a nice tier table like dapp staking. if you don’t perform you don’t get paid and you can even leave the program. do you like the idea? (Amount of message, proposal, you can structure this on multiple factors)

it’s too easy to circumvent the system currently, there are ridiculous answers in this forum, let’s see if by putting them in the same position as the developers, this changes something! those who do well even get paid! in my opinion no one accepts, ambassadors make a lot more money by staying behind the listed dapps and pretending to be here for free. Our two cents

1 Like
53

we have suffered too many wrongs here, and only because the core team decided to delegate the management of our team and many others to people who turned out to be incorrect and in some cases hostile even just for a personal matter. It’s the practical example of what @FFR23 wrote about double roles. Sfy’s proposal is one of a kind, the game exists, play it and let me know just one thing: has Astar lost a chance for growth with a dapp with its NFTs 2.0 protocols or not? can you find me something similar on Astar? regardless of whether or not someone may be interested “personally”, how many examples of support for dapps who haven’t written anything for months are there? What should be the goal of the community and ambassadors, seeking value for the ecosystem? currently this does not happen and it happens in part. Our example is one of those that makes you understand the problem posed in this post.

54

In fact, there is already a table and percentages previously evaluated by the central team, there are weightings and parameters for the ambassadors’ rewards. I invite you to visualize it first and share your opinion based on that. This is something 100% public.

This point seems very accurate to me, I have noticed the absence of several dApps that are part of the dApp staking that have not notified anything and some do not even make publications in their social networks, even my colleague @souleater put in the work to follow up on projects of this type.

1 Like
55

WOW, we didn’t know this… currently it is more profitable to be an ambassador than to collect 14.9 million astars from 200 stakers to be in tier 4 and put your work into play in a serious way. Once again you gave me some not so good news, at least from our point of view. Quite embarrassing, we thought that the contribution was voluntary, or at least that’s what we understood, from the answers received, an ambassador who earns 20k astar per month while a dapp in tier 4, 3k or a little more… well… now we understand why there are senseless answers on this forum…

Having learned this, it would be nice if the current ambassadors challenged each other in the same way as dapps do… with the tier system, I don’t think they would be very happy…

In any case, an ambassador especially because he receives compensation for his activity should absolutely not be behind ANY dapp! with any type of additional reward to the work he already does.

Generally speaking, it would be interesting to understand what a team or a single developer is expected to produce with the support of tier 4. This is why there has been no real control over developments for months, they would highlight gaps that at this point are not even attributable to the developers. Here there is a system where at a certain point funds were taken away only from bottom-up development, leaving all the positions of all the network components unchanged.
Closing like a hedgehog is a normal response at this point, I don’t see how our criticisms could have been taken differently in the past. There is a system of economic incentives that leads to this, if you want a tip without having to make a serious report and demonstrate nothing for months, you’d better keep quiet and be accommodating.

The opposite of what we are arguing can only be demonstrated with facts, beyond a few teams carried forward with a double role as ambassador, a few teams that use UCG (decisive now) how many others have been decisive in the growth of the Astar ecosystem?

ps: The compensation of ambassadors could also be fair, we are not able to evaluate this at the moment, what is absurd is the comparison with a developer.

1 Like
56

Ambassadors got their whole community.

Perhaps if dApps have their community as much as the ambassadors, dApps can ask the community to stake on them and earn more rewards.

4 Likes
57

I love this kind of threads in fact G summarized very well the code of conduct of the Agents, I think our main efforts should be directed first of all to the Astar network.

On the other hand we can also show to the communities the projects that are emerging, no need for fanaticism or preferences, “users must do their own research”, likewise the forum is a great filtering tool for the projects, since each project is previously analyzed and discussed before being voted, this minimizes the risk of the projects we show to the communities.

Showing the projects to the communities is necessary, this gives them an idea of how Astar Eco is composed, from DeFi to the tools that are created to facilitate usability.

3 Likes
58

We think that DAPP STAKING is something that should be the result of interactions and above all of the technical WORK of developers. An ambassador who has thousands of followers given by his excellent work over the years on astar, should not affect the presentation of projects and their future earnings. This will lead to not generating a real value on astar, interactions are an important part of a project, but not the exclusive part. There are many practically dead dapps, which do not bring anything innovative and which have been financed for years without a real reason, if not for the ability of some ambassadors who are an integral part of the project. The ethics of ambassadors is not something that can be controlled, it is not something that the community can control. The interactions and work of ambassadors (who are already paid) should not be used as a springboard for some projects in which they are involved. This generates a PYRAMID where there are always and in any case projects backed by ambassadors, regardless of the proposal and value of the project. Currently the astar ecosystem has many flaws because the economic incentives always and only end up in the pockets of a few. Real users who stake their astars, often do not know the project where they are aiming, they do it because they are reassured by external figures who should be neutral. An ambassador fan of a specific dapp can also post about it, but by analyzing a particular technical aspect, not doing 24/7 marketing. If he does it, it is because then you find his name behind the dapp.
The code of conduct is also bypassed in the voting phase, we personally had a terrible experience even on the forum, our problems that were largely surmountable were exacerbated by an attitude that was at times shameful, and even this after much research, in our opinion, is the result of conflicting economic interests.
If you do a search and find the top dapps all becked by ambassador, it cannot be a coincidence. If the economic push did not damage the other dapps but only impacted the dapps that decide to support, the problem would not arise. Since with v3 and a tier system, there is in fact a ranking, it is inevitable BEYOND THE WORK and TECHNICAL ACHIEVEMENTS of the various teams, that the first places are always assigned to certain dapps. The v2 was much more meritocratic being linear and did not create contrasts of this type. A dapp could also steal millions of astars without developing anything, but it could never impact the growth of other teams in the ecosystem. Today, however, this is the object of vote trading and in our opinion it will not bring benefits to the ecosystem.

59

dApp staking has it flaws since the beginning. Worse was when V1 started. If you can recall, arthswap abd starlay were the ones whi got the big bulk of the rewards despite having very low engagement. I cannot disagree with you that many are staking blindly.

Hence, I did speak about dApp staking rewards based on onchain activities. But still, this can be well manipulated.

Should we abolish dApp staking then? A yes is not a bad answer.

Astar has been around for over 2 years. There might no longer be a need to incentivize developers for building. Projects should be able to earn from their platform fees.

Imagine a country whose government keeps on subsidizing the local businesses. This is good for a start but it is not going to be sustainable. Businesses must learn to be independent and make their own profit.

4 Likes
60

based on our experience… this isn’t a bad answer. We were lucky enough to be supported by moonbeam with a classic grant with a legal contract, we presented a project and worked tirelessly to deliver a product in just 3 months. today this is certainly a more restrictive system for the teams, but also more convenient for the network, which will receive the product within the deadlines and times, and therefore value. Today here on astar between a staking dapp binding on the external activity of some people, which has nothing to do with the construction of a dapp and with the tier system which in fact excludes those who cannot compete with the numbers (even though they can do it with the ideas and professionalism of its team) we are witnessing support that is in fact manipulated. The v2 squandered too many funds… true. But it was linear and didn’t pit dapps against each other. if dapps competed only with their own skills, there is no problem. since, as explained, there are external factors such as that of the ambassadors, the problem arises. One solution was to drastically reduce the v2 incentives and put a ceiling on support, a cap of Astars reachable in stake so that everyone receives a minimum support if accepted. Instead, as mentioned, a pyramid has been created, and the promotion of new dapps is the result of this. How many great ideas and truly innovative dapps have you read in the last 6 months? The most engaging thing was the core team’s activity with Yoki, so at this point, as you said, why waste funds with dapp staking?