@sota Normally, decisions like these should be made through community voting, but with ‘Astar Surge,’ you bypassed the vote and made a ********* move, handpicking a few apps and presenting them.
These projects you selected already won the Soneium Incubator program and received $100,000 in funding. Why are they being given more money now, before they’ve even demonstrated the ability to deliver on their initial promises? Where’s the accountability?
And don’t claim it’s a matter of separate ecosystems these projects are currently earning Astar. Anything related to Astar should go through a community vote.
Furthermore, it would be more appropriate and respectful to the community for these projects to submit their proposals on the forum for open discussion and voting. This closed-door decision-making undermines the core values of transparency and fairness that Astar stands for.
Astar Foundation is the one that is taking care of all the funds. This is not run by Sota but by me. If you have any question please point them to me. Thank you
Sota can invest in whatever he wish to invest and it’s his business not ours.
That said, my concerns remain the same: why weren’t these decisions made through community voting? Astar has always emphasized being community-driven, yet this process bypassed the community entirely. These projects, having already received $100,000 from the Soneium Incubator program, should first demonstrate accountability and results before being granted additional funding.
Also, wouldn’t it be more appropriate for these projects to submit their own proposals on the forum, allowing the community to discuss and vote? Open dialogue and community participation are essential to maintaining trust and fairness in the ecosystem.
Just to be clear, Astar Foundation didn’t made any funding towards those projects. If Astar Collective wants to do an investment this will go through governance because we are not doing this with ASTR without consensus.
To create more adoption of ASTR, yes Astar Foundation does use it’s own treasury, not community treasury or onchain treasury, to create LP pools to make ASTR available and also bridge ASTR to certain ecosystem to support it’s adoption. This is not only ASTR but we also use our USDC or ETH treasury to build those pools.
No investment here is made and all things are done to bootstrap ASTR further for it’s value management. I believe this is Astar Foundation job. We are not selling or giving it away to any project. Everythings stays in Astar Foundation control 100%.
I understand the foundation’s role in managing treasury funds to boost ASTR adoption. However, wouldn’t it still be beneficial for the community to have visibility into these decisions, even if they don’t directly involve community treasury funds? For example, could the foundation consider sharing regular updates on these initiatives or providing a space for community input on strategic directions to ensure alignment with ecosystem priorities?
This would help prevent catching the community off guard with sudden announcements that could cause division among members or mislead people, leading to misunderstandings.
Yes that’s possible.
To be honest it’s something I also have been thought about especially when becoming more active on Soneium with the Foundation, because this will be an independent ecosystem from Astar Network.
Let me think about what could be in a monthly report to be more transparent to our community about how the Foundation treasury is used.
First of all, all conversations must be done respectfully. When pointing a gun at a specific individual, you must recognize that others also point you. Similarly, any statement that demotivates a specific individual is also not a good idea.
To be clear, as Maarten said, these applications are selected by Soneium more specifically by Starale and Sony. They are not selected by Astar Foundation. Therefore, Astar Foundation is not accountable because the foundation doesn’t use Astar’s treasury.
To bring more precision to the discussion, Astar Surge is an ecosystem-led initiative by these 5 Soneium projects to bring liquidity to Soneium to boost their launch and provide opportunities for ASTR holders.
Since this initiative aligns with the Astar collective narrative we’re building with Astar Evolution, the Astar Foundation is supporting them in marketing and providing liquidity from the Foundation’s treasury managed by the finance team. This can be seen as a business collaboration between these projects and the Astar Foundation, but it does not involve the ecosystem or Treasury funds.
However, not all discussions and decisions taken by the foundation can be shared and discussed with the Astar community for several reasons such as confidentiality, long processes as we discuss with hundreds of projects and most decisions cannot be discussed for weeks on the forum before reaching a consensus or that the foundation has a long-term strategy with a global picture that some community members who are not as invested as foundation members cannot understand.
Regarding global strategy, we always open discussions on the forum to gather comments and questions from the community, such as:
For Astar Surge, as it is organized by the 5 projects, I don’t really see where the community could have had a significant influence. Comments or questions could have been shared, but at the end of the day, the Astar Surge would have been launched anyway by the project, perhaps under a different name or with a different marketing approach, but that wouldn’t have changed the fundamentality behind it.
In the coming weeks, we’ll be opening a forum discussion about our next biggest strategic alignment between Astar and Soneium, and that will be the time for the community to get involved and support our proposal or not. More information to come.
