NEM Ecosystem - Future Governance and Plans

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#23

I don’t generally post on the forums but I do follow them. I have made this account to follow this specific topic and chime in when appropriate. You’ve written quite a nice narrative there, I’m not sure what the U Wash has to do anything. I own a Mr Minit down here in Kiwiland. You have written a lot of generalist and sweeping statements about yourself, but would you care to elaborate on specifics you have achieved to help NEM beyond your proposal in regards to the migration supply? Not that I don’t believe you, but your counterpoints do not actually address the issue you have with that posters statement.

Also, unfortunately I do agree with others that a six month paid sabatical for a year of work, no matter how hard that work was, is completely unheard of. In New Zealand you get three months of long service leave for every seven years you are with a company, and I like to believe our worker rights and treatment is amongst the best in the world.

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#24

First NEM Community AMA is starting right now

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#25

Firstly,
When Lon stepped down from President he warned that decentralised decission making was a road block to progress.
Why was this structural reform not the first priority of the new Council in 2018/19 after the elections?

Secondly,
Alexandra promised three things during the election

  1. A roadmap to the Catapult launch
  2. Transparency of the NF
  3. A decrease in the burn/expenditure of funds with ROI

What has been delivered is failed roadmaps, salaries excluded from expenditure reports and 61% burn of funds on “Personnel Expenses”

This is not transparency
If 92% of $4,133,654 was on “people expenses” -HOW LARGE are the Council Member’s salaries and severance packages???

Without a full transparent audit of expenditures how can ROI ever be quantifiably justified?

Failure to deliver this audit also begs the question of whether or not this Foundation is a salary rort scheme and whether this can be proven or disproven determines the legitamcy of the Foundation and it’s President.

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#26

Alex was, since the beggining, full of greed and power and everybody has been duped since she is a girl and smiled (And she is good at sending good words about how community is great etc… etc…)

Even before, NEM USA was the biggest expense despite she was the only employee (lol ?).

And then as president, she was giving herself a HUGE wage that can be compared to the wages of a CEO of a very big company in USA (Who has lot of more background and education than she has)

And now, I guess she managed to get paid by using the law and something like “ok, you fire me but I get all my money until the end of my contract” so they did.

If jaguar mentionned “paid” in his statement, it’s not for nothing I think. He knows that is is ridiculous.

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#27

@Jaguar0625 can we please get to the bottom of this.

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#28

Hi Issou,

Thanks from coming over from ProximaX to spend some time in the NEM Forums. It’s been a while and it seems there’s some frustration you carry from 2018-2019 when last we talked.

Attacking my character in an attempt to undermine my years of contributions to NEM is more of a reflection on you than me. We’ve just announced the biggest change to the NEM ecosystem since 2014 and your energy is focused on my sabbatical rather than the significant change to governance and improvements forthcoming. That’s weird. The attacks don’t amount to anything and I’m as much part of the change as the other leaders. We have a common goal – to improve the governance and future of NEM. Attacking me doesn’t provide any positive value to the future of NEM. I hope you attend the AMAs, Natta.

I’m not greedy :joy: but I have heard this from you and others in the past. I think having a female in a high salaried leadership position makes some people uncomfortable because it seems to be the one thing they focus on. I’ve worked hard for years on NEM (including happily contributing to NEM without pay in the beginning) to being paid a fair salary to lead the NEM Foundation. (Note: I chose to take a pay reduction from what the former Presidents in 2017 and 2018 made.) I worked tirelessly as a dedicated community member to communications director to being nominated President. Over 200+ people recognized I was the right person at the time to help NEM governance transform to help get where it is today. That’s not a power grab – that’s working hard and being recognized. And now, I’m thrilled to see (and been a part of) the governance improving again under the leadership of David Shaw as CEO.

2.) My sabbatical is fair and warranted. I would not have received a sabbatical if there wasn’t agreement from other leaders that I provided value to the ecosystem and teams. There was no power struggle with contracts. There was – and has been – an open discussion around improving the system and governance for over 6 months with various leadership team members across the entity including Jag, David Shaw, Council, NV, NS and more. In the end, we all recognized we wanted to do better and that the bylaws and governance needed to be modernized from what was established in 2016. So we did that. Together. I look forward to coming back after my sabbatical and continuing support of the NEM ecosystem.

3.) The claims about lack of ROI and transparency is moot. You can see the contributions of the NEM Foundation in the Year In Review Report and ROI Report. Did we fail in some areas? Yes. Did we succeed in areas? Yes. Am I proud of the collective work we did? YES.

4.) Foundation was awarded funds to operate in 2019-2020. We’ve shown where the funds went and also stretched out those funds beyond what they were originally awarded for (see ROI report above.) As of today, we still have funds to operate and transition to NEM Group. Core team and also the Trust has visibility into budgets/audits (from PMC).

5.) Foundation is not a scheme. It’s a company and companies abide by rules and there are rules about salary disclosures. Salaries range based on region and my salary has been market rate from the time I’ve worked at NEM. Many men in the same roles made much more than I did.

6.) I see rants in ProximaX about me supposedly saying things I never said (mostly from you Natta) and I have no idea what the hell folks are ranting about. Lon left years ago. I don’t see how these rants about Lon are relevant to the future governance and plans for Symbol.

If the only negatives from this forum post are about my sabbatical, that’s good. It means that folks agree we need to change the system. I encourage folks to come to the scheduled AMAs to ask more questions.

-Alex

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#29

I didnt have to go further lol.

You still do the same, taking the easiest sides to get supporters “Most people here dont like Proximax cause they see it like a competitor? I will say that Issou is a proximax supporter more than a NEM suporter publicly to discredit him :)”

Fact is I have way more money in XEM than in ProximaX. I’m also still very active in NEM community (Except on telegram since you banned me), I post more often than you here and 99% of my twitter post are reffering to NEM.

But you keep trying to discredit people, now the technic is “Oh, you are not supporting ProximaX ? :)”

Also saying “It’s been a while” despite I post here often means that you dont even read the forum post.

Cringe

Useless to read the others sentences after reading this one.

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#30

No complete audit of funds suggests salary rort.

If you cannot explain where 92% of $4,133,654 of you expenditure has gone in “Personnel Expenses” then how can you justify ROI and be taken seriously.

Honestly this ammount of money unaccounted for is a big deal and you evade addressing the elephant in the room

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#31

If I may, I think you may be misunderstanding personnel expenditures against personal expenditures. One implies that they are personal to one person alone and the other is for all staff salaries.
The ROI report referenced in Alexandra’s post included the severance and compensation for those who left in 2018 (which was not insignificant). This is a report you should read and review carefully.
I encourage everyone again to join the AMA’s, ask the hard questions and participate.

Personal attacks don’t forward the project, but suck focus and energy away from what’s important. The launch of the Symbol blockchain could be one of if not the the most significant event in the history of NEM-let’s focus on getting the launch done right.
Happy to work with the NEM Group to achieve this goal and excited for the future.

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#32

No I’m not confused and I’m clearly referencing the numbers from the ROI report and stating the lack of transparency in this particular part of the report.

What are the SPECIFICS of where this $4M went. We dont want vaguety or part answers.
Unaccounted funds of this magnitute can only be asumed as embezzled and should be proven or disproven.

Do you see the dilema here with the lack of transparency from this Council?

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#33

Calling salaries embezzlement is a bit hyperbolic. There are privacy laws around personal information disclosure that as a company incorporated in Singapore we are not permitted to violate, nor would we want people open to personal attack (which has happened in the past.)
I understand that people want to know exactly who makes what, but that is not going to be disclosed.
I am sorry you have hard feelings on this topic, but encourage you again to join the next AMA which is starting soon in English and Spanish to ask any further questions of the NEM Group.

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#34

I wish you so much good and thank you for your hard work @Inside_NEM, and for your enormous contributions to #NEM in moving forward this ship!

With regards to the future governance and plans, my opinion is that this change sounds incredibly good! Thank you @Jaguar0625 for taking the word here.

The imminent task at hand - namely, to launch Symbol - is an incredible project to contribute to. I feel confident, enthusiastic and inspired to work on this!!

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#35

Just for clarity, because the pie chart that caused your post -there is a table above and another pie chart below that outlines where the personnel expenses went by vertical and the largest was Technology and Development.
Sorry I cannot post it as I’m currently on mobile and the forum doesn’t allow me to post the screenshot.

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#36

And which header does severance packagaes and salaries fall under?

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#37

You paid sabatical is 50% of your entire time in that role. Again, absolutely unheard of in any form of business. To say it is fair and warranted is arrogance to be honest. Four weeks paid annual leave, sure. Six month paid sabatical for a year of work, absolutely not. If all the leaders agreed to something like that then it is a massive red flag regarding their capabilities to manage funds and make smart business decisions.

Your husband is yet to list specific contributions he has made other than owning a U Wash and giving a nice background of his work history and academic achievements.

Trepid used to be quite a neutral party, and often gave good feedback, but looks like he has developed some bias. His last days in the NEM channels seemed to be him stirring the pot for his own amusement. He still does it in ProximaX channels. His stake is no longer on the rich list either, so either he sold it or he moved it to a new address.

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#38

To reiterate the message from earlier (catching up after all the AMAs). The focus at this point is entirely on two things:

  1. How we get to symbol launch and surface that information to the community, plan by 18th April

  2. How we move forward and re-engage the community in a healthy way

Part of point 2 is moving past old rifts, rivalries, insults and issues. This is going to take time and I understand why various parties on both sides of these issues need to vent. However I would like to try and suggest everyone please try and focus on the bigger picture and the future of Nem/Symbol getting to launch and beyond. Rather that what did or did not happen in the past. Its not going to make either side feel better but is dragging everyone down.

I’m absolutely not saying it isn’t important to people or that they should forget. It is just to say it is not helping anything positively. I am very happy for people to contact me directly on here, on tg or any other platform (no one is blocked on any of my personal accounts to my knowledge) if you want to discuss why certain things are happening, as are the rest of the team. It would be really helpful to try and avoid counterproductive public slinging matches if at all possible though. Now that most people have had chance to vent a bit on here.

Personally, I’m trying to judge each action I take in the community with the question; does what I am about to do next help move forward to launch and a better place. If I can’t honestly say yes to that, its not something that is worth wasting the energy on.

I will skim the other posts for constructive things that need replying on, but let me know if I miss something.

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#39

History tends to repeat, there is no competing with time. Symbol looks promising though.

#40

Thank you for the RedHat resource link. I have looked at the business model previously but missed this guide. :+1:

#41

I want to leave my comment on this decision, which is made before the launch of Symbol, which is the most important moment that the history of NEM will have so far.

We should keep in mind that the work done in recent years will crystallize right after the launch of Symbol. That is why I believe that giving it the commercial structure that we are going to have in this new phase of NEM, can place us in a stellar position within the Blockchain ecosystem, not only because we will have a technology that has unique characteristics, but also because we will also have a commercial structure where it is contemplated and plans to cover everything the future will demand.

I am highly motivated by these changes and look forward to seeing the NEM Symbol, with many top-tier business, government use, and alliances.

We are ready for the next step.

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#42

NEM Foundation had done its best in the current environment and capacity, having the set up for NEM Group was not just timely but necessary.

This truly is an inflection point in the history of NEM and every decision and announcement made has already been calculated and accounted for.

Coming from someone working with NEM Foundation, Alex had given her all and very best. We operate across timezones and she had little sleep and paid a lot of attention on moving the org forward with a hands on approach especially throughout her tenure.

Despite the current challenging times, I am confident in the ability for NEM Group to steer the future forward and prepare for the launch of Symbol.

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