The whole point of crypto is to replace the centralized middleman with a decentralized validation protocol. Trusting a single person with your funds goes against this completely.
When I see any of these fishy IC projects (like ICNaming) that want my PrincipalID or for me to add them to my Internet Identity, my BS meter goes off and immediately ask trusted members of the community, which generally means the forums. I generally trust most things DFINITY employees say, and have respect for several members of the community like @Gabriel @quint @skilesare @lastmjs, or former employees like @paulyoung @nomeata @kritzcreek because of the work and time they’ve put in, but I still look for multiple sources and do my own research before making a financial decision in the crypto space, as there are no repercussions for the criminal after they make off with your money or identity. There’s a reason why the ICDevs neuron hasn’t been okayed as a named follower in the NNS UI - enough voting power doesn’t trust ICDevs yet, it’s as simple as that. I’m sure the more bounties and value that get delivered to the IC by ICDevs, the more trust they’ll gain and their proposal to be a named follower will pass the majority threshold.
This specific ICProposal DAO that got hacked hadn’t put anything of value into the community to foster the necessary trust. It had an idea that sounded good on paper, tricked a few somewhat prominent individuals from the community into getting involved, and charismatically brought along the rest in a short amount of time. The project never received the “necessary FUD” and criticism needed to build trust.
In Crypto, the motto I follow is “trust no one person or entity completely”.
I’ve even been skeptical of some of the DFINITY projects and proposals, for example the incentives that pushed and prioritized the Compound Maturity Proposal. For example, when I see Dominic Williams reference a software engineer’s “mum” in an appeal to sympathy for a change related to taxable rewards, that’s another fishy/bs meter that goes off in my head. Could totally be legitimate, but it’s better to be safe than sorry with all these initiatives and proposals even if they come from DFINITY, especially in the early days of the IC.
There’s a reason why people say that “Trust takes years to build, seconds to break, and forever to repair”.
We are all here because we are excited about the possibilities of the IC. The ability of the DFINITY engineering team and greater developer community to deliver has inspired a fair amount of trust in the project, but this trust can just as easily be irreparably lost if the Bitcoin integration fails or an exception is made for large VC/ICP stakeholder.
One of the things that gives me hope about this project is the openness and ruthless, but civil discusssion that happens in these forums. Everyone learns and earns trust in the system from watching these successes and failures transparently put out in the open.
If you hear all good news about a project - beware.
If you hear a lot of FUD and criticism about a project, but that project is resilient, responsive, and openly addresses these critiques with hard data - it’s worth following.