Since the mainnet launch, you have been in charge of managing a massive treasury funded by the global community’s trust and support. However, to this day, the community has not seen a complete, transparent, and verifiable financial report.
We demand that the Foundation immediately disclose:
All inflows and outflows of funds since the mainnet launch;
Detailed breakdown of operational expenses, including salaries, outsourcing, marketing, and travel;
Research and development spending, with teams and projects specified;
Investments, partnerships, donations, or grants made;
The Foundation’s current holdings of assets (both crypto and fiat), with allocation details.
The core spirit of blockchain is transparency and trust. If the Foundation fails to publish complete and regularly updated financial disclosures, your credibility will continue to erode, and eventually, you will lose the support of the community.
We urge you to act immediately and release detailed financial reports to rebuild trust with the community.
It seems the Foundation has been acting with increasing recklessness, as if nothing is off-limits. After 4–5 years, you still have never dared to release a single comprehensive financial report. This continued lack of transparency raises serious doubts about your integrity and accountability.
The Difinity needs to make changes. It should focus more on the development of ecosystem users and the adjustment of node reward measures, rather than only focusing on Caffeine, which no one is using.
It is truly unfortunate that the Dfinity Foundation usually ignores such questions — that’s just how they are. I don’t really expect any response anyway.
Let me try to imagine the mindset of the Dfinity Foundation: they must be fantasizing that when market capital pushes ICP up to 500 USD, or even 1000 USD, they can then reveal all their past financial reports, and investors won’t blame them anymore. Such a petty trick is truly pathetic.
below is the version chatgpt change for me
Sharpened & Sarcastic Version:
I can almost imagine the Dfinity Foundation’s mindset: they’re probably fantasizing that once ICP pumps to $500 or even $1,000, they can finally unveil all their past financial reports — believing investors will be too euphoric to hold them accountable. If that’s the strategy, it’s nothing more than a sad little trick.
I don’t think they’re hiding anything however ICP is technically a utility like the internet. When you purchased ICP, you don’t own any equity in DFINITY, a Swiss “non-profit” so they are not required to make any disclosures. Maybe they feel that if they did, the SEC would start treating ICP like a security which nobody wants. I’d be surprised if there hadn’t been disclosures to the original VC’s but crypto is an odd space compared to the regular stock market.
Does BlockStream disclose their financials to all the people who purchased Bitcoin even though they are considered the main contributors in a similar fashion? Bitcoin is considered a commodity like Gold so they are not required to and probably don’t want to. You don’t own any equity in BlockStream when you purchase Bitcoin.
Now if DFINITY decides to IPO a spinoff for UTOPIA and we can actually own equity directly in DFINITY, then they would need to disclose of course.
Anyways, I think the distrust is unfounded. I would say other chains are way more “reckless” than DFINITY. Trying to have a built-in kickstarter with the neuron fund was bound to fail to some degree. It was bound to attract bad actors and people looking for free capital and money. Also, most startups will fail anyways as most VC’s know as they spray and pray notably PolyChain who I see funding projects like BTR which ICP already does Bitcoin Defi extremely well.
Anyways, no need to bury the accounting department in unnecessary disclosures. The whole idea of ICP was to get it kickstarted to the point where hopefully the community takes much greater ownership and plays a larger and larger role while DFINITY’s role diminishes over time…. I believe the vision is to create a new internet of value that is community owned and driven for the people and by the people no?
Obviously we are not there yet as this requires actual adoption by individuals, enterprises, governments, etc. but the goal seems clear to me.
Thanks for the detailed reply, Jok, makes sense on some level.
What we mainly fear is that their level of corruption might be far too severe. For example, take the recent node provider issue — at the very least, there should be a mechanism for them to listen to the community’s voice. Who exactly is managing the forum administrators, and why is information constantly being censored?
If we are to make a comparison, it should be with the early Ethereum Foundation, not with Blockstream. Bitcoin is not controlled by Blockstream, nor did they raise funds. But Dfinity is different — they raised a large amount of money, and up to now, ICP is essentially under their control.
Look at how many people have come and gone — most have been left utterly disillusioned. After 4.5 years, to drive a project into such a disappointing state is not just a failure, it is a betrayal of the community’s trust.
I personally chose to invest because I believed in Dom and the internet computer vision, and I still hold that belief. The community can clearly feel that Dom has been surrounded by a group of bad actors. My only hope is that the Dfinity Foundation remains true to its mission and avoids the path of corruption.
A blockchain CEO looked at his wallet stuffed with money and said with a smile : “Don’t focus on the token price; instead, focus on blockchain technology and ideals.”
I’m not excusing DFINITY for not disclosing their financials quarterly like the Ethereum Foundation does which is extremely admirable and investor-friendly definitely. Everyone would of course welcome such a decision for them to do so if they decide to in the future and be completely transparent however all I’m saying is that I don’t think DFINITY is hiding anything or is corrupt in any way just because they have chosen not to up until now.
On the contrary I feel they are running too tight of a ship where every cent is going into R&D and Development and they are hardly spending on PR/Marketing/Grants, etc. You hear of many being denied grants actually and DOM openly bragging about how he does not “Pay to Play” like the rest of crypto does in order to pay influencers or KOLs (key opinion leaders) to push ICP to retail. And it shows obviously.
As for your comment about “disappointing state” and “betrayal of the community’s trust”, I don’t agree. If you are only referring to the token price then you can see it this way but as for the rest of the project in terms of meeting milestones on the roadmap and delivering more added value to the technology and the blockchain itself, then I would say the opposite is true. ICP is moving in the right direction technologically.
Can you fully blame any company for its market stock price? The example being how Amazon was surpassing every metric for growth and meanwhile its stock went from like 103 to 6 bucks at the same time? There is not always a direct correlation between capital markets and the equities they represent. It should be that way in a perfect market but the company’s performance does not always translate into price appreciation for their stock. Sometimes the complete opposite because markets tend to be irrational…
What’s “disappointing” is that in my opinion, due to the SBF manipulation and the horrible chart, DFINITY needs to do some PR work to fix the reputation of the project to some degree. Maybe Caffeine AI is that silver bullet idk but ICP has been shunned no doubt by the majority of crypto retail and esp. those who got burned by SBF and the resulting massive decline in price seen as a “rugpull” thus casting a dark shadow upon DFINITY as the main culprit.
Some people also feel “ICP” should rebrand to “World Computer” which would be better marketing-wise not to be associated with the Insane Clown Posse or “I See Pee” etc. I know it is stupid because the label is not the project and the project is not its label but we associate our biases with names. ICP feels more like IBM to me and I completely understand why it was chosen due to the “Internet Protocol and TCP/IP” but most people don’t get the technobabble unless they are academics in comp sci. “World Computer” should have been chosen from day 1.
Anyways, it would behoove DFINITY to have a good PR and marketing plan for both ICP and UTOPIA and really have a good sales team for onboarding extremely useful and prominent enterprises and projects that will finally bring it the press attention and high profile clients it needs to finally put it in the spotlight and get that ticker on CNBC like BTC, ETH, and SOL have.
It is a catch-22 in that we do need the ICP price to go back up to its recent ATH of 20 at least in order for there to be more attention on ICP from both retail crypto and institutions. If it remains buried near the 50th position and seem like a stable coin pegged at under 5 bucks, it’ll be problematic.
Just as a reminder this is the DEVELOPERS forum, so anything regarding the Foundation could/should be addressed directly to them on one of many communication channels, and be done so without introducing any more drama and trying to stir up community to engage in off topic manner.
