I think we have to differentiate and leave our initial potential emotional reactions out here.
The Community Treasury committee, as planned with the 15% allocation, will still be set up and operate fully community driven following the plan we have been working on for the last months. But we have seen that the process of enabling this is really slow, and contribution is slow, which is understandable as you all just contribute in your free time. But, the market does not wait for us to finish our community governance process, The winners of the next market cycle are currently shaped and positioned.
And therefore, to use all opportunities that can enable growth in Shimmer, more is needed than the community Committee can achieve.
15% is nice, but these will only be available to proposals that are brought to the committee from someone, so it is totally unpredictable what will actually happen and what will receive funding from the Community Treasury.
It depends on the proposals that come in. So the Community Treasury committee is a “passive” measure. We have no idea and no influence on what is coming in there.
Enabling real growth of the network will need more “active” measures, and they need to start as soon as possible, optimal, together with the launch of the Shimmer EVM that is around the corner.
Also, the community Treasury committee would never have access to certain measures that have proven to be extremely effective in other networks. The entities that are able to engage in such measures won’t write public proposals to a community committee to allocate their resources to an ecosystem.
Some of those partners will not want to be public and usually only approach core teams / Founders. And those are the measures that we have seen in our competitor networks playing out very effectively, surpassing IOTA in the last years.
Also, targeted marketing and growth campaigns must be facilitated effectively and professionally with those key players in the space. All these measures can be extremely effective for the growth of a network, but they will not be in reach for a rather slow and totally public process like the planned Community Treasury Committee.
So, much more is needed that the community alone cannot reach and enable.
Therefore this Groth committee and the use of additional tokens from the community is, in my eyes, the best and most effective way to exponentially grow Shimmer in Value and awareness in the space.
This growth will also fill up the Dollar Value of the community treasury, easily outweighing the invested funds needed for that measure.
Ultimately, we all want to succeed and make the most possible impact with Shimmer. This opportunity presented will be the one chance to really grow and break out of the valley where IOTA has been sitting for the last few years.
The network, the technology, and the Tokens holders deserve that everything possible will be done to put us on the same level and ahead of our competitors in the space.
If it costs us Tokens now to have a much larger Treasury value, later on, I would say that is an excellent risk-reward ratio.
We have always complained that nothing is done to grow awareness, no marketing, nothing that others are doing, and that all surpassed us in relevance and adoption.
Now Dom’s proposal offers this chance. If we all work together, this will be possible. Yes, it will use some tokens, and yes, it requires trust in the IOTA Foundation that there are professionals in place with the knowledge, experience, and connections to execute what is needed.
But in my opinion, the effect that can be enabled by this is much larger than the costs of this process, and therefore, we should do this with the maximum effort.
So again, things will run in parallel, the Community Treasury committee can take care of a lot of things, but some stuff cannot be done by the Treasury committee.
You need the connections to key players that open doors for us, and we need to bring such key players in. Yes, it costs tokens, but everyone here will greatly profit from this process.
And in the end, all of this will enable us to be seen again in the wider space and be recognized for what we have been building in the last 18 months.
When we are ready to reveal IOTA 2.0, we can then do this out of a position of strength, showcasing a highly adopted and successful Shimmer network to the space, and then really hit with IOTA into the next upcoming narrative and surpass SUI, Aptos, Celestia, Cosmos, Polkadot, etc. and all those that are currently ahead of us.
So my advice, think rationally about what is best for everyone, leave emotions out and only think about the potential risks and rewards. You will see that there is no reason not to do everything possible to move this project out of the shadow in which we reside. We all deserve the best and most effective measures to be taken now, nothing less.