SCF Round 5 Finals Postmortem
Well, the final results for SCF #5 have been sorted out and let me begin with a big long YIKERS. Remember in the nominations round how we had a record turnout of 671 voters all of whom we removed except for 295? Well in this final round we not only matched, but smashed that record. 4,137 unique Keybase accounts showed up last week to vote in our final round. Four thousand one hundred and thirty seven “voters”! Let’s put that in a graph compared to previous rounds. Red is removed votes and blue is votes which were left.
This round was extremely difficult to review. We’ve never had thousands of votes to look through, the current system isn’t designed for that kind of volume. We spent the last few days and nights combing through hundreds of votes and making lots of tough calls and we’ve arrived at the following criteria for disqualifications:
- All accounts with duplicate IPs (679 accounts removed)
- All accounts created since nomination voting started (320 accounts removed)
- All accounts with zero proofs (2,662 accounts removed)
- All accounts with inactive or bounty hunter proofs (291)
- All accounts which voted for Trybal.Network not caught by above criteria (106)
The first thing to address, regretfully, is that after much deliberation we’ve made the difficult decision to disqualify Trybal.Network from the final round. Before any adjustments they stood far ahead of the pack which always signals a deeper look.
As we began our standard disqualifications it became clear that a majority of the disqualifications had a common project in their queue, Trybal.Network. IP dups, new accounts, and zero proofs were all painting a pretty unflattering picture. Once we started a deep dive into hundreds of Twitter, Github, and Reddit proofs, strong evidence became hard proof. Trybal.Network has attracted a very specific crowd of folks the SCF wants nothing to do with; bounty hunters. Once we had removed everything short of a straight disqualification Trybal.Network was dead last in the standings, and not barely, it was clear they shouldn’t even be in the final round. We’ve always reserved the right to take dramatic action like this and today we’re doing it. Trybal.Network has been disqualified from the SCF #5 finals. There’s no need or value in speculating as to the blame or specific source of the manipulation, the focus should rather be on the fact that their community of supporters are not legitimate or beneficial to the SCF or Stellar community and were twisting the outcome in an unfair and unhelpful manner.
We don’t take executive actions like this lightly and we always prefer decentralization and openness. However, in its current design, with manipulation of this magnitude, the SCF isn’t well suited towards a fair decentralized distribution of funds, it’s weighted by design in favor of bad actors when they choose to take advantage. To date they really haven’t, but now, obviously, they have.
For me this leaves one final glaring question, how did Trybal.Network affect the initial nominations? Who got left behind? How would the final results have changed? The answer is not much, there’s a world of difference between 671 votes and 4,137. Most of the manipulation in the nomination round came from other projects which rightfully didn’t make it. However, if we were to apply the same disqualification logic from this final round to the nominations round: Trybal.Network and Rigel would both be out. Taking their place would have been Xlet and Cosmic.vote. These three projects, Rigel, Xlet and Cosmic.vote were casualties caught in an unfair fight. There wasn’t overwhelming support for or against these projects however Rigel got in when perhaps it shouldn’t have and Xlet and Cosmic.vote got left out when perhaps they shouldn’t have.
In light of this we’ve made the decision to leave Rigel in the final round but to adjust their position to more closely reflect legitimate community sentiment from the nomination round and to promote both Xlet and Cosmic.vote into the finals and assign them votes which also reflect community sentiment from the nomination round. So without further ado, after all the hours of review, conversations and counsel, our final results for SCF #5 are:
- Lettuce: Stellar-based point of sale (POS) Application | 18.1818% | 545,454 XLM
- Stellarmint - Stellar Tokens Made Easier | 15.8103% | 474,308 XLM
- Free Voting Platform | 15.0198% | 450,592 XLM
- OpenSolar: Securitized project financing powered by Stellar | 13.8340% | 415,019 XLM
- The Interstellar Platform | 13.8340% | 415,019 XLM
- Stellar Update - Dedicated Blog about everything Stellar | 7.5099% | 225,296 XLM
- Xlet - Open Stellar Hardware Wallet | 5.9289% | 177,865 XLM
- Cosmic.vote ~ Working Toward Decentralized Organizations | 5.5336% | 166,007 XLM
- Rigel - Monetize Links for Payments and Donations in Seconds | 4.3478% | 130,434 XLM
This round was tough and far from ideal and for that we are sorry. Ultimately this is why SCF 2.0 is so important, this is why we’ve been collecting and distilling years of feedback into a new structure for Stellar community funding, it’s why we’re so excited for the future and why we’re so sure it’s time for a Big Change™. So stay tuned, SCF 2.0 is on it’s way for a timely arrival on August 31st.
For those who won the last SCF 1.0, congratulations! You deserve it. We’ll be in touch about next steps for collecting on your prizes and taking your projects to the next level. I love and appreciate all of you and all you’ve done for the Stellar community. We’ve had some great rounds, but our best rounds are yet to come.
