Cityscape recently made a video called "Words from an ICP Entrepreneur," and I want to offer my response to it here, because that was a really good video. It basically talked about James Allen's experience working with developers on Internet Computer Protocol who are frustrated with the developer experience, who have not been getting support from DFINITY, and who are saying that actually building on ICP is difficult. The complaints went something like this: I'm not getting any money for it, these other chains are offering money, and it's hard to use all the tools.
I watched that video last night, right before bed, and I went to sleep in dysphoria. I'm lying there thinking: what? Am I out of position? Have I done it again? Have I screwed up and bought all in to the wrong altcoin? Have I poorly positioned all of my followers to go off the cliff with me? I thought about all of that.
I really appreciate James Allen from Cityscape offering that point of view and being willing to voice the criticisms of the difficult things. When I decided to go all in on Internet Computer, it was a long process, months and months of research. I didn't want to go all in on Internet Computer, because I got burned hard before.
Why I Searched So Hard for the Criticisms
I got burned by going all in on Steem in 2017. After a year of being all in on Steem, I ended up seeing that it was nothing but a rug pull, and that it was much of what we still see in crypto today. It was acting like its blockchain did so much more than it really did. It was a platform built on, quote, "decentralized social media," when in reality it was extremely centralized. One single person had control of the Amazon Web Services account and the URL that all the content was hosted on. When they sold it, it totally rugged the whole project. And they were rugging the project the entire time. As I was pumping Steem, they were selling millions of Steem and dumping the price at the same time.
So I did not want to go all in on Internet Computer Protocol either. I went looking for the criticisms and the problems on Internet Computer Protocol, and I see the same things that James is seeing, and that his clients are seeing, just from a different angle. I attempted to contact DFINITY. I sent emails. They didn't respond to me. I emailed community@dfinity.org for community grants and for people in the community. I emailed individual people whose email addresses I'd been given by an ICP developer, who told me, "You should email these people at DFINITY and get in touch with them." None of them replied to me. I messaged a couple of DFINITY people on X who seemed like they were in a position to help, not Dominic Williams, but a couple of others, and none of them responded to me on X. I've gotten no response from them myself.
So it's not surprising to me that developers who are trying to build stuff on Internet Computer Protocol are not getting a response. They're not getting grants either. And yes, DFINITY is focused very much on this AI narrative at the moment, and on what the protocol can do that nothing else can do.
The Foundational Question: What Else Would I Do?
That said, the more I've thought about this since I watched the video, I don't see any better options. To me, that's the foundational premise: well, what am I going to do? I was thinking, if I'm poorly positioned, maybe I should dump all my Internet Computer, sell my account, put the money in the bank, and figure out what else I'm going to do. But I don't have anything better to do. There's nowhere better to invest in crypto that I see. I've researched thousands of altcoins, and I don't see anywhere better to invest. If this doesn't work, I don't have any better ideas. In my experience, this is the best tech in crypto, and I hope DFINITY is pursuing the ideal path forward with its focus on what the technology can do that nothing else can do.
I talked recently to Aaron Bremser, and one of the best things he said in the interview we had came from his time working at DFINITY. He said ICP has carved out a lane in Web3 and crypto, and in the bigger landscape of technology. It's carved out a lane where it does stuff that nothing else does. Like Bobby O talks about in his videos on AI and the current infrastructure behind it, and how bad it is, and how all these third parties hold all this data. With AI, all these issues with security only get worse. In my view, ICP is the best solution to a lot of those current issues.
Now, the reality can be, and it is for some, that if you're trying to build an app on ICP or launch a coin on ICP, it can be frustrating. I'm going to do a response to Brian Phobos' video soon, because he shared some of the same sentiment. But the key thing is that there aren't better options.
It's Like My Marriage
There have been days where I've thought this through in personal terms. I've been with my wife now for 14 years. There have been days where I thought, I need to get another one, and there's a woman out there who I think could do better for me, and I could do better for her. But the fact is, I don't have any better options, and I've never had any better options since I started dating my wife. To me, ICP is the same thing. Yes, there are things about my wife I don't like, things I think she could do better, and there are things she doesn't like about me, but we don't have better options.
Now, if some other crypto came along that genuinely impressed me, then that might be a different story. If there were something similar to Internet Computer that had the same level of technical functionality, but they were very responsive and supporting their builders much more actively, that would change things.
Why DFINITY Might Be Silent
From what I gather, DFINITY is busy. I can relate to this. I have an open chat, and there are so many people in there that I'm not able to read a lot of the messages in the free channel. I'm barely able to keep up with the people who pay to be in the VIP chat and the coin marketing channel. A lot of my direct messages I don't respond to, because people message me "hello?" and I think, what do you want me to say to that? Or they send something and I think, post that in the VIP chat channel, that shouldn't be a private direct message, that should be something you're talking about with the community. I'm in all these other channels and I don't often get to read the messages there, because I'm one person. I have a wife and kids, and I also don't want to do crypto or content creation 12 hours a day. I'm a three- or four-hour-a-day work guy, and I should be doing work that's effective in three or four hours a day, not just grinding hard for the sake of it, but doing effective work.
So it's very possible that people at DFINITY have so much going on that they don't have the bandwidth to respond to what they view as smaller projects. And yes, that's bad. I think a sign of a great business is being able to provide great customer service. When I look for a local business, I look for somebody who answers their phone and can make an appointment. In some ways, DFINITY seems to be failing at those basics of customer service.
Unfortunately, they're in good company there with Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook. I deleted my Facebook account after being on there since 2005 and having almost 2 million followers, because I was so disgusted with their lack of customer service. On Facebook, you basically had to be an insider and an elite partner to get great customer service, and everybody else dealt with bots. So I hope DFINITY is pursuing the best route.
Trapped, But Happy to Be Here
The fact is, I just don't see a better place to be than Internet Computer Protocol today. For better or worse, since it's like my marriage, I'm kind of trapped here. Unless there's a better option, I'm not going anywhere. I'm happy in my marriage, and I'm happy with my ICP investment. And yes, we do need to talk about the things that could be better.
So going forward, I intend to do a better job of addressing reality, instead of just being a hype machine where it's all rainbows and unicorns. It sucks to be in ICP some days. It sucks to look at the price. It sucks to hear about projects moving to these other crap chains just because they want more money and they want to get more instant growth. Yeah, it sucks being in ICP some days, and I'm right there with you. I'm going to follow James's lead and make sure more of my videos address these things. While I'm at it, I'm going to do more videos addressing these things, and other cryptos too. If you want to follow that journey, you can dig through my ICP Crypto playlist where I work through all of it, the good and the difficult.