Asking the Questions that Matter
Amid the downward trends of the crypto markets at the beginning of May 2022, web3 project founders such as Do Kwon and Zagabond saw themselves under heavy scrutiny that has opened up key areas of discussion within the crypto community about how to reprimand poor leadership. Yet, a lot of these criticisms are only discussed among community members, and not so much with the leaders directly. For web3 to be more successful, community members and journalists have to be more direct and less forgiving with their questioning.
When a project fails, the founder is one of the last people involved to lose money. Their funds and liquidity are usually locked up in various assets which are not fully tied to their project's ecosystem. It’s normal to see founders exchange portions of their liquidity for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or other big name currencies which have less risk attached to them. Ultimately, when, or if, their project fails, it is the investors that supported them who are hit the hardest. This is why journalists cannot be soft during interviews after major crashes or failures because the founders owe a responsibility to their investors to solve the solution instead of shifting their attention to new projects.
Questions that journalists ask a founder need to be focused on how a situation can be repaired rather than what their next project will be. When an entire ecosystem like TerraLuna collapses, investors have a right to expect the founders to be the first people to take responsibility and initiate a plan to restore value to what they have created. When a founder is seen after a collapse to be smiling and happy it creates the wrong image and suggests to investors that the founder never really cared and still does not. This type of attitude, when compounded, can become a major detriment to the crypto space because it will slowly erode trust that users have in project leaders.
By allowing the leaders of a project to pretend that everything is fine while their investors are left with massive losses creates the general belief that crypto is truly speculative and not worth holding in the long term. It can drive the point that nothing has real value and that the best strategy will always be to sell high before a collapse. These types of strategies are dangerous and more akin to gambling than actual investments which can only hold web3 back from growing into the user-focused platform that blockchain enthusiasts are excited for.
Playing nice for a founder during an interview after negative events cannot be allowed. Just like in politics, business, and even sports, when failure arises, founders and leaders need to be held accountable. Questions like “how will this situation be repaired,” “What will you do to earn your investors trust back,” and “how could this have been avoided,” are all necessary to keep the pressure on a founder to stay committed to what they started. Crypto is a sensitive industry that has a strong hunger for hype and giving a founder any room to promote and pump their next bag after a collapsed project instead of forcing founders to own up to their mistakes and provide a plan will only be seen as a failure to the web3 community.
