The IOTA community loses with “Buffy, the fudster” a profiled critic. She explains her withdrawal with hopelessness of IOTA. Shortly before, she reported legal threats. What’s going on?
Once again, the way parts of the IOTA community deal with critical voices is frightening. Because the latest case concerns “Buffy, the fudster”, who went deep into technological issues of IOTA via her Twitter account since May 2020, revealing far more problems than future solutions. About ten days ago, Buffy had reported via tweet that in IOTA channels, discussants were coordinating legal threats against her to ultimately silence her. In her current departure from the topic of IOTA, Buffy writes little about her own sensitivities, but explains why she believes IOTA has failed. This raises two issues that should be looked at more closely.
IOTA threatens and expels critics in series
The Buffy case is also piquant because it anonymously cultivates her image as a woman. In August 2019, a case rocked IOTA in which an attempt was made to blackmail security expert Sarah Jamie Lewis with details of her private life. The male toxic climate in discussions at IOTA had also been pointed out by Buffy a few times from her own experience.
Another example of withdrawal from the public eye was the self-proclaimed IOTA enlightener “Dog.” Until late summer 2021, “Dog” provided detailed criticism of the inner workings and expertise of the IOTA Foundation, for which he was massively antagonized. Then “Dog” fell silent, whose objections we also repeatedly recorded and which were consistently confirmed.
As early as January 2021, the well-known video blogger Blocktrainer had made it known that he would no longer be involved with IOTA. As reasons, he cited the climate of discussion, in addition to the long list of unfulfilled promises in IOTA.
Block Builders also often has a reputation in the IOTA scene for overdoing it with criticism. Comments that aim below the belt and have nothing to do with objectivity are deliberately not given a stage here. Anyone who reads the relevant IOTA forums knows anyway: Critics are preferably quickly blocked and personally attacked. With repeatedly threatened legal proceedings, at least we know nothing about the fact that these are then also initiated in practice. In this respect, there seems to be more truth in much of the criticism of IOTA than the people responsible around the head of the foundation, Dominik Schiener, would like.
Future plans of IOTA: Buffy predicts “Rekt
The content part of Buffy’s “Good Bye” to IOTA does not throw cotton balls. She sees the IOTA ecosystem as “dead” and makes this point with three examples. Project Assembly (ASMB), which started with a lot, looks to Buffy like a pump and dump covered with venture capital. In the process, “PR bullshit” is used to promote Assembly, but there are no answers to the crucial questions about IOTA Assembly’s technological setup. The Assembly Staking at IOTA is to that extent probably to be classified as “bribery”, so that investors remain quiet for the time being and look forward to price gains with IOTA, finds Buffy. According to IOTA boss Schiener, who is also involved in the project, Assembly is to receive a mainnet before the end of the year and ASMB is to become freely tradable – but Schiener’s and the IOTA Foundation’s time schedules are notorious for their unreliability.
This is made abundantly clear by Coordicide. Every year since 2017/8, the IOTA Foundation has promised that “soon” or “in the coming year” the shutdown of the central coordinator in Tanglenet would be implemented. But the envisaged decentralized IOTA remains a pipe dream so far, not only Buffy recognizes more new obstacles than solutions in official IOTA messages on Coordicide. The bottom line is that at some point IOTA will officially accept to be a centralized network, Buffy said.
Third final point for Buffy’s IOTA settlement is Shimmer (SMR). This project, unveiled in November 2021 as the first for IOTA staking, is expected to become a testnet for IOTA and Assembly. But what then is SMR’s implied monetary value, Buffy wonders. She suspects that Shimmer will ultimately become a fig leaf to cover up the fact that the IOTA leadership has internally abandoned Coordicide.
Conclusion: Buffy falls silent – but IOTA needs criticism like any other project.
Buffy is certain that only Assembly will remain as a cryptocurrency in the medium term from the original IOTA, as this token is pushed with venture capital and does not have to take into account restrictions of the foundation construct at IOTA. She herself expects the usual abuse for her analysis – but in the end, she predicts IOTA and investors will experience “Rekt,” or “Game Over.” She said she doesn’t want anyone to be able to say later that she didn’t warn. In the comments on her thread, those expressing (Schaden)Freude about her withdrawal predominate. Some, however, regret Buffy’s decision, saying that this technologically literate voice will be missed.
We would like to agree with that. For Buffy has pointedly identified weaknesses in the official IOTA pronouncements and her chains of reasoning are logically constructed. If a foundation, as is the case with IOTA, repeatedly deals with factual critics with little aplomb and blows the community to smear campaigns, something is fundamentally wrong. The development of IOTA’s market importance speaks volumes in parallel: first IOTA fell out of the top ten list of the most important cryptocurrencies by market capitalization, then it was the top 30 and now IOTA finds itself in a place around 60 there. Professional investors have mostly abandoned IOTA and this is probably also due to the technological shortcomings of the project plus private squabbles.
Leave a Reply