IOTA boss Dominik Schiener: questions arise around side activities
Dominik Schiener aspires to position IOTA for the future and increase trust in the crypto project. Recent disclosures about Schiener’s business relationships raise questions.
IOTA Foundation on the right track: transparency and risk minimization
As a non-profit organization, the IOTA Foundation is committed to transparency and has also anchored the goal in its statutes to minimize risks for the foundation itself. When the IOTA Foundation concluded a cooperation agreement with Dominik Schiener’s firm KUPONA, this was announced in an official statement at the end of June. KUPONA was chosen to push forward the introduction of Shimmer as a sister network of IOTA. Questions arose from this concerning potential conflicts of interest, which are now being brought into focus by a Bloomberg report.
Bloomberg takes a closer look at the Schiener-KUPONA-IOTA triangle
Bloomberg points out in its article that knowing the exact ownership structure of firms is important to assess possible conflicts of interest. Two weeks ago, Schiener wrote in his blog about how KUPONA is structured: Schiener holds 40 percent of the shares there, but only acts as an advisor. The Bloomberg article has now highlighted that another company, Bauhaus, in some way also lists Schiener as a shareholder, but no explanations have been given so far on how this firm might interact with KUPONA and IOTA.
Ownership of crypto wallets also under scrutiny
In the case of crypto projects, there is also another sensitive point which concerns who controls the crypto wallets from which funding is distributed. On this topic, Stuart Jackson and William Sanders have commented and criticized Schiener. According to Jackson, about 10 percent of the Shimmer token supply is held in wallets, which likely belong to Schiener or people close to him. Sanders pointed out that Schiener is still the signer of the multisig wallet where MIOTA tokens from the IOTA Foundation are parked.
Conclusions
Unquestionably, Dominik Schiener, as a co-founder and head of IOTA, has contributed significantly to the direction and current success of IOTA and Shimmer. However, regardless of his slowly increasing transparency in private dealings and business relationships: Schiener must continue to work on transparency if he wants to fulfill expectations. Observers claim that pinpointing the ownership and functionality of wallets is of utmost importance for sustainable development. People who trust Schiener’s visions and invest in IOTA want absolute certainty that no one is prioritizing personal enrichment over the overall success of the project.
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