Thanks Chris for the info you provided today. I wish I knew this yesterday.
Over the years I have had the privilege to speak and work with some extremely talented women working within Decentraland. I do get that women innovators do experience legitimate struggles with gender bias both in Decentraland and in life; especially prevalent in the tech field, as it is an extremely male dominated space.
However, I believe honesty is relationships is just as important as diversity.
Having said that, the experience that Metatrekkers described above working with @serenaelis is very alarming to me in a couple of ways.
First, it seems that she felt it perfectly acceptable to agree to a payment for her services, then request to being paid in advance for her services via an off-chain payment method, and then after receiving the payment, proceeded to lie about not being paid in multiple public forums including Twitter, then further went on an extensive a smear campaign in attempt to defame and discredit Chris from Metatrekkers, which ultimately was the catalyst that lead to his grant revocation; which to my knowledge, has not been restored. She did this it seems, because after the fact, it seems she believed $100 cash, paid in advance for 30min of services provided, was simply not enough, despite agreeing to this in advance; and that she should be entitled to more.
Second, @Serenaelis then seem to make this dispute about gender, by taking to Twitter to warned other women to steer clear of any relationship with Metatrekkers!?
Has she ever presented any evidence that Metatrekkers paid the women DJs less than the male DJs? If not, if there was a legitimate dispute at all, it certainly was not gender related. So, if that is the case why did she take to twitter and warn only women?
In my opinion, gender bias is a pretty serious offense, and for Serenaelis to so much as insinuate in her Tweet, that Chris from Metatrekkers, without evidence, somehow engaged in some sort of gender bias seem very extreme, not to mention potentially very detrimental to his reputation.
So, the real question is: What if Metatrekkers did not have proof of payment and the text correspondence with Serenaelis to prove his innocence? My guess is that Chris would probably would be forever black listed from the community from receiving any further grants, and would likely find it difficult or impossible to gain additional support in Decentraland.
@Serenaelis If the information provided by Chris is accurate, could I ask why you havenât taken the time to publicly apologize to Chris, via Twitter, Discord, and any other medium you used, in order to help repair any damage to his reputation? I also think it appropriate that you issue an apology to all the women of Decentraland for misleading them in this instance, but thatâs just my opinion.
So, while I do hope the very talented, dedicated, and honest hard-working women building in Decentraland (and they know who they are) donât take this the wrong way, I feel unfortunately, based on these current revelations, that I must rescind my support for this grant at this time, and I do wish @serenaelis the best of luck in the future.
However, @serenaelis if you in any way disagree with my interpretation of the information that Chris has provided, I would certainly be very open to hear your clarification of these events.