[DAO:8ae0bf3] Mark District X as 'stolen'

Governance
1

by 0x8b257b97c0e07e527b073b6513ba8ea659279b61 (Morph)

Linked Pre-Proposal

District X: Contentious Leadership

Summary

Due to contentious leadership, failure to hold up core commitments to original contributors, and improper conduct of RobL#4045 - this proposes to mark District X itself as ‘stolen’ on the Decentraland marketplace.

Abstract

Recently, the community has engaged in an investigation over the handling of District X, and the current leadership of RobL#4045.

This investigation has brought to light several issues:

  • Rob became custodian of District X without contributor’s input; when the original custodians left, Rob took leadership custody, alongside Carl F via a centralized decision of original leadership who could not continue.

  • The land is sitting in a wallet with multi-sig, controlled by an LLC that is owned entirely by Rob and a ‘partner’, no contributors were given a share despite original contributor agreement mentioning group purchase & ownership of land.

  • Rob has removed all rights from contributors, stating that he owes them nothing, and that the land is his to control.

  • Rob’s contribution to district X is believed to be 2 parcels out of 2,001 total (.099%)

  • Rob has failed to deliver financial records of the Districts performance year over year as outlined in contributor agreements, despite public information that he is renting out the land for payment.

  • Attempts to resolve this in the District X discord has led to Rob banning or muting original contributors from District X forums such as Discord and Twitter.

  • Rob has conversed with multiple different interested parties to sell the entire district for personal gain (by transferring ownership of the LLC), for a large sum (~7 figures). Rob did not consult contributors and has stated they have no rights. When confronted - he states the assets are his and his partners to do as they please, including selling it in its entirety and keeping the money.

Motivation

We believe this is wrong for a few reasons:

1.) - The custodians of districts were always intended to be just that, custodians. Their job was to uphold a system in which contributors could consult or be consulted - when a custodian could no longer act in the best interests of the district, leadership should return to the foundation/DAO/contributors to continue the vision. We have seen this occur before with Rob being brought on via centralized decision by previous leadership once they could not continue.

2.) - The district has completely pivoted from its original intent, while this may be acceptable in some circumstances, the decision was made by Rob without consultation of contributors. Rob has not upheld any critical pieces of the original contributor agreement nor the district foundation agreement - after four years and lack of progress, this is a massive failure, and solidifies that Rob not only has no intent to sufficiently develop the district, but also refuses to use existing methods of tracking contributor involvement on the direction - this is further complicated by Rob banning contributors who disagree, or outright deleting history/channels/servers/accounts (like the District X twitter or discord).

3.) - Contributors have made multiple attempts since 2019 to raise these issues, they were either silenced by bans, or outright told they had no rights to District involvement.
When raising this issue, either by contributors, or DCL’s community in general, Rob’s response has been ‘sue me’ and that he is the true ‘owner’ of these contributed lands, despite being rumored to only have contributed 2 parcels himself and little to no relevant district development occurring.

4.) Many of the builds that won the Decentraland public building competition were placed on District X without consent of creators. This, alongside Rob renting land to the highest bidders (most of which seem unaware of the shady nature of the land they are renting) for personal income, is a great example of how Rob is leveraging others work in an attempt to make the district look active while not providing any useful development towards the District plan itself.

5.) Rob is weaponizing the 4M District VP against the community, recently declaring it ‘his’ VP in an interview and continuously voting against DistrictX contributors wishes. Rob has already used DistrictX VP to deny grants to those critical of him, or to vote in favor of those that defend his claims - as this VP was not purchased by Rob, he has an unequally assigned vote which does not carry the standard investment risk, disrupting the democratic process of the DAO.

So that’s where we are now, a user who had a small contribution to district X, was deputized without the contributor’s agreement, and now has outright taken the land hostage via an LLC, refusing to release it even after 5 years of failed district leadership and instead weaponizing the power he has been assigned against original contributors and the platform itself.

We, the DAO, must find a delicate balance of defending against platform level attacks, while also carefully considering the impact any changes may have. For this reason, I believe we must only take temporary and interface level action - designed to notify and raise awareness, so that all decentralized parties may make their own informed decision.

Specification

The proposal would add a simple ‘stolen’ flag on the the District X marketplace page:

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This would be a front-end change only (including front-end APIs), bids will not be able to be placed nor sales made on the marketplace frontend. However, any user can still interact with the Decentraland contracts themselves to perform these same actions, this is not a blockchain protocol level change, simply an interface modification.

The flag can be removed with District X meeting one of the following conditions:

  • DistrictX is placed inside a new ‘locked’ District contract that has no removal function, enabling delegation to a community voted leader (by District X DAO vote, fairly tokenized with original contributors share), forever removing the ability to split/sell/transfer the land.

  • DistrictX is placed under fairly decided new decentralized leadership and DistrictX LLC is disintegrated, with DCLDAO as part of the new multi-sig as a backstop should the same issues occur.

  • DistrictX is disintegrated and all land is returned to original contributors (although this option likely leads to many lands owned by inactive wallets, it would ensure original contributors are made whole). Any inactive wallets/land could temporarily be used as a community space by foundation/DAO until claimed.

Most importantly, there will be NO contract level changes from this vote, we will not forcefully remove assets, we will not alter NFT immutability, we will simply be making a front end interface change to raise awareness about the situation as decided by the votes outcome. Should Rob/DistrictX want to move forward with removing the stolen tag, they can do so, as they will not be prevented from modifications or continuing development, all requirements to remove the stolen tag will be within District X’s control.

We MUST protect the DCL community from buying or renting District X while unaware of it’s history, only to find it comes with community baggage, agreements, and contributors that were supposed to be involved in decision making. We must prevent contributors from being silenced/banned and removed while their contribution is on-sold without their consent by a leader who has abandoned the outlined agreements and original contracts of contribution for personal profit.

You can find further evidence and past discussions as well as participate on this topic in the Decentraland DAO’s #district discord channel: Discord

You can also read some shorter summaries here:

Conclusion

Given the points above, this is not a simple case of an unhappy consumer - this is a clear case of early good-faith users & creators being stripped of their agreed upon right to participate in the DAO (District) they contributed to, by a shoddily-appointed malicious leader seeking to extract wealth and serve only themself.

We, as the governing body of DCL, have a responsibility to resolve internal issues when attacks are carried out by the platform we have created - as a global platform, we cannot enable criminals to hide behind geo-restricted LLCs as a means to validate their coercion - we must use the DCL DAO as it is designed to resolve this problem that we ourselves have created; Especially one as complicated, nuanced and impactful to the community as District X.

Vote on this proposal on the Decentraland DAO

View this proposal on Snapshot

2

While I am for this in a sense I must ask, how would this impact those that are Decentraland residents and builders that have land within District X? Have they been consulted as to how they think this should be handled? I won’t mention any names here at this time but there are 2 very prominent and respected people that I know of that have land in District X. Until they are consulted and any others I am unaware of, I must abstain.

3

only RobL owns land within DistrictX. What ever your “very prominent” people have isn’t ownership of land.

4

I didn’t say they owned it, they have land. Do they have options to exit and go somewhere else? Perhaps this could be a use of the newly purchased DAO land if they like. Have they been consulted as to their thoughts on the matter? This probably doesn’t put them in a great position. I just think it should be considered if they feel the same. They could have no opinion at all. IDK.

5

The land MrD and Rizk, or whoever you are reffering to, have access to is stolen land under RobL’s control. The reason they are going to be in this position is because this unfortunate situation has been allowed to go on unaddressed for so long. The fact that two people who didn’t contribute to the district may be inconvenienced is not an adequate reason to not pursue making right a wrong that was done to hundreds of people.

6

Hi Existential,

Nothing about this proposal prevents the land itself from continuing to be used, it will simply be marked stolen on our frontend interfaces. Rob can still continue with rental agreements.

If you think this proposal is hurting those who rented land, then I agree, but that is not the proposals fault and is indicative of why it is important that we must mark this land so that people are aware of the contention.

7

I’m reaching out to at least one of them to see. I also think that maybe then we can offer them DAO purchased land possibly depending on the situation they are in.

The fact that two people who didn’t contribute to the district may be inconvenienced is not an adequate reason to not pursue making right a wrong that was done to hundreds of people.

@jar0d
So you are saying the good of the many outweigh the good of the few. Even those that are builders and have done nothing but work towards the betterment of the DCL?

I am not by any means condoning what has transpired but I think this is something to be considered. I could be wrong, it may not affect them and they may not care and want this to happen. In that case my thoughts on the matter are mute. I just feel there is no need to upset and make this even worse for more people.

8

Hi @Existential14

Just to clarify… there are two different situations here… there are scenes on District X who have been created by people like Rizk, and then there are scenes in District X that were made by people completely unaffiliated with the project and placed there over the past few years.

I can say with certainty that a lot of the builds currently deployed were the winners of the 2019 Land Creator Contest. Part of the prize that we won was that “Your scene will be deployed in Decentraland”, and apparently many of the scenes were placed in District X. I know this because my scene is deployed inside District X. The scenes around mine are ones that I remember from the contest 4 years ago also. I do not have any builder rights to my scene, I didn’t even know it was there until I was walking late one night and randomly came across it and thought, “Hey! That looks familiar!” So to be completely honest, the people who created the scenes deployed in much of District X may not even know their scene is there.

I think it would be valuable to ascertain which builds have been deployed by active contributors, and which have just been placed in the District to fill the land. My guess is that if any active contributors are affected by the land being marked as stolen, the community could find alternate land choices to deploy in to make sure they aren’t adversely affected. I guess the reason I’m sharing this is to let you know that the number of active contributors is much smaller than the numbers of scenes deployed in the district. I hope this is helpful in showing a little history behind the scenes deployed there.

3 Likes
9

Thank you for the clarification. So basically all that property is stolen is well, would you say? If that is the case this sounds even bigger than what I thought.
I will go ahead and change to yes instead of abstain. I’m still hoping to hear from someone inside of there.

2 Likes
10

I appreciate @Canessa for clarifying this whole situation, my vote is YES.

1 Like
11

My vote is yes for sure and i can’t even understand why some people are voting “No”. Is there really any reasons to vote against that?

It makes already several time that i see proposal to mark the district as stolen and heard about how it was and, it’s a shame to act as this!

The only information i don’t have about is : What were the objectives when creation of District X? I wasn’t really well informed when it was created and i know i missed the whole story about it. I’ll really appreciate if someone explain me

12

My vote is No from the several times I have spoken to Rob he made it clear to me what the ACTUAL issue is from his side of the story and considering that he is willing to projects deployed on his land I think its necessary for to keep it active and not mark it as stolen.

When I talked about the Amsterdam project that I wanted to build for the community he was willing to let me build on his parcel, later I did not do it because it appaered that the community didn’t want me to get involved in this.

He has 0% malicious intentions with his district does events on his district, allows builders to build on his district & is open to formal conversations about his district.

The issue with the contributors is actually with the previous owner of District X and not Rob since he didn’t make any promises and if there is someone that needs to be held accountable its the previous owner giving the district away without thinking of the problems it would bring to the contributors in the future.

I don’t think that a District that is given to him is considered a theft therefore I don’t agree with it being flagged as stolen and cant vote yes on something that is not true.

13

I actually supported this initiative.

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14

Oh yes I mean the majority that also timed me out from the discord back in the day.

15

That’s not a legally bullet proof argument. When he took over the district he also assumed it’s prior commitments.

16

But can we blame him for it, I highly doubt that. lets say i have a puppy nft with the responsibility to give all the artist on the puppy nft free expensive cookies.

and one day i decide hey lets send this puppy nft to jarod, would you send expensive cookies from your own pockets the artist?

I don’t think so.

17

This is not a good analogy and I will not be engaging with you on the topic further. Your opinion on the topic is biased given your financial incentive to support RobL.

You are choosing ot ignore RobL’s actions.

RobL actively campaigned to be named the replacement district lead on a project with a specific vision. He lied to contributors and the second he was given control he pivoted the project’s intention and silenced anyone who questioned him about it.

If you refuse to educate yourself on the topic, I ask that you stop making false statements on the topic, because it is clear that you are just repeating lies you’ve been told or actively trying to help RobL spread false information of your own free will.

18

Voting No on this. I have two builds there covering a total of 10 parcels. I have been entrusted to manage a project that i have deployed in District X. I have paid for a year’s rent there. I would change my vote if someone is kind enough to host my builds for a year for free in another strategic location.

Also, i define ‘stolen’ as something one would have their asset taken away without permission through acts of malware, phishing for credentials or seeds, or elaborate social engineering scams. The arguments here do not fit the term stolen.

Regarding this:
“Rob became custodian of District X without contributor’s input; when the original custodians left, Rob took leadership custody, alongside Carl F via a centralized decision of original leadership who could not continue.”

In spite of this act without contributor’s input, was this transferring of ownership legitimate and legally acted with tangible contracts? If it is, then it is not, by definition, stolen.

1 Like
19

Same thing I you and I adressed the very same thing on this topic but you just put it better in words Thanks!

1 Like
20

I can understand why you would vote to protect your interests, but it is part of the issue that this contention affects you at all.

As Jar0d has pointed out, the original terraform verbiage clearly dictates that the land contract enabled ‘groups to collectively buy bigger districts’ that’s all it was, a mechanism to buy large parcels that were next to each other collectively.

Now that we are 5 years later, we choose to ignore all rights of those contributors, despite the original agreements and assets being bound by them - I can think of no word more accurate than stolen as once the contracts held by these assets could not be completed, the asset should have been returned to those who original purchased it.

1 Like