There is a conflict of interest in the Black Cat community, should NFT artists interfere with community building?

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The NFT royalties obtained from sales are not shared with the community

According to the narratives of community members, the core builders of the Black Cat community have been paying out of their own pockets to maintain community operations and hold themed events. This is based on the consensus of the core builders on the concept of Black Cat. Let the black cat go out of the circle quickly in a short time.

But "out of pocket" is not a long-term solution, and official funding is important for community building. However, SHHAN did not share the royalties obtained from the sale of NFTs to the community, and previously agreed to sponsor Mimic DAO (such as expenses for helping the community organize events and rewards for the core builder).

In response to community members' doubts about this point, SHHAN explained that 39.56 ETH of the 157 ETH royalties obtained from the sale of Black Cat NFT were used to support contract audits and gas fees, and 12.43 ETH was used for the December 17 Guangzhou The preparation of the exhibition (4.46 ETH has been paid), as well as financial support for the Beijing exhibition and other community activities.

As for not providing funding for Mimic DAO, SHHAN’s explanation is that Adam (the leader of Mimic DAO) proposed to pay the community an operating fee of $6,000 per month. This does not have a complete operating plan, whether the use of funds is transparent, etc. The listed issues were not explained in advance, and this amount of money was not a small amount for SHHAN, so he did not want to give this money hastily.

According to Adam's Twitter, he is willing to discuss with SHHAN how much money to donate to Mimic DAO, but SHHAN did not give a definite reply.

But obviously, community members were not satisfied with SHHAN's explanation, and triggered a "protest" activity. On Snapshot, a voting activity was started to set the copyright fee of Black Cat to 0. Up to now, 2127 votes have been cast in favor.

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Deliberately cut relations with Chinese communities on Twitter and Discord

According to SHHAN's explanation, because he wants to develop the North American market, and the current community has too many Chinese elements, it is difficult for North American users to feel the diversity and internationalization of the community. Therefore, it is recommended that you communicate in English more often, and often block some Chinese messages. SHHAN said that the North American market is very promising for its upcoming Shhanverse, so it made such a move in a hurry.

In fact, Black Cat is a project that appeared in the Chinese community for the first time, and it is not surprising that it is considered a local project. It can be said that the black cat reached the top under the leadership of the Chinese, and most of the black cat owners are also Chinese.

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Airborne official community operation, "cleaning" OG builder

The last point of controversy is that SHHAN chose Sook as the official community operator, and Sook used to be a role similar to an administrator, with limited contributions to brand promotion and community building, and the appointment was not approved by community members, so More like an "airborne". However, Sook has made abnormal remarks since he took office, requiring everyone's avatar to be a black cat, and unblocking many early builders who were not black cat avatars, as well as many guardian roles, regardless of the interests of the community and the contribution of the builders, which aroused the community's dissatisfaction. Strong dissatisfaction, but also against the idea of ​​a decentralized community.

In fact, after sorting out the whole matter, I found that the above three points of contention all stem from whether artists should influence the development of the community too much. As a CC0 project, it should carry out decentralization to the end, fully give the community autonomy and governance rights, and communicate with community members more deeply, listen to the voices of members, and shorten the distance with users, which is a smarter approach ; Instead of depriving the rights and interests of community contributors by coercive means, this will not only damage the original intention of the community, but also increase the estrangement between each other.