NFTEarth RPGF Appeal

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There appears to have been a breakdown in the RPGF proposal review process that I believe needs some transparency so as to ensure we better understand what went wrong and how it can be avoided in the future.

The proposal from NFTEarth was flagged with the following information in Review Round 2 and there was a unanimous vote from Badgeholder Reviewers to remove it:

The NFTEarth Team was given an opportunity to appeal and provided the following:

  • The report was filed under “False statements & deception, Deceiving badgeholders” I have been trolled/harassed while building on Optimism. The report starts by labeling me as a serial scammer. There is 0 substantiating evidence to support this other than just continual forum posts of this being the case - NFTEarth is live on Optimism right now - running at https://nftearth.exchange. There were no false statements made or any deception of Badgeholders. Specifically what was cited was false information about being the only team building indexers. This is not was what was stated and appears they are just trying to cause confusion for badgeholders. Our team was and is still the only protocol to fork the Reservoir Indexer successfully, all other teams use their hosted version, which is a very different architecture. The other item cited was used copyrighted materials which again is baseless and not true, we made an actual cover song, no copyright infringement occurred.

In short, substantial evidence wrongdoing by the NFTEarth Team was introduced including links to copious amounts of documentation however the vote to remove was seemingly overridden on appeal on no additional evidence other than a denial.

Additionally, a simple search of the Arbitrum and Optimism forums yields a treasure trove of documentation detailing evidence of wrong doing by Weston and co:

Voting results are private, tagging the folks who volunteered as reviewers to weigh in here:

Questions:

  • Given one of the single most extensive collections of evidence of wrongdoing we’ve seen on a single applicant, what was the rationale for overturning on appeal?
  • Was there any communication with Weston, the NFTEarth Team, or those who submitted the reports outside of what is outlined in the the appeal documents?
  • Did @OPUser recuse himself from voting in this process given his past connections to L2DAO?
  • Do the reviewers still believe this proposal should be considered as legitimate by Badgeholders or should they do their best to minimize the likelihood of an allocation?

Answers to these questions will help ensure that any immediate damage is mitigated and will help to understand what kind of safeguards can be put in place in the future.

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Hey all!

Just wanted to share another response concerning the posts made by @alexcutlerdoteth.

I’m so sorry to see this creating drama in here regarding the NFTEarth app, and I’m sure it only adds more work to your plate Jonas , Lavande, Cush , Reformed Normie, Gonna, - and everyone/anyone else involved in managing the program that I may have missed. It has been a long year trying to build in the NFT space…especially on Optimism - getting a brand new marketplace - NFTEarth - launched on an Optimism from scratch in ~40 days…we still feel this was a major accomplishment. The challenges of learning about serverless infra on AWS/ultimately learning that switching everything to GCP would be best for us/getting accepted into the GCP for Web3 Startups Program, was such a whirlwind. I can’t think of a roadblock we actually didn’t hit along the way, but I can also say with certainty I have learned so much about what it takes to get an NFT protocol launched and thriving, and also what the primary challenges are still to to this day that have been preventing this from occurring on an L2, Optimism specifically. To the RPGF discussion here, Alex is well-known to have personal motive for discrediting any work we have done as a project, and it is his strategy to use the forums/Discord to take whatever is said and find a way to spin it back into negative conversation. By starting with the comments about “breakdown” and how to prevent in the future would force anyone responding to accept the assumption that there was indeed a breakdown that occurred in including NFTEarth in RPGF - which is simply not true. I am MORE curious about the reports - these reports are highly specific as to the nature of the work NFTEarth completed - specifically about the tech stack of an NFT marketplace and also the specific music NFT created by the team. Is there any way to figure out who submitted the reports - because I think this is actually where the breakdown - if we we’re to call it that - would be - and more accountability should be added as to who is submitting the reports. It appears there was an effective review process taken here, and so to me, the breakdown would be the ability of anyone with malicious intent, to far too easily be able to remove an eligible team from RPGF by submitting falsified reports like they did about the work of a team/project/community.

To be frank, I’m just so grateful to see we got to be in the running for the RPGF funding here. I really do hope we end up winning too - this was something that came up as a bit of a surprise for us. I remember when I became aware of the the RPGF Lists that got created and we got included in for all our OSS work from this year… thinking what a sweet way to showcase RPGF in action - someone completely unknown to us, curating Lists that surfaced all the OSS contributions made by myself and the NFTEarth project - to then help aid badgeholders in considering our application for some RPGF awards - seems like a well-designed process after all.

As for Alex and co. - your behavior and actions are the definition of cyberbullying as outlined in the CoC. It is unacceptable - no one deserves to be treated this way, not an individual nor a project. For my own well-being and the sake of my mental health, please stop harassing me. It is draining and taxing to try and complete work while being constantly berated in public forum. You have harassed me on Twitter, on Discord, on this Governance forum for over a year, please stop. I did have an epiphany though as to why you and the same small group of people continue to behave this way towards myself and the project we’ve been trying to grow here. Because seriously… my goodness - my first reaction upon checking back here in the Discord was almost a sort of shocked, “oh no, what terrible thing has happened?” - just to see literally nothing more than more of the same old posts and negativity you have been spewing for over a year now. And then upon not getting an answer that is satisfactory to your agenda, you have shown a pattern of behavior that devolves into escalating it to something such as you have done with this here, all while your actual accusations remain obscure. But your motive is no longer unclear; so since quite literally nothing has occurred that would warrant creating a new thread aside from being considered for RPGF - and just being aware of how these forum discussions have played out in the past, I tried something else for a change and instead, I spent some time really asking myself: what is it…and I mean - explicitly - that could possibly be so threatening to these same few people about empowering the NFTEarth project through an RPGF grant like this… that would lead to such behavior?

And I think I actually figured it out. Aside from the fact that it would obviously drive you nuts if we ended up winning quorum - that leaves only one single logical explanation: If given the chance to create what we would like to through the opportunity via RPGF, you know that I would create positive and meaningful impact in the ecosystem, and this is clearly something you view as negative. Because yeah, I have stated on many occasions how I can see Optimism becoming the central hub for L2 NFTs, and this would mean big things happen on OP, with me involved in contributing. I’ve talked a long time about the tremendous potential that exists if the right team was properly backed with funding and the support of the Foundation - for what could be built on Optimism in regard to NFTs. And an L2, as part of the Superchain, is something I’d like to help contribute to building: and my experience over the past 365 days makes me a great fit for contributing to that work. I’d say here is where you learn to work with ppl you don’t like - the OP Ecosystem will never grow long-term if it can’t move past things like this. As a clear example, what we’ve witnessed over the past week with the L2 Blast - not sure if we can call it that yet - but it has essentially proven the thesis I’ve been shouting about that there IS money ready to flow to an L2 NFT chain - and this is exactly what I’d like to bring to the Superchain; a community, a protocol, and a movement of empowered Creators and Artists, who collaborate in a community where there are shared and aligned values and long-term vision, instead of Blast being what fills this void. My strong beliefs that web3 is technology for the empowerment of billions of people all over the Earth are what led me to Optimism. And I want to reach as many people as possible too - which is also what brought me here - I can clearly see the potential latent in the L2 that is ready to be set loose and reach a global audience. I can now conclude that these views I hold must be incompatible with the way you view the world and I will leave it at that.

To close my response to your ad hominem attack on our project, I would take a minute to circle back to the aforementioned Google Cloud program - I’d again share for reference the specific NFT that grants me access to the private Google Cloud Discord as a member of a project accepted into their Web3 Startups program - I have shared this before when you have tried to discredit our work over the course of this year; being accepted to the program by Google after your original false accusations towards the team and myself subsided, please see the Project Name on the token, as it is ours: NFTEarth. Google vetted our application thoroughly and accepted us to the program due to my enthusiasm for the potential use case and application of NFTs - I proposed using NFTs as a means of credentialing for Google Cloud Training and the credentials that professionals can earn to demonstrate their cloud skills. What a great way for education and job seekers to be able to show their achievements than with onchain proof packaged in the form of an NFT. An example on the OP Chains could be: via a soulbound NFT, someone could earn a credential such as a OP Stack Engineer - Level 2 - as just one of the many ideas of the capabilities for NFT credentialing. Google is bullish on Web3 and if you have concerns about their work and who they invite into their Startup Programs, you should also probably head to the Google Developer forums to share your thoughts there as well. Thomas Kurian is CEO of Google Cloud - he can be reached on X -

https://twitter.com/ThomasOrTK
  • and Sundar Pichai is the CEO of Google - reached on X here -
https://twitter.com/sundarpichai
  • feel free to let them know our work on NFTs is in vain if you feel so strongly on the matter. I can also provide you the direct cell number to our dedicated Account Executive and Technical Account Manager at Google Cloud who have worked with us for nearly 8 months now and helped us outline the cloud infrastructure we designed for building a globally scalable NFT marketplace application.
https://opensea.io/assets/ethereum/0xcc4177805aad9483ea2b2b814b82a83abe564023/176

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I wish everyone well!

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TL;DR

  • Didn’t address a single specific pieces of evidence of wrongdoing
  • Didn’t address their ban from Arbitrum grant programs due to wrongdoing
  • Says if you have any questions, you should contact the CEO of Google on Twitter

And btw @0xWeston you are getting sloppier with each new effort.

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Hey Weston is this data accurate? NFTscan says that the last Optimism NFT trade on NFTEarth was 234 days ago? Seems very low impact to me. If its wrong can you direct me to where we can see the last NFT trade on Optimism? Even when ignoring the mountainous evidence of fraud its hard to see any positive impact that NFTearth has had on Optimism.

It looks like most of the historical sales have been from the 55,000 OP embezzled from Layer2DAO and than dumped to wash trade on the exchange

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As far as I can tell, virtually everything that has been presented publicly to call into question the positive impact NFTEarth has had on Optimism has been exhaustively documented and verifiable. The reason these sorts of reports are kept anonymous is that people should feel free to present evidence without fear of retaliation. It is troubling that Weston is calling to publicly identify a whistleblower and baselessly questioning Alex’s motives.

Eventually Weston might directly address the facts that have been laid before the community. Until then, there is little cause to take any of this seriously. I think this discussion is better oriented toward what Alex has proposed above. I’ll repeat his questions for visibility:

  • Given one of the single most extensive collections of evidence of wrongdoing we’ve seen on a single applicant, what was the rationale for overturning on appeal?
  • Was there any communication with Weston, the NFTEarth Team, or those who submitted the reports outside of what is outlined in the the appeal documents?
  • Did @OPUser recuse himself from voting in this process given his past connections to L2DAO [which has historically been closely connected with NFTEarth]?
  • Do the reviewers still believe this proposal should be considered as legitimate by Badgeholders, or should they do their best to minimize the likelihood of an allocation?

A reminder to everybody that RPGF is distributing enormous resources to reward positive impact—and that we only have so much to distribute before we have to start really thinking about the sustainability of the program. The time is now to really up our standards.

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Reupping this for @dmars300 @OPUser @LauNaMu @Gonna.eth @joanbp @maaria.eth @ulerdogan @Fuji - at least somebody ought to break this down in some form

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Hey all - per suggestion from Mark in the Optimism Discord, I wanted to add an additional response here in the OP Forums.

As the voting for RPGF3 is coming to a close and our project is seemingly in close reach of quorum, it would be much appreciated if the badgeholders would weigh in on our application to help give us direction - really either way would be appreciated (for or against) - just to provide some strong sense of clarity at this point would be really nice. NFTEarth is currently siting at 9 ballots. Being that we are so close to deadline now, and it seems there is ample energy to kill our application from @alexcutlerdoteth Alex and @jackanorak Jack and Dicasso and Fractal Visions, which I do not find surprising given the history, it also appears there is some healthy support for our work as well and the further development of NFTs on the OP Stack and Superchain vision. Our application on Agora can be viewed here: NFTEarth RPGF3

Our application is showing we are right in the thick of things at present moment, ranked #260 on grow the pie tracker out of 643 total applications.

So let’s dive right in:

  • “Given one of the single most extensive collections of evidence of wrongdoing we’ve seen on a single applicant, what was the rationale for overturning on appeal?”

We could take apart this question piece by piece, but we do not need to do so because the accusations being made today are being done by the same individuals from March/April 2023 - and they have not been discussed any further since there was resolution at that point in time. I would point out that NFTEarth was a named RGPF Round 2 recipient - AFTER - all of this prior accusation/drama came to a close as well, and during that point in time while many accusations were made, I provided a full and detailed report of every single transaction that occurred onchain that was brought into question. If there was no penalty to the NFTEarth team, nor myself as an individual, or any findings of wrongdoing… which there was not (again this is now going back around 8-9 months ago now) - then this means that factually…there is not an “extensive collection of evidence of wrongdoing”… as you chose to phrase it. How we use our words is important, and I don’t appreciate being labeled as someone contributing to a project that has an ‘extensive collection of evidence of wrongdoing’ - when this is factually not the case. This is poor choice of wording at best and intentional libel at worst and the assertion as if it were fact is not true, which makes the basis of your question flawed. As an example, I think a more accurate and fair way may have been to say something like “given NFTEarth was accused of something that was against the rules in the past (which was then addressed by the team and no formal violations occurred), I still feel this appeal deserves an extra set of eyes to be sure it belongs in RPGF3… what do you think?” - to me, this seems like a much more reasonable question to have asked.

  1. I think it is important to start by reminding the Collective that the environment of the community surrounding Optimism feels to me and many others I’ve spoken with to be highly toxic and extremely hostile right now… and this is absolutely not a conducive environment for supporting the growth of the OP Stack and the Superchain. I feel that this needs to be stated again and again until action is taken until we have a community that exists where builders/delegates/citizens feel safe expressing their views and can do things such as say… apply for RPGF funding without the fear of being attacked by competitors or people that you have a history of disagreement with. And even more explicitly, when I am being attacked by a team (Alex and Jack of Velodrome) of which have received publicly disclosed funding of over $10,000,000 from the OP Foundation (source Grow The Pie).

How am I (or anyone for that matter) seriously supposed to feel comfortable presenting my side of any story when the accusers are these specific people? Like come on everyone - let’s use a little common sense, this is common knowledge of the individuals asking the questions and brings up the common idiom of: Judge, jury, and executioner. (Meaning: If someone is said to be the judge, jury, and executioner, it means they are in charge of every decision made, and they have the power to be rid of whomever they choose.) - and makes feeling like responding to any inquiry you make or are questioned on by Jack or Alex is completely and utterly futile. In systems of accountability like we have with IRL justice systems, or what the OP Collective is aiming to bring onchain, you don’t get to bring up past accusations of someone or a project, in this case the NFTEarth project, if its the same entity from an already settled matter - and then… just claim it is now under a new pretense, which is precisely what you have done here by flagging this. And to take this one step further, this is especially true if the accusations being made are coming from the SAME parties as before - which they are - it is important that this is clearly pointed out for badgeholders.

The rationale for overturning the appeal would seem to be: the complaint was not valid, as it is not. Did you not follow up on the this? Did you not read the post specifically addressing all comments? They are categorically addressed - and provable on GitHub regarding the Indexer - and OpenSea/NFTEarth for the NFT - go see for yourself - both the comments about the Indexer and the NFT created by the team.

  1. No. I can only speak for myself but the answer is simply no. I would add here though: To the contrary of what you are insinuating here, we were reached out to multiple times about getting our RPGF for Round 3 application submitted by OP representatives - we were not even planning on applying because we have felt this is such a hostile environment - and that an event or something might transpire almost exactly like this one here; would unfold someway, somehow. Unfortunately - we were right about that part and this has been a massive drain on my energy and our team’s energy and again brings us all the way back to questioning why we are even here… please badgeholders, make a CLEAR statement on our project, this is what is genuinely most important right now - that we reach quorum - vote us for 0 or vote us what you believe is right but give us an answer so we can take clear direction - even if not one that is spoken to directly about how to proceed as a team, we can use your votes as a guide.

  2. Did @OPUser recuse himself from voting in this process given his past connections to L2DAO 2 [which has historically been closely connected with NFTEarth]? I don’t understand the motivation of this question. Obviously I cannot answer for OPUser but this question is not one that OPUser would be able to answer without operating under the pretense that you set when you ask the question. Did Jack recuse himself of voting based on his past connections with blank, which has been historically closely connected with NFTEarth? I think we can say a simple example of this question phrased another way is all anyone needs to see. So let’s say I’m one of the badgeholders here for a second - and also - let’s say I’m someone who is not on the NFTEarth team. Question becomes: “Did Weston recuse himself from voting in this process given his past connections to Thales? [which has historically been closely connected with Synthetix]” Or, "Did Weston recuse himself from voting in this process given his past connections to Saddle Finance? [which has historically been closely connected with Yearn Finance]” Every protocol is going to have issues to be dealt with as they grow and mature over time (these are two random examples that I am using that are relevant only because I have contributed to both protocols and it makes the point clear. Because, some people contribute to many projects, such as myself, and so… does that mean I represent them all? No, of course not. Does that mean my actions at one point in time represent the project actions at another point in time in the future, or the the actions of an entirely different project that has a connection to the aforementioned project? No, again, - of course not.

  3. Do the reviewers still believe this proposal should be considered as legitimate by Badgeholders, or should they do their best to minimize the likelihood of an allocation? Again I cannot answer for any of the above mentioned, but let’s follow your logic @jackanorak - This feels like a question designed to bring doubt to badgeholders or anyone who answers… where almost quite literally anything the person would reply with would be used to discredit them - or anything they say if it does not appear to come across in a negative light towards NFTEarth’s application for RPGF3.

I’d like to express my sincere gratitude for all the badgeholders/delegates and OP community members and team members for the efforts for collective onchain governance and all the progress being made on Optimism. Thanks again to everyone who has shown us support over the past week or two, it’s been extremely stressful, and I hope my answers here are useful to the Collective in helping to form an opinion on NFTEarth and its merits for RPGF3.

Best regards,

Weston

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A lot of words, none of which address any substantial evidence of wrongdoing which I will repost again here to make sure it doesn’t get lost:

Some specific follow-ups…

You were named a recipient because you qualified prior to the second round of accusations surfacing and there was no mechanism to remove you. You said yourself the foundation never awarded you the funds. Any guesses why?

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You’ve tried this before and the Foundation has had to officially correct you. They were clear that while they could not enforce the code of conduct retroactive, the concerns were well known and documented and issued you a warning.

“this does not indicate that the concerns have been resolved.”

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And all of this proceeds all of the additional evidence of misdeeds that surfaced subsequently:

A reminder the accusers also include the leaders of the Arbitrum Grant program, members of the Millennium Club DAO that you ripped off, etc etc.

Reminds me of the old saying “if someone is an asshole, they’re an asshole, if everyone is an asshole, you’re the asshole”

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A drain on your team? Seriously?

Your team had officially abandoned the project as 10/26 after your ban from Arbitrum to launch a new exchange under anon identities that you subsequently abandoned.

NFTE has been functionally dead on on Optimism for nearly 8 months with seemingly 0 trading activity.

You seemingly only pop up when you think you can extract value.

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The complaint contained documentation of wrong doing. The response contained nothing but a denial. That is where the breakdown occurred.

You need evidence to dismiss evidence.

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The complaint contained documentation of wrong doing. The response contained nothing but a denial. That is where the breakdown occurred.

You need evidence to dismiss evidence.

So let’s specifically address the breakdown then @alexcutlerdoteth as everything else you are mentioning here has been extensively covered and additionally was not part of the NFTEarth appeal for RPGF3 - which is what is explicitly in question and what you have brought up here.

The project has not been “abandoned” - you are in the Discord community, why would you make a false statement on a public forum of such a thing knowing full-well it is not true? Anyone can come join the Discord community right now or visit the live application.

The report filed had 2 complaints of wrong-doing to be specific. 1 of copyright infringement.

This doesn’t make much sense as a form of violation, and again feels like an attempt to simply confuse badgeholders or whomever would have been reviewing the application, but by copyright infringement, I take to mean in this scenario someone claiming we did not actually complete this NFT as an original work by the team - so I will prove with evidence that we did. Again, as stated in the appeal, we have not received any notification/complaint/report of copyright infringement for this NFT collection.

In order to provide you with ample proof this report filed is inaccurate and this is an original NFT completed by the team, I’ve gone searching back through conversations trying to find enough evidence of this - and I was able to locate in the Unlock Protocol Discord evidence that proves how the project was created in order to show this is an original NFT made by our team and no copyright infringement occurred. I found this conversation with Julien, their protocol founder from several months back.

Here is a screencap of said conversation in Discord with him and a link to Unlock Protocol Unlock Protocol - you can see us discussing the idea for a token-gated music NFT on Optimism. He helped me figure out how to get it to work with Unlock Protocol. I explained what I was looking to accomplish and we figured it out all the technical details for making this a reality.

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Additionally here is the actual Unlock Protocol dashboard in real-time for the specific NFT lock for Better With L2:

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If you see they have added a new feature “download member list” - I have downloaded this .csv file and uploaded it to GitHub for anyone to review for any questions, further analysis or concerns. The GitHub repo is available to view here: Better With L2 Data I hope this is enough substantiating evidence of it being an original NFT collection created on Optimism. We had the idea for this, the design mechanics, and completed the build of this NFT collection and locked it with this specific lock from Unlock Protocol - there has not been any sort of copyright infringement made, or even brought up to the team in any capacity, ever, at any point over the past 9 months. It is an illegitimate claim - as stated in the appeal - this should be more than enough evidence to substantiate that this is an original work, completed by myself and the NFTEarth team exactly as stated on the RPGF application:

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The 2nd item in the report was about the Indexer, specifically that many teams, were using self-hosted Indexers

I think simply re-reading the response that was filed should be sufficient here to understand where the breakdown may be occurring still -

“Specifically what was cited was false information about being the only team building indexers. This is not was what was stated and appears they are just trying to cause confusion for badgeholders. Our team was and is still the only protocol to fork the Reservoir Indexer successfully, all other teams use their hosted version, which is a very different architecture.” - so based on this response - any proof to demonstrate this is the case, would be able to be seen in by reviewing GitHub repository of NFTEarth showing the Indexer that was spun up - which can be reviewed here on GitHub: NFTEarth Indexer. This is unquestionable evidence that what was stated on the RPGF application is true and proves with evidence both claims are false, in alignment with what was stated in the appeal.

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You are intentionally trying to evade the documentation. You focused on the only two portions of this statement that were not substantiated. Click the links my dude.

The first link reveals your ban from Arbitrum grant programs and links to supporting evidence, none of which was addressed by your appeal after the unanimous vote to remove.

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This thread on the Arbitrum forums provides and links to additional evidence:

A simple search of the Arbitrum forums also reveals evidence of:

None of this was addressed in your appeal or in your response.

You were the one who said that development had ceased following your ban from Arbitrum grants:

This is also when your account, the NFTEarth Account you control, the NFTEarth Alerts account you control, and your other alts all start tweeting exclusively about DREAM as well.

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So once again, we’ve got probably the single most extensive string of evidence to point to wrongdoing in a project that this ecosystem has seen, it receives an unanimous vote to remove, only to be overruled on appeal on a statement that doesn’t address any of the above.

That is what we are here to talk about, please stop wasting our time.

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Hey Everyone - I’ve extensively documented the connections between NFTE and Dreambyte. I would ask again the the badgeholder reviewers who overturned the NFTE exclusion from RPGF3 weigh in on the forums so we can figure out how to prevent this in the future.

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More updates: