This last Polynya's blog post is strong, painful, and mostly very close to the truth.

https://polynya.mirror.xyz/ptscXuh3J3KOj2uJAn0vrEanpn2nauwA7iytYZ4cM9U

The one-liner summary of my answer is "we should take the responsibility for this shift right now"

Below are more thoughts around the topic and if it resonates with you – feel free to reach out I say something :)

I agree in many things:

> "It’s the same story every time - there’s some grandiose narrative for what’s nothing more than pure casino." – true

> "Others clearly know all of this is very, very bad, but give it a wide berth, “I’ll just focus on the good and ignore the very very bad”. – very true

> "this evil in crypto is banal and normalized" – very very true

I can't disagree. But ...

"Crypto's broken moral compass" – yes it is. The same is fair about the humanity's moral compass.

The difference is that we can't do anything with the humanity moral compass – the humanity is too huge and its powerful institutions are too strong comparing to the amount of people who are ready to take responsibility for the desired "cultural shift".

But we can do something with the crypto's broken moral compass. The number of people with moral standards and high ethics in crypto is very high (if we compare %-to-% in crypto vs in humanity). But we should take the responsibility for this shift right now. Every person (including myself) who truly care about crypto's future should take the responsibility for its future right now.

Because it will become only worse. Why? Because more resources are put into the domain, more power is aggregated in the domain – the more it attracts actors who appreciate resources and power.

The thing is that as much as we need resources and power in the domain – we need the culture, the culture of doing right things and not doing wrong things. And the culture is not falling from the sky, it is built absolutely in the same manner as code, row by row.

And sorry for telling this but airdrop hunters don't contribute to the culture.

Culture is the network of long-term relations between people who sincerely care about the domain's future.

And I should say (as an opposition to polynya's article) that I am very bullish on the blockchain industry culture. I am here for just around two years, and within these two years I've met several dozens of people with high moral and ethics (it's kind of more than within all years of my previous life).

When I got to know Matt, Zac, Joe, Sebastian, Meredith, Dave, Paul, Estevan, Carlos, Isabella, Alex, Julian, Lior, Lev, Marcus and some other folks (and I am a very non-social person almost not going to any events) – I am absolutely confident saying that this domain is worth putting life into it. Because it has a large number of people who care about its future, who are playing a long-term game.

And for the full transparency, I also met people who were not nice at all, who promised and didn’t make it, who left without saying a word, who lied knowing that they were lying. The difference is that I am here not for these people even though they are part of the game.

And a funny thing but it takes a very little time to feel and realize that the person you met shares kind of the same values. And when you feel it – it feels fantastic.

But we can do much better! And we should do much better while the crypto domain is still small because now is the right moment to build the culture and later it will be too late because the domain will become too large.

What can we do much better? Care about each other. It's as simple.

Culture is the network of long-term relations between people who sincerely care about the domain's future and each other.

> We can stop dividing into we and they decreasing the amount of barricades between people and projects. At the end of the day we never know what will happen tomorrow. Today you're working in a companies-competitors and tomorrow you might end up being neighbours.

Instead of dividing into "our" and "their", "here" and "there", "right" and "wrong" we can enjoy being together. We can enjoy sharing the same crypto domain, building in the same domain, sharing the same values. It's a very rare thing in the modern world to feel the place of belonging and crypto domain can be a place of belonging for all of us.

> We can help each other when asked directly. But furthermore, we can be more attentive to people around to see at the right moment that we can be of any help in whatever they are doing (if we really can).

Most people are so busy, so cool, so titled that they don't have any free attention to look at people around. But it is worth it. Because if "today" I help 10 people, "tomorrow" they help 100 people. This is exactly how culture grows and flourish.

> Appreciate each other. Good people are rare. Professional people are rare. Kind people are rare. Caring people are rare. Furthermore, western culture doesn't encourage to express appreciation in small things in everyday life. It doesn't encourage us to tell each other what we like in each other, what we like in the work of each other, what we admire in the work of each other.

It encourages to critisize, provide constructive feedback, and check if the results meet the KPIs.

> Make the newcomers feel welcome. We never know who will leave in 5 min and who will stay side by side forever. We can stop thinking about how long is one in the industry, how many crypto winters they survived through, how many startups they built and money raised. Instead, we can think about each other based on values. Good values lead to building good projects or contributing to good projects. It can be a matter of time, number of trials, etc – but the values are the drivers and the key factor of the results of the long-term game. The values are the reason why people won't leave the industry when it becomes hard. The values are the reason why people will stay till the end.

And if we want more people with high moral and ethics to come to the industry – we should be seriously committed to these values on our own. This is the only way. And it's not because people need a "proper example", it's because to recognize your place of belonging while surfing through the world – this place should have some signs of recognition. These signs are values.

> Be more serious about commitments and promises we do, take more personal responsibility. Words are cheap but words are a medium of communication. If we tell something – we should be able to follow it. If we were wrong – we should be able to admit that we were wrong and take responsibility for it. Communication is the key. But it's not about reading books on efficient communication, it's about readiness to be sincerely open with each other.

We have everything, absolutely everything, including the right moment, to re-build the crypto domain culture as a place with high moral, and ethics, and values. The only thing we need – readiness to take personal responsibility for it right now. If we have this readiness – further it's very simple: doing right things and not doing wrong things.

For contact: twitter or @l_girll on tg.