I find it difficult to find the words to adequately describe the feelings I have towards crypto protocols who create tokens, but exclude people from receiving those token distributions based purely on their geographical region. This is troublesome for me, because if I use the language I'm honestly feeling I may be banned for hate speech. So I'm going rein myself in. I’m going to try and keep this civil.

Fuck. You. You cowardly fucks!

We're in this space because we believe in a fairer freer world, one where despots and tyrants aren't able to weaponize currency to steal from their poor citizens and enrich themselves. And instead of taking power from evil and giving it to the needy - you actively support the tyrants by needlessly obeying their whims! You spend all of this time and effort to build on a permissionless decentralized base layer - for what? To actively debase the efforts of those that came before you? I could even understand wanting to avoid indirectly funding immoral government actions. Nobody wants increased nuclear weapon proliferation, or to encourage the behavior of rogue nation states who engage in wanton cyberwarfare. But as evidenced by your overbroad exclusion metrics, you don’t actually give a shit about any of that. You’re perversely helping these shitty governments exploit their populations, in fact.

I despise you. Your fear of legal retaliation is the epitome of cowardice. We have public goods funding, we have retroactive funding, multiple legal funds and associations dedicated to protecting your rights and the rights of the protocol users. These funds and organizations have supported countless developers. They’ve won battle after battle in the courts! Yet you can't stomach the risk of doing the same?! Even going so far as to block VPN traffic just in case someone would dare defy their own government?!

Presumably you want to decentralize your protocol, but from the very start you choose to abandon the principles of decentralization. Don't even get me started on the ridiculous disproportionate handouts to VCs and the pittances allowed to the actual users who give your protocol life. By choosing to exclude regions with unfavorable governments, you're excluding the poorest users, developers, community members (who have cumulatively risked the most time and capital to support you!) - and giving even more favor to the rich (who can travel to claim), the VCs (who no doubt feature prominently from the countries you're excluding), and most greedily yourselves.

So, let’s review. Your decision to geo-block users is (in no particular order):

Greedy and self-serving - ✅
Hurtful to the poorest and most oppressed - ✅
Hurtful to crypto ethos writ large - ✅
Beneficial to tyrants - ✅
A boon to power grabbing bureaucrats - ✅
Devastating to decentralization - ✅
A detriment to your stated goals - ✅
A bait-and-switch attack on users - ✅
Needless cowardice - ✅

Despicable, reprehensible, vile behavior.

Burn in hell.

Kind regards,
ruz.eth