not sure its insight, but stacker news convo here

https://stacker.news/items/636091/r/itsMoro 

 I only know what they officially posted in their announcement and blog. It sounds like complete bullshit. 

 It honestly reads like they need to grow up. Being disillusioned with the industry you work in is par for the course for most adults.  
If you don’t want to work on Mutiny, that’s your prerogative; just say so. You don’t get the right to shift blame onto what you see as a shift in ideals of a community you only pose to represent. 

 that fedi experiment ended up blowing up. probably ran the numbers on the premium subscription and realized that won't cut it. pivot seems like a reasonable decision to me. 

 Projects and companies fail. That’s nothing new. But at least have the integrity to be open about the actual reasons why. Their messaging so far sounds to me like total bullshit. 

 That stood out to me too. Very strange. I get it that people change and projects often fail. If this was all done on their own dime then it would still suck, but life happens. But what accountability is there, or should there be, when donations and grant funds are involved, especially within such a short time frame? Do they pay it back? Do they keep it? Did they already spend it and can’t sustain themselves any further? The blog post and announcement sound like corporate BS and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. 

 What have you done for them that you think you are entitled to anything more than what they've disclosed in their article? 

Did you donate?  

 “Don’t ask questions. Nothing to see here.” Lol listen to yourself. 

 Chill... just trust. Don't verify. 
🤣 

 They don't owe you shit 

 Dude, calm down. I can ask any questions I want. Lol 

 Did they get donations and grants, or was it just VC money?  VCs expect to lose money on some ideas, so there is a risk/reward aspect there. 

 Yes they were a grant recipient from OpenSats last July. 

 Most grants I've seen are paid in stages exactly for this reason. Quarterly, monthly, etc. I doubt there are any strings attached if that's the case here. It's likely not worth pursuing regardless, other than maybe to take ownership of the project and branding to appoint new people. I'd like to see that here. They shouldn't be able to take and have the sole choice in closing the project entirely. The grant holder should be able to take the project over if they choose to. 

 Ah good to know about the stages. So you’re saying that Opensats can take over the project or you would want them to be able to take it over? 

 I'm saying it would be fair if that were the case. I don't think it's fair for investors, grant donors, etc to just be shafted and left with nothing unexpectedly. But that's on those parties for not having an agreement if they don't have one.  

 I also know nothing about their financials. I just  meant in general from what I've seen with grants 

 I understand. Thanks 

 No idea. I’m sure it’s between them and the grand foundation. They also had raised at least $300k in investor funding, and again that’s between them and their investors. I assume that’s why they left the business “operational” even though they’re killing off the only products they actually offer. Lol. It smells shady, and it hurts trust in other open source efforts and in the OpenSats vetting process. 

 Vetting process must be difficult. Seems impossible to know a project’s intensions a year in advance 

 Your input is especially valuable. Maybe that’s it, but the announcement didn’t feel right being so out of the blue and focusing on personal reasons (Ben got a job, Tony fell out of love with Bitcoin). Lol. I’ve learned to listen to my gut on stuff when something feels off. Doesn’t mean I’m right every time though, but I’m often at least partially right once more info comes out. 

 Intuition is not to be toyed with. 

 No idea about Tether. Mutiny is listed on Ten31’s website though. 

 Good feedback. 💜 

 Even though Mutiny is self custodial, it requires that your channels be with their node for liquidity right? I don’t see an option to open a channel to another node. If that’s the case, any community version would need to have a dedicated node for liquidity. 

 Got it.  But we have node runners in the community, no? 

 Correction, it seems you can open channels to other nodes. So that makes it more usable. Still would need to be maintained and updated. And I’m not sure what features may or may not be unavailable without their LSP. 

 Probably not. Probably no refunds for the 3 times I paid 10k to open a channel that got forced close a couple days later. That app was doomed to fail from the start. 

 At the very least they ought to do that. 

 I get what they are doing is difficult, and we are early adopters in this and it’s part of the risk, but i was put off by their “just deal with it” attitudes. 

 you apparently haven't talked to nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnyv9kh2uewd9hj7qg3waehxw309ahx7um5wgh8w6twv5hsz8nhwden5te0dehhxarj94c82c3wwajkcmr0wfjx2u3wdejhgtcpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qyvhwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnndehhyapwwdhkx6tpdshsz8thwden5te0dehhxarj9ekh2arfdeuhwctvd3jhgtnrdakj7qgewaehxw309akxjemgw3hxjmn8wfjkccte9e3k7mf0qyv8wumn8ghj7cmjv4shgu3wdehhxarj9emkjmn99uqsuamnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dshsqgzmuezx429rrsgm8dznh7x6ljdngmln9rgl5ydqlgp2rejxra4fkywfegex  before lol 

 Haha my only interaction with him was in short Nostr replies. And was basically, “yep, it is what it is.  enjoy the tool. Or don’t.” 

 he doesn't beat around the bush. but he's a good person.  

 I never want to judge too harshly on text interactions and I can usually give benefit of the doubt until I meet someone in person. It was just getting expensive for me to want to keep throwing money at for the, just suck it up attitude. 

 sure. that's understandable.  

 We've stopped accepting new Mutiny+ about 2 months ago. 

 Farewell, 16,000 sats. 

 Lol 

 I thought they said a total of 800k in funding for 18 months 

 i see that mentioned but don't see a public announcement on that funding. 

 Oh 

 For a team and project of that size, $1.8M for an 18-month runway is more realistic. 

 Like that’s 44k a month man how many people were working there? 

 3 salaries plus freelancers, tech infra subscriptions, servers etc, any marketing etc. It goes fast. 

 This is an estimate of what they should have to keep going, not what they had. I have no idea what they had. Loved their product, hope to see it again in some form. 

 It’s a rough time to be in tech. Pre-seed on up. It will settle. Eventually. 

 yeah, i'm seeing problems in my own work too, getting a definite muted feels from my boss, first time since i started waiting so long after beginning of month for my pay to go through also

economy is tanking hard, so that means probably a huge money print is upcoming and then later on raging inflation and more hitting the brakes and further the whole thing slides out of contrtol

with the real shink going on the NGU in bitcoin is not gonna be as good or mean as much when there is less it can be used for, but on the other hand, the rush to cash is gonna mean a lot more bitcoin so ... i'm on a bitcoin standard anyway, i pray for a good ngu so i can get some stuff organised 

 Hang in there. Sounds a lot like my 2007, I was going through that a year before the economy dumped. Clients had trouble making payments back then, work slowed down. 

I’m a freelancer, tech is my primary income and tech winter has been long. It’s getting better but I diversified my ass off and stepped out of the tech bubble a bit. Shut down my brick and mortar. Just doing things differently than 2007. A much more positive experience today, for me, but the signs are there. The volatility, for sure. 

 yeah, i think the coming 12 months are gonna be very rough

but for those of us who know the score it's gonna be relatively smooth because we are not in the way of the oncoming train, that will help because people will notice we aren't sinking like the mainstream 

 We have something we didn’t have in 2008 😉 

That was a rough one for me. I worked for a giant corporation that furloughed us. We made half for months on end. It was brutal. 

More prepared this go around. 

 i wish i was more more prepared... for me at that time i was insulated from the real world in the UBI bubble of australian long term unemployment just before the point at which i started to realise it was never going to change while i lived there... 4 years later i left the country for good, was no scope for me to really become economically mobile

has only taken 12 years to reach the point now where i will likely weather this next storm where before i would have probably sunk into suicidal depression

just mainly hoping to establish something of a tenure as a bitcoin/nostr dev so i can tread water until the economy fully corrects from the current insanity

i'm not so optimistic that i've feathered my nest adequately at this point, i think i should have reconsidered my relocation options sooner when it was easier for me to do it 

 Our countries are similar… they screw is similarly 😉 

The mistake I made back then was sticking with what I knew like there would be a return or recovery. I just don’t think that happens anymore. 

 yeah, it is a corkscrew going downwards, at some point the people are gonna realise they have no more cork to go and flip out, guillotines time 

 Most do not want the realization because it means they must change and make effort 

 yeah, i think that it's coming in the next cycle for them, we are deeper in recession than we were during the great depression by orders of magnitude, worse than the winter of our discontent, tecehnological deflation is hiding it 

 Problem is, the mainstream kids just don’t see it that way. They don’t try to. They believe what they are taught in high school and by the media. They don’t comprehend the forces affecting their lives. 

 at some point reality will pierce the membrane of brainwashing, it is inevitable that eventually the tricks run out of effect, it's the same as how eventually printing more money becomes impossible due to literally mathematics (and wheelbarrows)

speaking of that last one, they have a trick against the appearance of wheelbarrows but the dizzying moves of NGU will show it, that is still to come 

 Success isn’t guaranteed, and I know lots of projects and companies fail. I applaud them for trying, but the way they announced this leaves a lot of questions, more than it answers in my opinion. 

 i've met tony and ben a few times. they're good people that are incredibly smart and talented. maybe im blinded by considering them friends and also because i never fully dove into using mutiny on a daily basis. does this suck? absolutely. it hurts. and im sure users are upset too. 

 No question regarding their talent. Can’t speak to anything on a personal level beyond what I’ve seen them post on social media. My main point is that the decision to completely shut down the wallet and the way the announcement was made is not in line with their messaging for the past year since launching the app publicly. 

 that's a lot of money. i read somewhere else its a few times more but 300k is a lot of money. it's important to see how much money flows through this space (both open source and bitcoin), what is being used for and the outcome. What was the effort in user adoption ? 

man, people are so privileged - Just come here, ra ra abut bitcoin, take in half a million, a year later say opps sorry, i tried, didnt work, bye bye. This is insane.  

 “We’re still early” also means we’re still learning and will fuck up things until we’ve figured them out. 

I celebrate everyone who’s helping us to fail upwards. 

 Agreed. We need more cypherpunks in the arena trying things. Even if those things don’t work out or aren’t perfect. 

 Thank you for investing in this team and accepting the risk! 🙏 

 startups are way fucking harder than most people realize 

 100% 

 Give up after less than a year = scrappy? I think they got fat from the money raised and ran 

 Are you speaking from any kind of experience here? Got any software business or investing results of your own to back up your opinion? 

 Thanks for investing and for sharing these thoughts. 

 Thank you this is helpful feedback. I applaud their effort and talent. The announcement was sudden and out of the blue, and not in line with their messaging since launching a year ago. I think any company building a product that people rely on for using money ought to carefully consider how they make decisions and changes and how they communicate those out to users. 

 I feel like that’s fair criticism. 

 🤝 

 Fucking hard indeed! 

 Honestly I feel they tried to do too much too soon.  Hopefully their next endeavors will bring them more success. 

 I have not found a single open source toC application case. ToC applications lack a positive incentive mechanism for open source. Zuckerberg open sourced Llama because Meta missed the best time. He was forced to open source by competition and surpass OpenAI by imitating Android. The other reasons are all high-sounding. He is not an open source advocate. These vested interests who advocate open source are also unwilling to open source their current successful applications. The successful open source companies I have seen are toB companies. Most of the successful open source software companies open source some common tools in some emerging industries. For example, the big data and AI industries. After more companies use this tool on github, they provide value-added services around the tool. For example, Databricks. 

Starting a business is difficult. You have to face team salary and product revenue issues every day. Lightning wallets also need to face legal risks. I understand Tony's pressure, but this is the price of creating new things. You can take a break if you feel you can't stand it. This is a rare opportunity to reflect and grow. It is common for startups to fail, and failure is a way to find the right path. But Tony needs to consider his future direction. "I've fallen out of love for Bitcoin and the industry." 

 I was with Tony, Ben and Paul in Bitcoin Commons in Austin when they were launching Mutiny & explaining how they'll monetize... and that you're in.

I though it was quite good play considering the talent of the team. 

 I felt good about it. Still do. 

 Way better than 90+% of the bets I've seen in startup land over the last decade+. Also, they're shutting down the product, not the company... have been hard at work for quite a while.

I had no idea there was this much discussion on it. From what I read today, it seems to me more about people caring about their success and struggling to express it than anything else. 

 Absolutely. I think that’s the correct read. It just goes to show what a passionate customer base they built. Which is a testament to the team. 

 Awesome product. Great team. Passionate, but small customer base. 

Perhaps too focused on “western” adoption? 

Cool product for their passionate customer base, but a “nice to have” vs a “need to have” when focus of primary base is on SOV vs MOE. 

  the influencer cartel was the major part of this. 

 I think we all want to see self custodial lightning succeed with a degree of ease on par with custodial lightning, especially where it intersects with nostr like Mutiny did. It was an exciting and promising product, and I think the hopes of it getting better with time kept people on board even with the channel closures and other issues. The ecash integration was exciting. The fact that it runs in a browser was exciting. And all you had to do was download an app or save a PWA to your phone. The hiccups were frustrating but perhaps tolerable as their work continued. But then this announcement came out of the blue, and speaking for myself it felt like they weren’t saying everything. I respect what they built and the talent it took to do it. It felt like they spent the last year building huge momentum and everyone’s trust, and abruptly pulled the plug on the very thing they built that trust on. It’s just very disappointing.  

 Agreed 

 With the very recent change in leadership, including Marks as new Chief Product Officer, my guess would be that they have a new product or direction already in mind and just not ready yet to announce what it is.

If I had my druthers, it would be web of trust related.🤞🏻 

 I’m curious. Tony said in an earlier reply that they weren’t building another wallet, so I’m wondering what else they may be working on. 

 I'm honestly sad to see Mutiny shut down.

Startups are super hard. Businesses targeted toward power-users are even harder.

From the outside, if there's something I think we can learn from this great work, I think there's a lesson in that. We need to know our customers. Most customers aren't power-users.

Mutiny was really growing on me in the past few months. I featured it heavily in my recent Nostr article. I was an active user. As a literal user I'm sad to see it shut down. What a great wallet it has been. Great work from the team.

 

 so just assume users are dumb and even subhuman and make some AI prison that they will love? 

 https://blog.mutinywallet.com/mutiny-wallet-is-shutting-down/#:~:text=Mutiny%20Wallet%20will,will%20come%20soon. 

 No, he raised enough money to say fuck you and ran 

 Are you claiming they stole money? That doesn’t appear to be the case. Even investors such as @HODL have come out and said they don’t think anything shady happened. So no money appears to have been misappropriated. They gave very advanced notice that it’s shutting down so you can take out your money easily, and no users got rugged. They transparently described many struggles they’ve had along the way, both in blog posts and in podcasts. Hence how I know not have covenants is/was frustrating. 

 You call it dunking on devs. I call it asking for clarity and transparency. 

 They have a public blog post answering every question you asked minus giving exact dollar amount which isn’t a fair expectation 

 “Fuck that and fuck them unless they’re more forthright with everyone about what’s going on.”

so polite! 

 Yes and gfy too 🫂 I’m just speaking in Tony’s native tongue. 

 🤙🏽💜😂 

 It’s been a year since launch so I don’t doubt they used a lot of funds in that time. Labor, resources, etc, aren’t chea, even for a small team. But something about it didn’t smell right the way it was suddenly announced. 

 “I fell out of love with bitcoin” was the sleaziest excuse ever.  He should open up
the books to stop people speculating 😂 

 That statement was odd lol 

 Thanks for the reply 🙏 I’ve gotten several good responses including some from Tony that help give more context, and have re-read the blog post and combed through some of the discussion on Stacker News. The news was just sudden, at least for the end users. Mutiny has been one of very few wallets that showed a lot of promise for Nostr users in particular. Maybe it should have been tested more before launching publicly, or maybe it was too overhyped for what it was able to actually do as a wallet, I don’t know. I appreciate their work both on the wallet and their contributions to bitcoin and lightning.