Despite all of the controversy over their decision to change the payout structure and not award the prizes they originally claimed they would, Sirius Labs has made good on the promises to the winners they selected in their Chia hackathon.
Multiple winners have come to me to show that as promised during the winners announcement, the payments went out 5 days ago in USDT (Tether) at the following etherscan address. Good on them, because this hackathon and the decisions made therein did not generate the good press for their VC firm they were hoping for.
This whole endeavor has been a lesson in properly setting expectations, for both ourselves and those we do business with. Sirius Labs clearly set expectations for themselves too high for the market readiness of the Chia ecosystem and the projects it would generate. In turn they then set expectations to the developer community for what the prize payouts would look like that didn’t match the reality of the projects that would be created at this time.
Had they clearly outlined what their expectations for their grand prize would be and articulated that they did not expect anyone to win it without immediate market readiness they would have been fine. Had they told the community there was a chance they would hand out no prizes if there were no projects they felt deserved it they would also be fine.
People plan for what they expect, and they expect what they are told. Let this be a lesson to everyone in this space that setting proper expectations is more important than almost any other factor in creating customer or client satisfaction.