Hello Breadfam,
We're shocked, sad and disappointed to be writing this one. For those who didn't see the news yesterday, here's a quick summary.
Artizen, a platform that Bread and our partners used to raise funds, ceased operations yesterday. The founder, René Pinnell, has suffered medical emergencies and has been forced to step away.
This was unexpected, and Bread is owed significant amounts in funds raised on the platform.
We have been informed that the matching funds will not come, and all contributions will be refunded to all who donated, minus the fees.
Getting funding in crypto has been hard if you're not working on an exchange, a coin mixer or a prediction market. And the people with the greatest desire to support the public sphere are often the ones who aren't flush with disposable income to donate. The Solidarity Fund exists to make that middle ground work. So when a platform like Artizen came along with huge matching funds, a community of like-minded projects, and a very public, doxxed founder, it felt like an opportunity that doesn't come along often.
Many in the Bread team and wider network have met René in person and came away convinced he was doing this for the "right" reasons. He's an artist who wants to see art flourish. After a successful round, we, like many in our communities, rallied support around the platform.
We believe people when they say they're unwell, and we trust that. But a lot of creators are owed a lot of money, and right now it's incredibly hard to actually speak to a human about any of it. All contact is now going through Venus, Artizen's AI agent.
We'll say it plainly. A platform holding other people's money with no system backup and no other people to talk to is, at best, shockingly bad opsec. At worst, it's exploiting the goodwill of a community that wants nothing more than to create a better world.
We'll be on Artizen's case following up the refunds the whole way through. If you've contributed, you need to make some noise to make sure you get your funds back.
Artizen's tweets are now protected, so if you were already following them, mention them, repost, screenshot and do whatever you need to bring more attention to this.
If you see returns that are too good to believe, it's probably too good to believe.
Artizen regularly offered matching funds worth many multiples of the deposit, along with several time-based milestones that could really stack up rewards.
That's why the Bread Solidarity Fund works the way it does:
Lower yield, because it's pegged to the Sky Savings Rate, with no other external funding.
A strong dollar peg from BREAD to xDAI, because xDAI is a battle-tested, over-collateralised stablecoin.
A transparent treasury of onchain assets that anyone who's interested can check. There's no opaque "endowment fund."
A track record of over two years distributing to real projects doing real work.
If you have stablecoins lying around, you can mobilise them right now towards the Bread Solidarity Fund at https://fund.bread.coop/
If you have funds to spare, we'd also welcome donations, because we were most definitely relying on income generated through Artizen to support our operations. You can donate here: https://giveth.io/project/bread-cooperative
We'll keep you posted on Artizen as this moves.
Solidarity forever 🍞