The recent news that the Spacemesh operating company filed for insolvency hit me pretty hard. I spent nearly six years full time working on the project, and believe as strongly as ever in its mission and vision. I've mostly reserved my thoughts since leaving in December, but since everyone keeps asking, here are a few quick thoughts: - Spacemesh got a lot of things right but also made a lot of mistakes. I'm beginning to write about them this week, more soon. - The company may have died but the blockchain is still alive, at least for now. Blockchains don't die so easily. As long as there's still a supportive community and a few people running nodes, they tend to stick around for a long time. (Having said that, Spacemesh is more complex than most protocols, and if all of the company's infrastructure suddenly goes away, there will be problems.) - I understand that the remaining team plans to convert the project into a community-led DAO. DAOs are complicated and typically not very good at developing products or complex software, so I'm not sure what the outcome will be here. - I've been asked many times what I would do differently. It's hard to give a concise answer here. As mentioned, the fact is that a lot of mistakes were made and IMHO if Spacemesh is going to have a second chance at life, a lot of things would need to change. Many of those changes are painful changes. - My responsibility today is first and foremost to the incredible NEAR community and to the House of Stake project, but I do of course also feel an obligation to the Spacemesh community that gave so much and suffered with us across the years. - The key question on my mind is, if Spacemesh were to be relaunched, what would we want to salvage? What's the key value proposition when you take away failed experiments like PoST and mining from home? Athena is awesome, the community and project values are awesome, and I even like the economics, but these things together don't make a blockchain. This is the question that's currently keeping me up at night. If you have thoughts, I'm keen to hear them. DMs are open, as always. <3