It has been some time since I published because I was processing research into crypto, especially Ethereum. I watch/listen to the core developer calls, watch the posted videos, check my twitter feeds, check my own series of Google news alerts, and so forth. This is what I'm finding:
Courtesy within an open community, perhaps to a fault. I think developers might benefit from making "certainty" estimates when they offer a development timeline for an EIP they are working on. Just an approximate % would help investors estimate downline risk.
Attempts to "decide" without sufficient input or documentation. This is a natural consequence of being on a call with some members of the team absent. A decision when the participants are logged in as to which items can be appropriately decided would shorten calls and increase general accountability.
An urgency to meet deadlines for implementation versus testing. Setting a test date makes sense. Implementation a dependent variable. When clock time and goal time are conflated, people get bumfuzzled. This is one of the major reasons for stagnation in the price of the token in the investor community. We don't know how to distinguish between a successful test and a successful implementation and can't assess our risks.
The "magicians" and the developers. Clarifying whether our uber developers endorse efforts of our core developers would be helpful. We don't need Vitalik himself, but we do need someone who has a larger vision of the ethereum ecosystem to provide preliminary validation of work done to date on EIPs and sort through benefits and priorities. The Foundation website would be a good place to do this.
Twitter noise and irritating uninformed opinion. Every day, I see petty and whiny messaging, outrageous claims, and criticism published by the crypto gurus and their "news" outlets. That is a good thing from a free press point of view, but the Ethereum Foundation does not sort through these for those they can verify or deny. Why not? This information would not even need to be "pushed." It can just be a checkmark placed next to various feeds from various organizations on the Foundation's web page to indicate the information has been vetted. An example is the self-promoting "news" from folks involved with Tron and other tokens about who is beating whom with transaction volumes and making false equivalences between POS and POW and transaction - volumes and mining costs etc.
I love Ethereum, but don't have the physical ability to attend a Devcon and argue this stuff face to face. Please, as you read the above and consider other ways to make our ecosystem one that grown-up investors can join....... advocate for simple communication and process improvements at Devcon this year. 