Key points to remember
- Daniele Sestagalli has called for Wonderland to be closed due to divisions within the community.
- Sestagalli made the comments despite a community vote that saw a majority of respondents signaling they want to save the project.
- The statement follows a dramatic week for the Wonderland community after the project’s cash manager was unmasked as a former convict and co-founder of the QuadrigaCX exchange.
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“The Wonderland experience is coming to an end. It is clear from the vote that the community is divided,” Sestagalli wrote.
Wonderland drama continues
Daniele Sestagalli ended Wonderland.
The disgraced DeFi founder, who rose to prominence in the community leading Wonderland late last year, posted a storm of tweets late Sunday, expressing his feelings about how it should end. “The Wonderland experience is coming to an end. It is clear from the vote that the community is divided,” he wrote. “The core and heart of Wonderland is always the community. agree on whether to continue or not, it means that we have failed.
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The Wonderland experience is coming to an end. It is clear from the vote that the community is divided. The core and heart of Wonderland is always the community. If we can’t agree whether to continue or not, it means we failed.— Daniele never asks the DM (@danielesta) January 30, 2022
The statement referred to a community vote on how Wonderland should move forward after what has been a dramatic week for Protocol. Earlier this weekend, members of the Wonderland community voted to oust project cash manager 0xSifu after he was identified as Michael Patryn, a former convict who co-founded the QuadrigaCX exchange (QuadrigaCX made headlines). newspapers in 2019 when it suddenly shut down after Patryn’s partner Gerald Cotten disappeared with $169 million in investor funds). Amid the drama, Sestagalli published a Mirror article stating he thought Patryn should step down from the project before suggesting the community “should bring in the professionals” to handle the cash flow. Although the vote to evict Patryn saw an overwhelming 87.5% vote to replace Patryn, Sestagalli said community divisions signaled the end of the project.
Several other community votes took place on Wonderland’s Snapshot page over the weekend, with mixed results. One titled, “Vote ‘YES’ for relaxation” has a description that reads, “If you couldn’t trust Dani or sifu after all this time, you’d trust the new direction found in the 5 days? Vote yes,” with two options for voting: “YES” or “Yes.” He has received 257 votes so far.
Another similar poll suggests ending the project and returning the cash to TIME holders. 53.51% of the votes opposed the proposal and 46.49% voted in favor. Another calls for saving both Wonderland and the treasure. So far, 53.73% of the 3,127 respondents have indicated that they are in favor of maintaining the project.
If the project fails, it’s still unclear what will happen to Wonderland’s $708.6 million treasury. Some have suggested that there is a risk that the founding team will take a large portion of the funds although the community has reached a majority consensus on returning funds to TIME holders.
As news of 0xSifu’s identity surfaced on Thursday, Wonderland took a major hit. Sestagalli also suffered embarrassment after admitting he knew about 0xSifu’s uneven history for a month. The so-called “Frog Nation”—former Sestagalli fans who have coalesced around Wonderland and his other projects, Abracadabra and Popsicle, too appeared in dismay as the news spread through the community. Critics criticized Sestagalli for not revealing Patryn’s identity, and the token prices for each of his projects plummeted. Thursday he noted that he had received several death threats following the debacle.
TIME is down again today, trading at $360 at press time. It is more than 96% of its record level.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this article, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.
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