Wonderland (TIME) Scandal: Daniele Sestagalli Ignores Community Vote, Announces Project’s Closure

Daniele Sestagalli announced on Sunday that the “Wonderland experiment is coming to an end”, capping a week of high drama for the troubled decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol.

The disgraced DeFi founder took the decision against a community poll in which the majority of respondents voted to save the project.

“Wonderland experiment is coming to an end”, said Sestagalli, in a Twitter thread. “It is clear from the vote that the community is divided. The core and heart of Wonderland is still the community. If we cannot find agreement on wether to continue or not, it means that we failed,” he added.

The statement follows a week of high drama for the so-called “frogs” in Wonderland after the revelation of project treasury manager, 0xSifu, as Michael Patryn, a convicted criminal and co-founder of failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCx.

Wonderland community votes to continue with project

After the disclosure, the Wonderland community voted to remove 0xSifu as treasury head. At least 87.6% were in favor of replacing him, but Sestagalli, who revealed in an earlier post that he had asked 0xSifu to step down, said the vote reflected divisions in the community.

Another poll, “keep Wonderland keep the treasury, save the frogs?”, proposes to continue the project under a new model based on sharing revenue. At Press time, 54.79% of the 3,466 respondents voted to continue with the protocol on this new model.

Several community polls to decide the future of Wonderland as a going concern have since taken place.

In one such poll, members were asked to vote on whether to “wind down Wonderland, and give the treasury back to its holders?” The poll closed with 55.11% of the 22,500 respondents voting “No” while 44.89% were in favor, according to Wonderland’s Snapshot page.

A vote on whether to give holders of Wonderland’s TIME token the choice to “leave or stay” has so far garnered an overwhelming majority of 85.84% of voters opting to be given that choice.

The results show that most people in “Frog Nation” are in favor of saving Wonderland, the Avalanche-based decentralized reserve currency protocol, but Sestagalli decided to shut it down anyway. Fans who have followed Sestagalli and his projects including Wonderland, Popsicle Finance, Abracadabra and Sushi refer to themselves as “frogs” or “Frog Nation”.

Sinister motives

In his tweet, Sestagalli said:

…there is only one path forward: it is to reimburse /unwind who does not feel be part of Wonderland and find a new home for who feels attached and inline with the Frog Nation vision (sic).

Wonderland holds around $714 million in treasury. Sestagalli did not provide details on how he intends to distribute the treasury balance once the protocol is shut down. Later, he said he was “working more closely with our Wonderland and WAGMI community moderators and supporters to ensure a better top-down level of communication and infos.”

Many in Wonderland are in grievous bewilderment. “He [Sestagalli] is a scam, you vote no, he still wants to liquidate. Wonder why?” shouted one user.

Others suggested a more sinister plot – the risk that founders of Wonderland could plunder the treasury by selling TIME tokens to Abracadabra at a discount, leaving those who voted against the project shutdown with “an empty DAO with no treasury”. Sestagall previously proposed a merger of the two entities.

Sestagalli has come under fire for protecting 0xSifu’s identity. He said he had known about Patryn and his checkered past for a month, but decided against disclosing his true identity because he believed in “giving second chances”. Sestagalli only came clean after on chain sleuth Zach doxxed 0xSifu on Twitter last Thursday.

The scandal sent panic throughout much of decentralized finance, causing a cascade of liquidations. Sestagalli promised to compensate “those who got liquidated under me”, using personal funds. Total value of assets managed at Wonderland plunged to $146 million at one point, from more than $1 billion. That has since recovered to $406 million, according to DefiLlama data.

TIME, the native token of Wonderland, reached a low of $315 over the previous 24 hours, but is up 4.4% at $384 at the time of writing. The token has slumped more than 95% from its all-time-high.

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