Disgraced DeFi Founder Daniele Sestagalli Calls Time on Wonderland

“Wonderland experiment is coming to an end. It is clear from the vote that the community is divided,” Sestagalli wrote. 

Wonderland Drama Continues 

Daniele Sestagalli has called time on Wonderland. 

The disgraced DeFi founder, who rose to prominence in the community at the helm of Wonderland late last year, posted a tweet storm late Sunday stating his feelings on how it should wind down. “Wonderland experiment 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 still the community. If we cannot find agreement on whether to continue or not, it means that we failed.” 

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Wonderland experiment is coming to an end. 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.

— Daniele (@danielesesta) January 30, 2022

The statement drew reference to a community vote over how Wonderland should move forward after what’s been a dramatic week for the protocol. Earlier this weekend, Wonderland community members voted to oust the project’s treasury manager 0xSifu after he was identified as Michael Patryn, a former convict who co-founded the QuadrigaCX exchange (QuadrigaCX made headlines in 2019 when it suddenly shut down after Patryn’s partner Gerald Cotten vanished with $169 million of investors’ funds). Amid the drama, Sestagalli published a Mirror post stating that he thought Patryn should step down from the project before suggesting that the community “should get professionals onboard” to manage the treasury. Although the vote to kick Patryn saw an overwhelming majority of 87.5% vote to replace Patryn, Sestagalli has stated that community divisions signal the end of the project. 

Multiple other community votes have been running on Wonderland’s Snapshot page over the weekend, with mixed results. One titled “Vote “YES” for wind down” has a description that reads “If you couldn’t trust Dani or sifu after all this time, you gonna trust new management found within 5 days? Vote yes,” with two options to vote: “YES” or “yes.” It’s received 257 votes so far. 

Another similar poll suggests winding down the project and returning the treasury to TIME holders. 53.51% of votes have opposed the proposal and 46.49% have voted in favor of it. Another calls to save both Wonderland and the treasury. So far, 53.73% of 3,127 respondents have signaled that they are in favor of keeping the project running.  

Should the project fold, it’s still unclear what will happen to Wonderland’s $708.6 million treasury. Some have suggested that there’s a risk that the founding team will take a large portion of the funds despite the community reaching a majority consensus on returning the funds to TIME holders. 

As news of 0xSifu’s identity surfaced Thursday, Wonderland took a major hit. Sestagalli also suffered embarrassment after he admitted that he had known of 0xSifu’s patchy history for a month. The so-called “Frog Nation”—former Sestagalli fans who banded together around Wonderland and his other projects, Abracadabra and Popsicle, also appeared in disarray as the news spread across the community. Critics slammed Sestagalli for failing to disclose Patryn’s identity, and token prices for each of his projects tanked. On Thursday, he said that he had received multiple death threats over the debacle. 

TIME is down again today, trading at $360 at press time. It’s over 96% short of its all-time high. 

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this feature owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.