A proposal to return Sifu to Wonderland

General Discussion
1

A proposal to return Sifu to Wonderland

Authors: Some of the Time Cops & Cheshire Cats

Executive summary

Since Sifu anonymously appeared two years ago, he has been universally loved by nearly everyone who has come to know him, and has made financial achievements in DeFi surpassing those of most professional investment firms. Among other achievements, he was the founder of Wonderland, and grew its highly profitable treasury to over one billion dollars.

Shortly after creation, Sifu felt it important to reveal his identify to the Frog Nation founder, Dani Sestagalli, as it involved mistakes made in his youth. Dani decided to judge Sifu in the present, rather than past, and accepted Sifu into the team

Recently, Sifu’s identify became known to the public, and in a possibly emotional reaction, was immediately voted out of his position in Wonderland. (The emotions of the moment were also flamed by two preceding and unfortunate wMEMO cascading liquidation events.)

However, with time and reflection on both the specifics of his past, and the achievements of his present, we perceive a sentiment shift happening in the community, and a desire to bring Sifu back to shape Wonderland’s future.

We now propose to reinstate Sifu as treasury and operations manager at Wonderland, continuing its former trajectory of success and benefit to the Frog Nation.

Contents

  • Sifu’s past
  • Sifu’s present
  • Reinstating Sifu
  • Conclusions

What happened in Sifu’s past?

In assessing, understanding and ultimately judging Sifu’s past, it’s critical to separate what is fact, from baseless speculation.

  • In 2001, when Sifu was 18 years old, he committed credit card fraud, for which he paid $35,000 of restitution. In 2003, he sold an early form of digital currency [see evidence here] on the internet to a group of youths who committed burglary, credit card fraud, identity theft. He did not commit, nor was charged of, those crimes, but was included in the arrest for having sold the digital currency to those who did, accused of knowing what they would do with that cryptocurrency, and as a consequence served 18 months in prison for conspiracy.
  • (As an aside: The author of this proposal, at the same age, used stolen credit card numbers to make long distance phone calls, and was expelled from school for simply being present in the car with a group of kids that broke the law. Many of us make mistakes in our early years, and sometimes get in trouble simply by association.)
  • Of greater significance, Sifu was the co-founder of Quadriga, the Canadian exchange that came under suspicion of various misconduct. The title of “co-founder” was honorary, not formal, as Sifu was a large investor and advisor.
  • Any misconduct that may have happened at Quadriga happened during the three years after Sifu left the company due to a disagreement regarding its listing on the stock market [see evidence here]. The Canadian government’s extensive investigation of Quadriga, did not implicate Sifu in any way.
  • The only formal Sifu-related allegation of misconduct at Quadriga, is trading with customer funds at Bitmex. When Quadriga came under public scrutiny, Bitmex froze Sifu’s funds to investigate their source. After two years of investigations by both Bitmex and the FBI, the funds were legitimately determined to belong to Sifu, and were returned to him.

On the question of whether Sifu can be trusted with handling user funds today, it should noted that, at times while managing Wonderland’s treasury, and by necessity, Sifu held almost half a billion dollars of Wonderland funds in his wallet. He could have taken those funds, but he did not.

At the end of the day, as pertains to his involvement at Wonderland and management of your capital, you need a clear statement from Sifu on his history, and here it is:

“As a youth, I made mistakes for which I am sorry and for which retribution has been paid. I was not, however, involved in anything illegal or unethical at Quadriga. Period. I can not change my past, but I hope that my actions over the past two years demonstrate evidence of both a trustworthy, and capable citizen of this community.” — Sifu

What happened during Sifu’s present

If we inspect Sifu’s activities over the past two years, we discover a journey of good citizenry and amazing financial achievements.

  • In the early days of Pickle Finance, Sifu was an active community member, and ended up suffering the largest financial loss in the pDAI hack. In the midst of an angry community, Sifu was the voice of calm and compassion, asking people to be mindful that the developers are human, subject to making mistakes, and we’re all beta testers in the creation of these amazing products in crypto.
  • Sifu was the largest provider of coverage at Cover, and was the largest investor and advisor at Ruler.
  • When Ruler failed, and the project leadership left, Sifu sent the project’s $800K treasury to Andre Cronje with the statement, “I know of no more trustworthy person in crypto to hold these funds until the current situation is resolved.” What’s particularly notable, is that those $800k were to be distributed to token holders. Sifu invested $1M in Ruler, and could have considered those $800k as his own. But in favor of token holders, he took the full loss. [see evidence here]
  • He tirelessly helped Discord and Telegram users as a moderator since nearly launch at Yearn, Cover, Ruler, Cream and Pickle.
  • He was an advisor at Spiritswap, revamping their farm economics, which led to a 3x in token price
  • He was an advisor at Morpheus, responsible for their ve33 token.
  • He was an advisor at Abracadabra, contributing to the design of the UST and TriCrypto CDPs, after which the SPELL token price increased in value by 100x.
  • He was an early supporter and major liquidity provider near launch of nearly every major protocol in DeFi, from Yearn to GMX.
  • He grew his own wealth from $3M to nearly $70M, in a public wallet, the activities of which are fully transparent on-chain for anyone to audit.
  • He generously offered his time to countless people who followed his wallet, needing help understanding the sophisticated investments he was making in DeFi, so that they could also benefit from them.
  • He founded Wonderland, worked tirelessly in community support in Discord, growing its treasury to over one billion dollars, and leading its first VC investment in BSGG, which in a span of a month has 5x’d in value.
  • He donated $1.5m of his personal funds to the treasury in order to help fulfill hisand Dani’s joint promise to repay back those who were liquidated under them.
  • Recently he bought over $10m worth of wMEMO, reflecting his continued belief in the potential of Wonderland as a worthy investment. [see evidence here]

It would be hard to overemphasize the positive impact he has made in the broad DeFi community, over the past two years.

Reinstating Sifu as the manager of Wonderland’s operations and treasury

We believe the following are considerations involved in reinstating Sifu as manager of Wonderland’s operations and treasury.

  • Temporary public backlash — There will likely be some public backlash, especially from people unwilling to assess the situation in its full context and the mob tendencies of social media. But this is a free market, and nothing stops the Wonderland community from deciding to forge the path it feels best leads to flourishing and prosperity.
  • Investment performance — Will his past affect Wonderland’s deal flow, and ability to make investments? His past will have no impact on his ability to invest the treasury in permissionless DeFi activities, from which we were previously earning $1M per day. What about VC deals? This is unclear, but we believe that at the end of the day, partners will engage in mutually beneficial investments with Wonderland, and that Wonderland’s performance over time will solidify its credibility.
  • Cleaner funds management — Given the impracticalities of investing from a multisig Gnosis Safe, funds in the past frequently flowed between the Wonderland treasury and Sifu’s personal wallet. It’s easily verified on-chain that no improprieties arose from this activity, but moving forward, a separate wallet will be created, so that there is no wallet co-mingling.
  • Return to progress and profitability — Wonderland will exit its current state of treading uncertain waters, and get back on track, deliverying on its promises to users, growing its treasury, investing effectively, and benefiting its investors.

Process

Following is the process we propose:

  1. Pass a vote returning Sifu to Wonderland.
  2. Implement a exit option so that anyone objecting to this chosen path, can redeem wMEMO at backing value.
  3. Sifu returns to daily management of the Wonderland operations and treasury management.
  4. Prioritize those areas of management previously targeted for improvement, including:
    • Better reporting on treasury investment activities
    • Development of a performance dashboard
    • Hiring of a Community Manager

Conclusion

Sifu regrets the mistakes of his youth, has apologized and paid retribution for them. As evidenced by the past two years, he has participated in our community, and the DeFi community at large, in ways to which most of us could only aspire.

Bringing Sifu back to Wonderland returns us to the path we previously knew — a growing and profitable treasury, promises made and kept, continual innovation, vibrant support of our community, and a passion to deliver value to each and every frog in the nation.

Let’s bring Sifu back, along with the passionate community and treasury performance in which we all want to participate, and make this the greatest comeback story in crypto history.

125 Likes
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I support this. My funds are Safu with Sifu

34 Likes
3

Facts speak louder than FUD, I support this as well

26 Likes
4

This is a pleasant read and I agree with this proposal, how can we move it forward?

23 Likes
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For me this is something we can definitely speak about.

We already have the public breaknews that led to shock, angry, shame, and more and more emotions exploding in FUD.

Some time has passed, and perhaps the moment has come to see the facts from a more objective and less emotional perspective.

And this could be also a great life’s lesson about To not judge a book by its cover.

19 Likes
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Let’s bring Sifu in and bring professor on board if they are not same individuals. Totally support this idea.

15 Likes
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I like the idea. but cant go forward, till we dont hear from Sifu, to my opinion. we dont know how this is affecting his personal life.

And I think we should focus first on team and management, as proposed in wonderland 2.0 and the professor. I dont think this is a priority.
We miss so many things.

P.S: When Sifu can state as mentioned and WL could help to reinstate his good name ( as they say in India) than why not.
Frogs should help frogs.

And I think of the professor and sifu on board. what that could bring?

8 Likes
8

They aren’t and I’m not sure what purpose the Professor would serve.

3 Likes
9

This was beautiful this needs to be passed to restore price

8 Likes
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I agree with this proposal

8 Likes
11

Let’s vote sifu back in. I voted for him to stay last time!

7 Likes
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Have you considered how this will reflect on Wonderland public image? First thing is lack of consistency in decision making, which is already damaged (Abra merge and Patronum). We will face imense backlash within space, be it YT, CT or media.

I agree with Sifu track record and I couldn’t find any leads to ill deeds on his behalf in WL, nor I have seen anyone do so, but thats not enough for those outside the DAO and they can still harm our image. A move like this we will surely be out of VC framework.

Also it would be needed such strong foundation that with Sifu’s 4 months we havent seen. Strong dedicated PR, full audit published and certified, better treasury page and periodic reports, updated documentation, obliterate TIME pools, wipe out all TIME and MEMO supplies in favor of WMEMO. And be prepared for continuous attacks.

This is a absolute risk move that cant be properly accountable on its impacts, financially wise.

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wMEMO cascading liquidation → WIP#3 → 0xsifu doxxed → WIP#4 vote (snapshot Block Height:
10181614 Timestamp: Jan-28-2022 08:11:08 PM +UTC). Apparently Wonderland treasury is being targeted by the enemy. sifu may just be a scapegoat, but relaunch wonderland is a priority, the proposal to return sifu should be discussed later

8 Likes
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My vote was for him to stay originally. I think he did a great job and I don’t care about his past. However, this is a mistake. You don’t just keep putting up votes on the same thing if you don’t like the result.

What i’d love to see is Sifu hire a dev and start his own fork. He has a lot of supporters (myself included) that would help with being mods and the such. I’d be curious to see how that went.

6 Likes
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I would normally agree. But the first vote happened when emotions were high from two devastating liquidations, followed by the suspiciously timed doxx.

9 Likes
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I have high hopes and good experiences dealing with Sifu in the discord. But you need to understand that moving from here, if you want Sifu re-instate as Treasury manage, you need provide more information than a mere passage. I deeply want this to pass but this is not how you gain community trust.

You gain community trust by facts. And facts can be given easily if they are true. With an emotional post like this, we will not move anywhere.

So I would request the author of this post to provide facts and proof of the following information. @dafacto

  1. source or truth of the following paragraph. When you write something, you should add a proper source with it.
  • In 2001, when Sifu was 18 years old, he committed credit card fraud, for which he paid $35,000 of restitution. In 2003, he sold an early form of digital currency on the internet to a group of youths who committed burglary, credit card fraud, identity theft. He did not commit, nor was charged of, those crimes, but was included in the arrest for having sold the digital currency to those who did, accused of knowing what they would do with that cryptocurrency, and as a consequence served 18 months in prison for conspiracy.
  1. Please add the source of the following statement. There should be a public investigation report or Sifu should be able to obtain one from the authority.

After two years of investigations by both Bitmex and the FBI, the funds were legitimately determined to belong to Sifu, and were returned to him.

  1. Provide the blockchain proof of the following statements,
  • When Ruler failed, and the project leadership left, Sifu sent the project’s $800K treasury to Andre Cronje with the statement, “I know of no more trustworthy person in crypto to hold these funds until the current situation is resolved.” What’s particularly notable, is that those $800k were to be distributed to token holders. Sifu invested $1M in Ruler, and could have considered those $800k as his own. But in favor of token holders, he took the full loss.
  1. I was liquidated and I didn’t get anything back. Please provide blockchain proof and also mention when you guyz are planning to repay?
  • He donated $1.5m of his personal funds to the treasury in order to help fulfill his and Dani’s joint promise to repay back those who were liquidated under them.
  1. Please provide blockchain proof of the following statement,
  • Recently he bought over $10m worth of wMEMO, reflecting his continued belief in the potential of Wonderland as a worthy investment.
16 Likes
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I voted for him to stay as TM last time so I’m voting to reinstate him this time, without him there’s no Wonderland.

9 Likes
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I understand the perspective that doing this would create an uproar and damage WL’s image.
Or that it is silly to keep setting up proposals/votes for something that some people didn’t like.
Because where does it end.
There’s a chance that if this proposal were to go through and Sifu got voted back in,
there would be a new proposal to kick him out again.
For that my view is, as stated in this proposal, the vote to fire Sifu from WL was made during a very tumultuous time and made it an emotional and not well thought out decision.
For me, the vote was quite unnecessary to begin with.

Looking purely at performance (main evidence: how well the treasury is doing), I personally see no reason to have kicked him out in the first place.
And I see all the reason to correct this misinformed and mob-mentality driven decision.
I believe that if we properly inform people about the facts, as this proposal is trying to do,
many would see no harm in bringing him back under the proposed conditions.

As @kryptonyte41 mentions, it would indeed be a good addition to make available any official documents/statements.
So that there can be no discussion about it and it can always be pointed to when FUD around it arises.

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  • I agree with Sifu returning as Treasury Manager
  • I agree with Sifu returning but NOT as Treasury Manager
  • I DO NOT agree that Sifu should return

0 voters

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This is nonsense and the mods are using there perceived power to add an air of authority to a silly move

10 Likes