Let's Fix Wonderland

General Discussion
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As I write this article, disgruntled members of Time Wonderland’s Dao protocol bicker back and forth about the declining price and lack of progression. Their discouragement and anger are certainly justified, as Time has undergone nearly every setback imaginable from “Sifu-gate” to a slow, steady decline in the price of wMemo. A lack of worthy and credible treasury managers ™ to take over the helm have only further complicated the fiasco, after the previous TM was voted out. Dani has taken over the TM role for now, and with the recent Rage Quit (RQ) finalized it is time to focus on a strategic plan aimed at finally providing a sufficient ROI for holders. As a member of Wonderland, I am proposing the following game plan to fix the Wonderland mess and instill renewed confidence in the project:

  1. Resume Buybacks. My plan focuses on resuming buybacks in a random fashion, at the discretion of the TM. Let me be clear, that I am not advocating for automated or guaranteed buybacks as a means to prevent manipulation. Buybacks are beneficial to our holders as they increase the backing value of each members’ wMemo. For example, if we buy back a token at $25,000 and the backing is $45,000, the remainder ($20k) is reallocated back to the remaining holders via the treasury and the wMemo is taken out of circulation. This is a benefit to ALL holders. Furthermore, any future revenue share will be greater for the remaining holders as it is divided by a smaller number of wMemo. This is a win-win for all holders of wMemo (including those looking to sell).

  2. Develop a strategic plan to allocate capital. A proposal should be made on how to allocate investable capital going forward at the TMs discretion. I have developed an example model using a % basis model for the treasury. The investable portion of the treasury (some assets are not investable or required for purposes of liquidity) would be allocated as follows: 30% in stable coins that are farmed for APY, 30% in diversified masternodes — this investment has been shown to be recession resistant and provide 5–10% monthly returns with low risk (Google YieldNodes), 10% held in stable coins to be utilized for future VC projects, and the remaining 30% held in solid “blue chip” coins like Ethereum or Avax and farmed for APY. This allocation would be recession resistant with low draw-downs (40% in non-directional assets), but would still provide sufficient yields. The rewards from masternoding would provide us with monthly revenue sharing “dividends” that can be distributed to wMemo holders. This portfolio asset mix should outperform the broader crypto market in both a down and up market and provide a nice revenue share “dividend” for holders. Yieldnodes has been utilizing the masternoding model for over 2 years, and has provided consistent averages of 7-10% monthly returns for its holders…we can do the same in the form of revenue sharing utilizing 30% of the portfolio.

  3. Scrap the rebase non-sense. The rebase model does not provide revenue for holders and is simply a source of confusion and misleads newcomers to the project. We need to set the bar higher for Wonderland, and scrap this misguided marketing scheme. Arguing about how the rebase works every day in the Discord does not benefit any of the holders — new or old. The marketing and communication forward should focus on wMemo, revenue sharing “dividends”, and increasing the backing value of wMemo.

  4. Prioritize hiring a new TM. Dani currently holds the role, but his true talent is fulfilling his role as a crypto “visionary”. He also has too many projects on his plate and he deserves some time to relax and take a break. We need to find a talented TM whom has the energy and dedication to take the project forward whom does not have any distractions or baggage. We must continually seek out new qualified candidates for this role going forward.

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I agree in each point, great work

I would add a permanent rage quit option. Let anyone exit the protocol with a 10-20% fee on backing price. This option should not be used often because of buybacks. It gives the investor the safety of having an exit price for his wMemo.
This mechanism generate value for holder as we saw during rage quit. It is also a safe net for the price when buyback aren’t enough

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I’m not a huge fan of Nodes. I feel like I understand the concept but I’m unsure if that’s the type of model Wonderland is designed for. I think it would benefit anyone wishing to bring perspective to this topic if we had a good example of how yieldnodes would be a safer bet for us than managing that portion of our portfolio ourselves. It is true that they have had stronger performance within the market than many other avenues right now, but it’s not a sure bet that it will be a model with continued success in the future. Why do you feel that model will have continued success and stability in ROI in the future?

I like that you bring in an example of where our revenue sharing dividends could come from, this gives us something to work with to figure out what our potential returns could be in various market conditions. I would like to consider other revenue avenues that could generate us a shareable income. I have a feeling our Liquid Staking protocol could generate a fairly stable income for Wonderland that would be useful for this purpose, could be an option at least.

Prioritizing a new TM is a very important topic. I’ve discussed a few ways we could assist Dani in that effort with another user, @isthatlowfat. I’d love for them to get in on this convo as well to bring in some of the insights they shared with me over on discord for this challenge. I believe Dani is working behind the scenes to find a TM for us, but if he needs our help, there are a few things we can do to take on some of the load. A big move there would be actively publishing the request for candidates across our various social channels. Before we got there though we should come together around our expectations for treasury management and their responsibilities, something you’re getting started here with this proposal. We should also consider discussing various compensation options for the TM so the community already has some comfort around that topic when we start bringing someone in.

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I think the concept of nodes has been ruined after Strong nodes and others came out, but in all honestly these are not true “masternodes”. True masternodes have been fairly sustainable and resilient so far compared to almost every other crypto project with comparable returns. Am I 100% confident in masternodes? Not necessarily, but they provide better risk adjusted returns than most other projects in crypto and with 5-10% monthly gains we can break even very quickly. I’m not advocating we hand over the funds to Yieldnodes, but rather that we employ a similar model using a third party service to host the masternodes without giving up control of the wallets, and this is possible as there are several services are offering this. If you can find another crypto project with similar risk adjusted returns I’d be happy to hear about it.

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This is beautifully written! Thank you for taking the time to put this together! I couldn’t agree with you more. The frustrations in the forum - while I understand - are unnecessary and I truly believe in the future of this project! I am here for the long term and have been holding since the beginning. I am here to help in any capacity! Thank you.

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Good points all the way around. I to would agree that prioritizing a TM is extremely important in addition to discussing compensation and role of the TM for transparency. Transparency seems to be one of the biggest issues with many of our investors.

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Amazing work!!! I would say that it is kind of urgent move away form rebase to revenue share. I dont know any project doing revenue share and be the first one could be very beneficial.

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While we wait for the team to implement liquid staking, revenue sharing, and find a TM, there needs to be a reason for people to keep holding to their tokens. We’ve seen a massive selloff the past day because people are getting impatient.

Agreed with 1. having buybacks will keep holders happy and not panic sell. This is needed not only for price stability, but to protect the small frogs from themselves. The loyal frogs that didn’t ragequit got nothing other than a 21k, no rewards in any way while the quitters got compensated with 33k-37k, the least we could is to provide price stability. We have $14 million from people that signed up for ragequit that didn’t. This was earmarked for the community, we can spend some of it to keep it at a reasonable level (25k-30k).

Other ways that can help maintain a link between market price and backing price is through inverse bonds (what Olympus has currently and their dashboard is clean in tracking this) and through regular redemptions (i.e. ragequit) every x months. I see buybacks as temporary stop-gap measure until either inverse bonds or monthly/quarterly redemptions is implemented. When we have this link, people would be insane to sell when they have a chance to redeem for fair value. And the team can take all the time they need to do a good job without this time pressure.

Points 2 and 4 are related and I think the investment strategy can be left for the TM to figure out. We don’t want to limit them with a strategic asset allocation that non-professionals came up with and tie their hands… I also personally don’t think masternoding is a good solution because it’s not defi and doens’t play into our strengths; if people really wanted that exposure they can invest in yieldnodes separately. I would also add that the strategic advantage Wonderland has is access to VC deals and may want to allocate a higher % as needed. There’s no reason to buy into Wonderland if you can replicate this portfolio yourself (30% in safe stablefarms, 30% in safe layer 1s, 30% in yieldnodes, etc). So I think we should let the TM figure out how best to do his/her job.

Agreed with point 3. We can either have a new token or get rid of rebases from the dApp entirely (and force people migrate from Time/Memo to wMemo to interact with the protocol).

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That is actually the direction I had more in mind. It could be another potential revenue model for us to engage in a masternode style service ourselves, similar to the liquid staking protocol that’s been implemented for us. I’m not a crypto guru and just spent some time reading about masternode and yieldnode, my admittedly limited research gave me the feeling that it’s something we could probably do ourselves without handing over control to a third party - but I’m still lacking in understanding how the node service generates a revenue.

From my limited understanding of the yieldnodes model, they use staked funds to help grow fledgling tokens and provide yields through continued growth of those assets. As yields are generated for the user, the safest bet is to dump them onto the market for the profit, but the yieldnode service is there to gobble them up and maintain the price. Gobbling them back up also gives the protocol tokens to then spit back out at those receiving the next round of rewards. It doesn’t seem Super sustainable to me, but I understand how the concept can be long lasting and beneficial to the growth of the ecosystem by helping fledgling tokens. I could very likely be missing something there. Am I?

The masternodes thing seems a bit different though. It looks like it’s some kind of upper node on top of the validator/miners. Strongblock has a similar model, which is not really able to generate a revenue because there’s no immediate payout in gas fees to their type of nodes within the blockchain model - they have to find a way to get paid. I’m still struggling to see where the immediate payout to the masternode comes into play. Are they some kind of validator who gets paid in gas fees too, or have they found some other revenue model?

I think this is a super constructive convo. I hope all my comments are taken as a genuine desire to understand the concepts we’re discussing and have a good outline of how they would work for our org. In order for us to get through this process and have a really strong foundation, the community needs to understand How we make our money.

On the TM topic. It’s been expressed quite a bit that Dani is handling that, so it may be best to see where that goes. But it would still be beneficial for the community to come together around reasonable expectations for that position before someone takes on the job, it will make their task and our lives much more comfortable.

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I love this input. I’ve been trying to square a way for buybacks to be helpful in the now and I jive with this perspective. I really like the inverse bonding concept and I would love to see movement on that mechanism moving forward. This could be a great way to avoid overuse of buybacks and organically maintain a market price parity with backing value. It’s definitely something to be fleshed out seriously.

I want to push back a little on the desire to avoid talking about how we’d like our treasury to be utilized. Yes, 100% we are all non-experts, that’s why we need a TM. But without aggregating some collective expectations within the community, we could find ourselves in another situation where most of the community has no idea where our revenue is being generated and simply just shouts “devs do something”. We should not kid ourselves in these discussions and imagine that we would want to dictate the use of our treasury to a puppet treasury manager. But understanding the various options our treasury manager will have and the different parameters we could imagine they would employ to generate us a revenue will make it easier for the community to grasp the plans that a new treasury manager will eventually propose to us. The inverse would be us just waiting for them to bring us a roadmap and then at that point dissecting that map to decide if we like it. We can utilize this interim period to dissect the territory we inhabit and create a legend for both us and the new TM to use to better understand the map they eventually lay out for us.

I totally agree with your opinion on VC allocation amount as well. One of our strongest tools for incredible growth is our ability to seed this ecosystem with capital to flesh out new profit opportunities for us. I think it would be more acceptable to have somewhere close to 20% ready to be doled out to VC deals as they become available, but those assets can be used in stable farming until new deals come to light.

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How you going to scrap the rebase? Now I have 11 Memo so I’m down 10X from my initial investment now what I got in Wmemo I’m also 18X down my initial investment.
Anyway won’t pass any further than this as most of the things here.
All what matters to them isn’t relevant to us and other way around.

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Yieldnodes works by supporting smaller proof-of-stake blockchains by providing the hardware and having the initial capital. Masternodes are more demanding than validator nodes because their responsibilities, hardware and capital requirements are higher, and are rewarded accordingly. You need someone monitoring it constantly, with the right technical expertise in setting up these masternodes (far out of reach of the average person). They produce their steady yield by liquidating the staking rewards. This is the same as how Anchor sustains its yield, except Anchor does it on more established blockchains that have gone past the growth stage, and also the reason for the lower yield than yieldnodes.

That’s why I’m pushing back on this idea, because i) there are already experts in this area, and we’re just imitating them instead of innovating ii) the coins are exchanged through a CEX with bitcoin as the medium. Not easy for accounting to bridge to the Ethereum-based chains we’ve been using for defi iii) we need very specific expertise to run this, and if that person leaves us we’re screwed. There’s a separate agency problem where it’s difficult to carry out multisig operations outside of defi.

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Great initiative man. Really good play to post on Medium as well to get attention from a wider audience.

On point 1 - Buybacks. I’ve been on the fence from the get-go about the benefits of buybacks as there’s been tons of mixed opinions on the topic since WL launched. We had a chance to test them, they worked for a while, until they didn’t. At the time, the “what’s in it for me” was simply to keep the price of your holdings at backing. removed this section thanks to a post from another user clarifying what I had misread. I’d be happy to see buybacks happening anyway just to demonstrate some signs of life.

On point 2, I don’t feel qualified to comment. All I would add here is that the future TM should set the investment strategy once selected. I’m aligned with the idea that we need an interim strategy to begin producing with the remaining 500M treasury we have. Whether that is this or some other creative ideas Dani has are TBD.

On point 3, I agree and think the time has come to scrap the rebasing. In doing this, we need to revisit how we launch a vote. My understanding is that you need 100 Time today to launch a snapshot vote, and rebasing helps you get there. Without rebasing, it’s purely a $ figure game to be able to launch a vote, which means unless you continuously invest, you’re never getting to that point. Ideally, we should have a plan for this before removing rebases altogether. From your list, this is the lowest priority IMO.

On point 4, I would love for us to get some insight from Dani on how this is progressing and what his process for considering candidacy is. Is he still taking suggestions from the community at this stage? If it turns out that he wants the community to handle this task and we need to figure this one out ourselves, here’s how I would break down this process to progress in a structured manner:

Select a WL rebuild team
The purpose is to empower a group willing participants within the community with the authority to contribute at a more direct level to rebuilding Wonderland, which would primarily be to help find a new TM. The rebuild team can remain in place for other subjects if the community wants it to and the rebuild team wants to continue, but the objective is not to become the new operational structure of Wonderland.

  • Create the requirements list for anyone looking to join the WL rebuild team.
  • Open up an proposal taking inventory of applicants for WL rebuild team.
  • Get WL Core team to signoff on the Rebuild team’s authority to assist in the TM discovery process.

Define Job Description and scope for Treasury Manager.
This first step is essentially building consensus in the WL community on what we expect from our future TM.

  • Align on scope of the TM with the core team and rebuild team. (What can the TM do. What can’t the TM do.)
  • Write an exhaustive draft of the proposed functions of the treasury manager.
  • Present a draft job description of the TM role to the core team and the WL rebuild team.
  • Once fully aligned. Submit to community for visibility and open it up for comments and feedback.
  • Collect feedback. Any strongly supported changes from the community should be debated between core team and rebuild team.
  • Revise draft - share decisions made on popular changes suggested from the community in replies on the WL forums.
  • Finalize the job desc. (proofreading, translation if we want to go international).

Determine if any special requirements should be included in the process for the hiring of the new TM
I decided to separate special requirements from the initial alignment, as many of these are quick questions that should be answered by the community. Simple popular vote through polling would set us on the right path for many of these points.

  • Ask the community via the Forums to share any special requirements we should include in our official consideration for new TM applicants. Core team and rebuild team should pass their ideas through the forums as well. Key examples:
    • Should TM be doxxed?
    • Should TM be comfortable participating in video interviews with WL media?
    • Should TM be expected to be active in Discord on a daily basis? (within reason obviously)
    • Should TM have ultimate authority on all treasury decisions?
    • Should there be limits to the budget the TM can allocate to projects before a DAO vote needs to be launched?
    • Should there be discretionary spending for TM?
  • Review commentary from community. Present cliff notes to Core Team and Rebuild Team.
  • Rebuild team to reply to the most popular suggestions (50+ likes or some other metric, TBD) with the results of the decision making.
  • Launch short vote (3 days) so the Community can provide their consensus on the points listed as a package.
    • Ideally this passes, otherwise we need a strategy to figure out which will need to be removed.
  • Implement any required changes into the job description and in the upcoming Medium article.
  • Update our documentation with the full expectations of the TM role, attributes, and special requirements.
  • Optional - RACI chart for treasury management operations built.

Define Compensation structure for Treasury Manager
This one is fairly self-explanatory, but here’s the process I would follow:

  • Align between Core Team and Rebuild team on a fair compensation structure for new TM.
    • Total amount.
    • Redemption timeline.
    • Bonus tied to performance metrics. I.e. If TM can ensure Revenue share hits 2k/wmemo/month in their first 6 months - they get a one-time bonus.
  • Align with Dev resources on proposed compensation structure to ensure that any selected specifics are possible from their position)
  • Present to the results to the community on the forums. If there is strong opposition, revisit this with core team.
  • Update Job Description docs with the details about compensation.

Select a new Treasury Manager

  • Launch a short DAO vote for consensus on all the requirements of any future treasury managers. If the vote passes. (Everything we settled on above would be part of this vote). Proceed to next steps. If the vote fails, collect feedback via WL forums and launch another vote. (We can align quickly with founders on how many fails can transpire prior to an executive decision being taken as to not further delay this process).
  • Align on acceptable timeline for submissions for new treasury manager.
  • Define where applications should be submitted and what criteria they should include in their submission. i.e. Should it be posted on WL Forums? Should they follow a basic template? Should a voice AMA be done with any shortlisted candidates?
  • Post on all social media channels that Wonderland is accepting applications for treasury manager.
  • Community is given a chance to review all applicants. Top 5 most popular from community will be considered.
    • Founders will have an opportunity to review the Top 5 most popular and voice any objections and veto a maximum of 2/5 candidates. Objections and vetoes will be done transparently to the community and reasons will be shared.
  • A pre-defined timeframe is established for the top candidates to introduce themselves to the community publicly. They should be open to scrutiny, challenge, questions in some format.
    • Ideally, each candidate should come prepared with their own 30-60-90 day plan (or some variety applicable to a TM role).
  • Once the timeframe is up, the DAO vote will launch.
  • DAO vote is concluded. Winner is selected and granted access to the multi-sign.
  • Documentation to be updated. (Wonderland Docs mainly, but anywhere else we have info needs to also be updated with latest decision).
  • Communication across social media platforms performed.

Sorry for the long post. I actually had most of this written up already in another space. Anyway, this is only really useful if the community needs to handle this task. There’s still a lot involvement I predict would be necessary from the core team, but if the rebuild team can have scheduled access to the core team, this is all very doable.

Depending on the needs, maybe the rebuild team could remain in place to focus on other important topics to address for WL. But this obviously depends on the community sentiment, the operational structure Dani has in mind and the level of authority people are comfortable with empowering this group of individuals with.

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I love what you have written down here but if this long essay didnt even get to be read by dani, then you probably have wasted 2 hours? maybe? of your time.

Our problem is not short of ideas, I seen people repeating the same discussions you guys discussing again here again and again. In fact I also have written such long essay regarding buyback/burning, rebase, lock staking, so on and so forth. Where did all the efforts I put in to write those long essays went? yup, down the drain.

Unless you guys can actually be discussing all these with dani, I personally think its such a waste of time discussing anything at this point. Dani will still be doing his own thing right now, and perhaps tomorrow too. Perhaps dani is reading all these and stealing the ideas and implement them in his own way. Great! but nobody is telling us what going on. I m not in discord, i dont like discord but if discord is the only place to get what’s going on, then I guess I will be in the dark forever.

There are probably 3 running threads just trying to reinstate buyback and from the look of it, will go nowhere. So, if even a small of an initiative is repeatedly ignored over and over, then what do you guys think will happen to your ultimate proposal up there?

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You definitely raise a good point about the time spent writing this stuff out. I’m stubborn and refuse to give up on my investment at this stage, so if there’s a chance it can influence things in what I would consider as the right direction, I’ll probably take the time to do it.

I think where my post stands out a bit is in specifying the operational steps we can take to actually deliver on the proposal. Lots of people are tossing good ideas out there, but they are light on the specifics of how this will be accomplished. By going into this level of detail - the community can see how it’s going to be done, and share their input on each of the steps.

It would be amazing if Dani did take inspiration from the posts in the community and implement them in the background. In Discord, Dani is providing snippets of progress every so often, but it’s not enough to answer everyone’s questions.

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Buybacks made below backing price by their nature cause the backing price to increase. There is no need for any fancy redistribution system. You already understand the way it works. If the treasury buybacks WMEMO at 25k while the backing is at 45k the treasury earns 20k MIM, so the backing price increases. We don’t have to redistribute the 20k MIM to all holders to see a positive impact from buybacks.

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Oh mybad, I misread his initial post. I’ll edit my initial post in that case then - thanks for pointing that out!

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