Wonderland is meant to be built around community. There’s endless talk of ‘frogs stronk’ and ‘frogs help frogs’ - and maybe it’s all true. But the rapid price decline and cascading liquidations of Dec 21/Jan 22 suggest the reality is somewhat different. The game theory (3, 3) model evidently doesn’t prevent some frogs (i.e. whales) and bots manipulating price to maximize their profits - which can easily destroy the holdings of more ‘everyday’ retail investors - at least in the short-term. This in turn gives rise to panic and FUD, which further dents Wonderland’s credibility and its appeal to new investors. And this is before we even get onto the subject of the founders’ missteps.
Think what you like of Dani and Sifu (and I still have faith in them), they’re still human. Still fallible. Still liable to misspeak or make other mistakes (like sleeping through devastating liquidation cascades) in the course of managing the protocol. Human error is inescapable. But the cults of personality that have grown around these individuals mean their errors have more grievous impacts than usual. Frogs don’t just lose $$$, they lose faith.
For the good of the protocol, I propose that we hire a dedicated Comms and Messaging Manager (or similar) - someone independent of the existing team but tasked to work closely alongside them. This individual’s role would be to:
- Update all documentation to ensure it is accurate and sufficiently detailed, balancing the need to encourage new investors while educating them about the workings of the protocol. Managing expectations = more realistic, long-term investors who won’t panic-sell at the first hint of whale profiteering etc.
- Gather information about all forthcoming projects and investments from Dani, Sifu and team (bound by an NDA or similar, of course) and present them to the wider community (and wider world) at the proper time and in a precise and considered way. For example, no more announcements about Airdrops when the nature and mechanics of said Airdrops are as yet undecided. Let’s stop muddying the waters with conjecture and provide people with the info they want and need WHEN it’s appropriate to do so.
- Maintain and update the FAQs section of the Wonderland Discord to ensure accurate info is available at all times.
- Maintain a separate, linked news hub where newcomers or those seeking complete and accurate info from a reputable source - Wonderland itself - can find what they need: the official word. This should help to clear the Discord of the many thousands of repeated questions and free space for productive discussions about the protocol mechanisms and future. Discord and Twitter are good sources of opinion. They’re not good sources of factual information - or at least, not without painstaking detective work. Let’s give people the resources - and thereby the reassurance - they need in a single, easy-to-navigate space.
It’s my belief that having someone working every day on collecting, considering and communicating information about and for Wonderland - while also representing to Dani and Sifu the views voiced by the frogs - will make the protocol a far more stable part of the Frog Nation ecosystem. It’s not a complete solution to all our problems. But it makes it far easier to bring our community together, ensure a single source-of-truth for all frogs, and make Wonderland the best-run organization in the DeFi space.
I bet we have some folks who are marketing professionals right here in the frog nation. I don’t think they should put in Work for this project, they already put in money. But some people view parts of their job as fun, where as the rest is the work stuff. I have a feeling there are people who enjoy doing something someone else thinks is work but still find some stuff boring, while still others who enjoy doing what that first group finds boring, and so on. There are folks who find pleasure in organizing and even others who find math relaxing for some weird weird reason.