As the portfolio manager of tfBill on TrueFi, Adapt3r Digital feels compelled to address the recent governance developments involving Wallfacer.
In line with what others in the community have also voiced, the recent vote against Wallfacer’s proposal has left us disappointed and with many outstanding questions about the future of the DAO. Wallfacer has been a steadfast partner since our initial engagement with TrueFi. @ryan.rodenbaugh was our first point of contact and has remained so throughout our journey. Our decision to launch on TrueFi, instead of another competing protocol, was heavily influenced by our strong relationship with Ryan, Tyler, and the entire Wallfacer team.
The fact that the vote came from an unknown wallet from a party that wasn’t inclined to give feedback on the reason for their vote is especially disappointing. No DAO or protocol is perfect – decentralized governance has myriad well-documented issues – but DAO governance becomes impossible when transparency, perhaps the only reason open governance makes any sense at all, breaks down. Without further explanation or feedback from this unknown delegate on the reason for their vote, TrueFi is left without its longest-standing contributor and no plan in place for any of the work needed to drive the protocol towards future success.
Our experience working with Wallfacer has been nothing but positive since day one:
- Constant communication from Ryan, Tyler, and the team covering everything from pointing Adapt3r to new potential investors, to strategic collaborative opportunities in other DAOs and protocols, to strategic whiteboarding – we have tens of thousands of messages in TG and Slack with them over the past year and do weekly strategy calls with the team.
- Proactive marketing and IR around tfBILL from working with media outlets, to making announcements on socials, to engaging in governance forums.
- Top-notch, expedient technical support both on the contract level and managing our product on TrueFi’s front-end. We get better technical support from the Wallfacer team on TrueFi than we do from many centralized service providers we engage with.
We apologize for not being more active in Wallfacer’s original proposal, but the overall positive nature of the comments left no reason for us to feel the need to get involved. Whether it was about the dollar number, specifics around performance-based compensation, better definition of the scope of work and use of funds, etc., we strongly believe that it is in TrueFi’s best interest to continue this conversation in a more open and transparent fashion before abruptly ending its relationship with such foundational contributors that have been paramount to the protocol’s past success.
Even if a new team is brought in to replace Wallfacer in the future, we believe a smooth transition requires some kind of extension of the Wallfacer contract. This abrupt end of their contract will cause the experience for managers, lenders, and borrowers (in Cicada’s case) to be severely downgraded in our opinion.
We propose the following to ensure a smooth transition if the DAO ultimately decides to part ways with Wallfacer:
- A 3-month engagement for the Wallfacer team beginning ASAP and lasting through the end of September. This aligns with the term of Cicada’s engagement with the DAO. Given that there were specific concerns with the original compensation amount as well, we propose a compensation of 9mm TRU for the 3-month period. On a monthly basis, this is less than the previous proposal, and given the recent decrease in the price of TRU, significantly less in USD terms as well. We encourage conversation on this compensation suggestion (and any other items) before moving to another vote. For future proposals, we are also open to further discussion around the kinds of compensation structuring and benchmarking that @Sanctus discussed in the comments of the original post.