Wonderland

Wonderland is a cross-chain fork of the Olympus DAO protocol. It is native to the Avalanche blockchain. Capitalizing on Olympus’ initial success, and building on the Olympus DAO’s tokenomics, Wonderland was initially popular amongst yield hunters. 

However, heightened market volatility beginning in late November 2021, followed by a wave of scandals involving members of the DAO’s leadership left the future direction of the protocol highly uncertain.

Wonderland is a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and DeFi protocol native to the Avalanche network. It launched in September 2021 as one of many cross-chain forks of the Ethereum-native and, at the time, headline making project, Olympus DAO.

Following an initial period of value accrual, the onset of market wide uncertainty in late November 2021 correlated with an increase in the volatility of and downward pressure on Wonderland’s market cap.¹

The situation became much more tumultuous in late January, as the formerly pseudonymous Wonderland Treasury Manager 0xSifu was confirmed to be convicted felon Michael Patryn, who had earlier pled guilty to conspiracy to commit credit-and-bank card and bank fraud, burglary, grand larceny and spent time in U.S. federal prison.²

Patryn had also been a co-founder of the failed Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX, which in 2018 was revealed to be a massive exit scam that caused at least $133 million in losses for 76,000 investors in Canada and elsewhere, although Patryn was not accused of any wrongdoing related the Quadriga implosion.³

Community sentiment was further impacted when Wonderland founder Daniele Sestagalli admitted that he had prior knowledge of Patryn’s identity but chose to keep him on as Treasury Manager of the DAO.⁴ The holder’s of Wonderland’s governance token TIME saw the situation in a different light and chose to remove Patryn from his previous role via a community vote.⁵ 

The aftermath of these events has seen a prolonged and laborious period as members of Wonderland DAO seek to establish the future direction of the project.⁶

TIME

TIME is the token that Wonderland’s protocol is built around. Most of the benefits for users participating in Wonderland come through different interactions with the TIME token, and the ways the protocol gamifies those interactions.

In this system, there are three actions a user can take:

• Staking
• Minting (aka Bonding)
• Selling

Staking and minting are considered beneficial to the protocol, while selling is considered detrimental. Thus, given two actors, the following dynamics exist:

• If both stake, this is the best outcome for both (and the protocol).
• If one stakes and the other one bonds, it is also positive because staking takes TIME off the market and puts it into the protocol, while bonding provides liquidity and assets for the treasury.
• When one sells, it diminishes the effort of the other that stakes or bonds.
• When both sell, it creates the worst outcome for both (and the protocol).

Both actors are awarded by the protocol according to the positive and negative actions they take.⁷

Staking

Holders of the TIME token can benefit from very high APYs by staking their TIME in the protocol. Staked TIME is known as MEMO, short for Memories.⁸

Most decisions at Wonderland are made by the core team. However a progression towards decentralized governance is underway with a token-voting system where TIME holders can vote on proposals using the Snapshot governance tool.

Following Patryn’s forced exit, the Wonderland core team turned to the community for input about how to proceed with the protocol.