A Letter to Our Sherpas
Dear Sherpas,
Some members of our community have brought to our attention that MANTRA DAO has come under attack and FUD recently. It is allegedly a coordinated smear and slander campaign to target some of our team members. We all know that good crypto projects eventually face this kind of FUD storm, but it appears that even in this regard the OM token is setting records at breakneck speeds. Not only are we seeing FUD attacks at a record pace, but also within one week of debuting on Bithumb Global, OM was listed on 11 top centralized exchanges, most of which were free listings to accommodate voracious community demand. Even today, OM remains a top-10 volume coin on Uniswap. Within the first 24 hours of its listing, OM trades comprised over 10% of all Uniswap volume! The response of the global DeFi community to MANTRA DAO has been amazing. We are humbled.
We have a community that is approaching 10,000 token holders, a milestone that MANTRA DAO could not be prouder of. Keep in mind that our initial membership offering only included around 1,000 members, which means that our community has grown 10-fold in less than two weeks. It is an incredible accomplishment that motivates the team to focus all of our effort and concentration on creating the safest platform for our Sherpas to interact with and benefit from our robust token economy.
With that kind of success, a certain amount of FUD is to be expected. But what we observed coming from certain quarters of the industry was beyond the pale. While MANTRA DAO does not condone or acknowledge such vain attempts to try to cripple and set back Polkadot’s premier community-first DAO, we would like to take this time to respond to each and every one of the concerns brought up to put this FUD to bed.
First, there is some confusion about the relationship between MANTRA DAO and its aspiring Polkadot parachain, RioDeFi. We don’t deny, nor have we ever, that the two teams are close with each other and work closely together. While it is true that James Anderson and Stephane Laurent are both in the MANTRA DAO Council and the RioDeFi management team, their role in MANTRA DAO is that equivalent of Company Directors, helping steer the Foundation’s overall strategy, but not involved in day-to-day operations. John Mullin, Will Corkin, and Rodrigo Quan on the other hand are all founding Council Members and all three together form the senior management team running and managing the day-to-day operations of the MANTRA DAO Foundation. While it is true that in its seed stage MANTRA DAO leveraged some of RioDeFi’s tech resources, the Foundation is now fully supported by its own dedicated team under the leadership of John, Will, and Rodrigo. MANTRA DAO will be the first dApp on RioDeFi’s RioChain. With this in mind, the MANTRA DAO tech team will continue to work very closely with the Rio tech team to provide a secure and efficient platform that is well-integrated into RioChain. First and foremost, we owe this to our Sherpas. They are our guiding light.
Second, both the MANTRA DAO and RioDeFi teams will open-source all of their code in the near future. Not making the code public until platform launch is a common tactic in the blockchain industry and is a part of both projects’ strategy to ensure the safety of their token holders. In a world where anons can permissionlessly launch billion-dollar blockchains under cover of night, both teams felt that this was a reasonable precaution. The beginning of any new technology company and platform is a crucial time. After all, their code is their unique selling point (USP). Making this information completely open from Day 1 leaves the project, both its team and its token holders, open to many attack surfaces. Based on this recent spate of unwarranted FUD, we are even more confident in our decision in this regard. We owe it to our community to prioritize the safeguarding of their interests.
Third, the MANTRA DAO team, council, and advisors include many seasoned blockchain entrepreneurs and investors who have been in the space for years. Some of our team members and the crypto startups they were previously involved with have come under the spotlight as alleged “scams.” While the negative FUD incorrectly associates a start-up that fails to launch as being a scam, experienced entrepreneurs and seasoned start-up investors know that over 90% of start-ups fail. In the “crypto winter” of 2018–19, the failure rate was even higher.
While the previous companies of some team members may have changed direction, not built to their ultimate goals, or failed to live up to expectations, such as Penta and trade.io, John, Will, and Stephane performed as best as they could in their functions as employees of those organizations. They have continued to contribute and innovate in the crypto space beyond the roles they had in those companies. That experience of watching the decision-makers at those firms fail to achieve success, despite the hard work of extremely dedicated teams, now informs the decisions they make as project leaders and decision-makers today. Those lessons shaped their leadership approach and informed the values of emphasizing community and transparency that now guide MANTRA DAO today. Ironically, it is this very experience of our Council Members and advisors that distinguishes MANTRA DAO from other project teams today.
The truth is that all of our Council members have always been public-facing members of teams in the blockchain space. John Patrick Mullin, for instance, has previously been an avid writer for established publications such as Coin Telegraph, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. In 2019, he was ranked as a top 100 leader in the blockchain space.
Our angel investor and advisor, Calvin Ng, has been a notable entrepreneur for decades in the gaming and blockchain space. He has led investments into numerous big-name companies and is an active GP and LP in some of the most respected venture capital firms in the space. The accusations about some of his previous investments in the casino and gaming space are ill-informed. Investments in casino companies are not “scams” just because of the industry, but actually quite the opposite. Ng’s previous investment, 21PINK, was a portfolio company of highly respected China VC firm IDG. After being acquired in 2018, the company still operates out of Taiwan. Calvin’s investment thesis, in fact, prioritizes casino-style companies because of their very attractive ROIs. His investing acumen is the reason why he is entrusted with over $200 million of assets under management at PLUTUS.VC.
Lastly, MANTRA DAO’s list of ecosystem partners has also had some questions raised about their legitimacy. Council Members Will Corkin, John Patrick Mullin, and Rodrigo Quan have all worked for licensed investment banking firms in the past. They understand the severity of a company’s compliance whether it relates to fundraising, releasing PR announcements, or marketing. With this in mind, the team does not put out any partnership releases without prior approval from the partner company. Every listed partner on the MANTRA DAO website has been approved to be placed there.
The instance with FTX and Alameda Research’s logo being removed from the website was also done so because of a change in their compliance team’s guidelines. We assure our community that both logos were initially included in our website with their team’s permission, and both were removed following a subsequent decision from their compliance team to do so, which we respect. In addition, Alameda’s founder, SBF, and the team have publicly alluded to their involvement with MANTRA DAO on multiple platforms, leaving no debate on their participation in the MANTRA DAO ecosystem.
The MANTRA DAO team does not take these accusations lightly, so we have decided to openly share this development. We are certain that our growing Sherpa community will continue to march forward with us and defend us in times like these, as long as we continue to share facts and uphold transparency. We know we still have a long way in our very ambitious roadmap. For the sake of our rapidly growing community of Sherpas, we prefer to focus on building the best platform and developing innovative product offerings for our community like MANTRA POOL than having to address every bit of negatively targeted doubt.
We hope that this post helps to shed light on any areas of confusion or misunderstanding. If you think we missed anything, please comment below or message in our Telegram chat so that we can help to answer any additional questions you may have.
We pride ourselves on being the most approachable and available leadership team in the DeFi industry. Join the Sherpas today and you’ll see.
Best,
The Council
