The Appchain Formerly Known as “DEIP”

As mentioned in our announcement published last month, on October 7, 2022, Alex Shkor, the former CEO of DEIP (having resigned on November 27, 2022,) published a public formal statement without any warning that DEIP would no longer maintain their token and would abandon their mission of developing their Substrate-based appchain effective immediately.

The Octopus Network core team reacted quickly to protect OCT token holders with the following actions:

1. Changed the DEIP anchor contract to disallow new validators/delegators.
2. Disabled cross-chain transfers between the DEIP appchain and NEAR.
3. Advised validators and delegators to unbond their OCT stakes immediately.
4. Requested a transparency report from Alex to the DEIP and Octopus Communities to account for the failed project.
5. Returned all staked OCT safely to delegators and validators within seven days
6. Assigned the token contract owner to 0, meaning no one can use/change the DEIP token anymore, not even Octopus Network. Additionally, all access keys have been removed, and the contract is locked. This ensures the contract can’t be altered anymore while it keeps working under nobody’s control.
7. Octopus Network has also continued operating the DEIP blockchain explorer to support any claims or concerns from their community.

What Happened to DEIP Appchain?

From what we can surmise at this late stage, the DEIP appchain had been apparently struggling for some time. Yet, instead of collaborating with us directly, DEIP chose to abruptly violate the value proposition in their audit which mandated protection for OCT holders.

To date, the DEIP Discord community still has many more questions than answers. At this point, it doesn’t appear that the DEIP Team will follow through with their promise of a transparency report. We hope DEIP will honor their mission to mature their API extension service and asset fractionalization tools, but according to the team it’s no longer a priority.

Ex-CEO of DEIP, Alex Shkor, has recently raised some irrelevant concerns on Twitter that have caused confusion, and we will continue to correct the record for accuracy. Octopus Network is not affiliated with nor supports any new/current/future products of DEIP and/or its affiliated organizations.

Moving Forward

As we say goodbye to DEIP Appchain we say hello to lessons learned from this experience. Octopus Network has been reviewing what we will do differently and how we can mitigate this type of risk in the future. As mentioned in our previous statement, we are committed to drafting and submitting proposals to the Octopus DAO that govern Octopus Network exit procedures.

• We’ve begun holding bi-monthly appchain meetings for feedback and an ongoing chat (private lobby).
• Graduating/exiting proceedings are now in draft.
• New processes for onboarding appchains are currently under construction.
• We’ve launched the Octopus Forum for community discussion on future proposal drafts, questions from the community, and open and candid communication.
• The monthly Octopus DAO Community Call has gained momentum with lively discussions among attending validators and delegators.

While we are excited about the new proposals and the efforts being made by the team and community to launch the DAO, we are disappointed that these efforts are overshadowed by the ex-CEO’s decision on behalf of the appchain formerly known as DEIP.