The decentralized finance (DeFi) analytics platform DefiLlama has been forked by its core team amid an internal dispute over the launch of a token.
On Sunday, March 19th, a pseudonymous developer at DefiLlama, 0xngmi, announced that the core team was forking the DeFi analytics dashboard as the project founders were trying to launch Llama token that the team didn’t want to do.
https://twitter.com/0xngmi/status/1637425043482222599
A So-called Hostile Takeover
According to 0xngmi, DefiLlama is “undergoing a hostile takeover” by its founders. He said:
“The person who controls both defillama’s Twitter and domain has decided to launch a token despite everybody in the team not wanting it.”
According to another pseudonymous developer, Tendeeno, there was someone to launch the Llama token without the approval of a single person on the DefiLlama team.
Therefore, the core DefiLlama team has forked the dashboard and launched a new website and Twitter handle that goes by name of llama.fi and @llamadotfi respectively.
Llama Corp, DefiLlama’s parent company, denied the claims and said that 0nxgmi actions were independent. On the DefiLlama Round Up Telegram channel, the company said that 0nxgmi and a few team members had “gone rogue.”
https://twitter.com/0xMasterChief/status/1637438133515026433
“They are actively looking to seize DefiLlama IP and community while inaccurately claiming the rightful owner to be doing a hostile takeover,” the parent company said on Telegram.
The original DefiLlam platform indeed hinted about a token airdrop to celebrate its aggregator platform hitting $5 billion in volume.
However, the crypto community was not much impressed with the 0nxgmi move and showed support for DefiLlama founders. The DeFi analytics platform was co-founded by Charlie Watkins and Ben Hauser, who always maintained a low profile.
Yearn.finance founder Andre Cronje supported Charlie Watkins saying that the rogue team would soon have to raise funds or launch a token to be sustainable. He said:
“Easy to be ideological when you aren’t paying the bills. Charlie has been out of pocket funding all of defillamas expenses for years, it isn’t cheap. Watching everyone turn on everything he has done is disgusting. Him trying to stop the bleeding isn’t greed, it’s sustainability. Let’s see how long they last without his “free money”. They’ll be raising or adding ads or a token soon enough.”
People supporting 0nxgmi argue that they are many other ways to fund the project, including adding monthly or yearly subscriptions, launching an NFT project, and other monetization methods.
