Co-Founder and Core-1 member Dimi wrote a blog post about the current state of Juno, mistakes made, and why he’s still bullish on the smart contract chain.
Dimi is one of seven members of Core-1, along with Jake Hartnell, thefrey, Lobo, Jack Zampolin, MaxJuno and Block Creators. Core-1 is a multisig wallet designed to oversee the Juno treasury, but over time has expanded to include handling business dealings for Juno.
On Friday Dimi took to his personal website in an effort to be transparent and let the Juno community know what has happened and what is going on. In his post, Dimi covers the origins of Juno and how it was built for individual holders. Dimi points out Juno took no money from venture capitalists.
One of the problems Juno holders highlight is that 12-year vesting tokens alocated to the Core-1 members were able to be staked and rewards were able to be sold. Dimi puts this issue in his list of mistakes.
Dimi admits mistakes were made and writes about a lack of analysis of the mechanics of Osmosis’ airdrop, which could have prevented “The Whale” situation or as it is commonly known, Prop 16. Prop 16 saw Juno voters seize the wallet of Takumi Asano, Japanese Co-founder of GAME, who was able to “game” the stakedrop (intentionally or not) by having multiple ATOM wallet addresses linked to investors he was managing. Takumi received 50,000 JUNO per wallet for 2.5 million JUNO, which violated the intended purpose of Juno’s “Whale Cap” to keep the airdrop in the hands of the community. It was a historic moment for crypto as a chain had never voted to freeze a user’s funds. Two camps have arisen out of the Prop 16 fallout with some calling for a burn of the tokens or redistribution back to original Juno airdrop recipients.
Dimi attributes the constant downward price action of Juno to the “truly decentralized holder base” and writes there is no one reason for the slide. According to him, a combination of factors such as lack of demand, loss of faith in leadership, unfavorable tokenomics, grants, competition and the bear market could all be to blame.
It’s important to point out that these are Dimi’s opinions and not necessarily those of the rest of Core-1. Dimi starts to show why he’s bullish on Juno as the letter goes on:
“While reading the paragraphs above may cause an initial reaction of ‘omg it’s a sinking ship! we’ll never recover from this situation,’ let me also emphasize the major strengths of Juno. In my opinion, these strengths significantly offset any mistakes and will allow us to progress with a solid foundation to fix any possible issues.”
Dimi writes about the social structure of Juno and how it is a “modular DAO.” This gives it the capability to adapt to any need and anyone can offer their services to existing SubDAOs or create their own. Juno’s SubDAO structure is the most innovative in the space, he writes.
Dimi offers the reason Juno experiences so much drama is due to the high level of engagement in discussion and that the community wants the project to succeed. He goes on to explain how people building on Juno are some of the best in the space and they provide the latest and best technology for smart contract building.
When it comes to the issue of leadership, Dimi acknowledges the community is requesting more direction, but let’s readers know Juno is a DAO and everything must be done in a transparent way. Dimi is unsure if Core-1 is the appropriate group to assume a leadership role, however, he lists changes Core-1 could implement to fill the role:
- Work Log – The SubDAO should report back to the community on the work completed within a set timeframe.
- Feedback Platform – We need to provide a way for the community to directly propose ideas to Core-1 or give feedback.
- Clear Objectives – We need to define the goals we want to achieve and establish a means to measure progress towards them.
- Transparency Disclosures – Every member should provide their own transparency disclosures about project involvement and other operations that might create a conflict of interest.
- Automatic Diversification – Instead of waiting for grantees to sell the tokens we grant at any time they want, we should implement an automatic diversification smart contract. This would allow the emission of grants in tokens that impact sell pressure in a more controlled manner.
In the letter, Dimi suggests changes to Juno’s token economy:
As I’ve previously mentioned, the original token economy of Juno was naive and not adequately balanced to perform optimally during both bear and bull market periods.
I believe the overall economy should be rebalanced as follows:
- Reduce overall inflation (perhaps something dynamic similar to Cosmos Hub).
- Automatically allocate a percentage of inflation for protocol incentives, as described in my old Commonwealth post.
- Reduce and introduce dynamic unbonding periods – the longer you lock, the larger share of inflation you receive.
- Distribute tokens based on a curve determined by validator position, incentivizing decentralization of stake.
- Separate governors and validators.
Token demand should be driven by a clear vision, a path towards a long-term objective, and tangible utility. The Juno Evolution article briefly explains this, but I’ll share more thoughts if you continue reading.
Dimi thinks the decentralized structure Juno is building is the best way to scale, but indicates budgeting accountability and leadership issues need to be addressed. More standards and procedures are needed, he writes.
At the end of Dimi’s letter he calls on the Juno community to “work together” in solving these “manageable” issues so work can begin on the “incubator vision” to create the first truly functional DAO with real “interchain yield” for all stakers.
