Terra Classic Community Debates Handling Of $4M Off-Chain Assets

The Terra Classic community debates whether to put its trust in a team or professionals or send the newly discovered assets to the community pool.

The Terra Classic community has been locked in intense debates over how it should handle $4 million in newly discovered off-chain assets in the past week.

In a proposal five days ago, ex-Terra Rebels Quant Team Lead Alex Forshaw had revealed that Terraform Labs founder Do Kwon had made him aware of $4 million in off-chain assets that rightly belonged to the Terra Classic chain. Consequently, Forshaw proposed that the community reclaim the assets currently held in a multisig wallet and use them to fund development under the oversight of developers and the community.

Forshaw, in his proposal, nominated nine signers, including himself, to manage the wallet on behalf of the community by proposing a 12-month plan for the network, soliciting bids for executing items in this plan, evaluating bidders, and monitoring the progress of the work. In addition, he proposes that each signer be entitled to a stipend of $5,000 monthly.

It is worth noting that Forshaw’s proposal has seen fierce resistance from parts of the community, seemingly led by Vegas. Notably, like Vegas, this group prefers converting the funds to Terra Luna Classic and sending it to the community pool.

In fact, to this end, Vegas has written a counter-proposal to Forshaw’s, arguing that these funds belong to the community. According to Vegas, community members can always make proposals to request funds from the pool. In addition, he also points out that the community is already voting on Edward Kim’s grant proposal, which puts extra securities in place for community pool spending.

With the issue dividing the community, other key members are beginning to speak up in support of the proposal by Forshaw. These include some of the members Forshaw nominated as signers to the wallet.

Key Developers Respond

StrathCole, in a recent medium blog post, pointed out several shortcomings with sending the funds to the community pool. First, according to the developer, it risked causing unwanted LUNC fluctuations both in the initial transfer and in payments, as not all developers would prefer to receive payment in LUNC. 

Furthermore, he highlighted the worrying fact that as much as people want to believe that the community is decentralized, it is becoming increasingly influencer controlled. Consequently, leaving funds to governance can lead to a situation where ideas favored by influencers are prioritized over bright ideas by relatively unknown people in the community. According to StrathCole, the nine nominees have the right balance of expertise to carry out the responsibility of efficiently managing the funds for the good of the community.

Meanwhile, core developer Tobias Andersen AKA Zaradar, giving his opinion in a separate medium blog post, expressed the view that a bulk of the hatred directed at the proposal by Forshaw is because it is coming from Forshaw. According to Zaradar, the view of the community towards the author is coloring the evaluation of the proposal. 

Not only does Zaradar think it is beneficial for efficient governance, but the developer believes that it is also necessary that the signers be paid to incentivize them to overcome the human inclination of favoritism and maintain the highest standards.

It remains unclear to what side the community would lean at the end of the day. Still, effective use of the newly found funds could be critical to the Terra Classic chain’s progress as it has the potential to speed up development exponentially.

Notably, RexYellerBelly of TerraCVita, not among the nominated signers, has also created a series of threads yesterday arguing in support of Forshaw’s proposal.

1) #TerraClassic Tech Facts:

➡️Code needs upgrading.
➡️Chain needs infrastructure.
➡️Upgrades will happen quicker if more hours are spent coding.
➡️Projects are more likely come to chains with upto date code.
➡️ The chain will do far better with more utility and projects.

— Rexyz (@RexYellerBelly) November 1, 2022