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The JUNO Whale Saga, New twists in the Story

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JK
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The Ongoing Saga of the JUNO Whale.

If you saw my post from a few days ago, you will be familiar with the saga of the JUNO Whale. In case you missed it, basically one entity had multiple ATOM wallets at the time of the JUNO airdrop and gained a huge number of tokens (over 10% of total supply). There is a governance vote for JUNO stakers underway to forcefully remove the stake from the whale via a chain upgrade. Since my last post, new details have emerged, the Whale has come out and plead their case, and signs of internal division amongst the core dev team seem to be emerging.

Image Source: Pixabay

Getting up to speed.

I'll drop a few links here for those not familiar, if you wish to get up to speed with this situation.

New Developments.

Since my last post, much has happened. The Whale has identified themselves as a kind of fund manager (for lack of a better term) for a group of Japanese investors . These investors are people they bring into crypto, focusing on ATOM, and they manage funds for them for a 10% commission. All of these activities pre-date any talk of Cosmos airdrops, and particularly this JUNO drop in question. They provide details of two validators on the Cosmos Hub they run, and attempt to explain the lack of transparency around how they have managed JUNO and OSMO airdrops.

My impression is that their statement is a little shady, and a lot of their plans are being developed/altered in response to being called out. It is unclear, but in my opinion doubtful, whether they had intentions to distribute these funds gained from the drops to the rightful owners, their investors. in any regard, the "intentional gaming of the airdrop" narrative has largely been discredited. It is clear these wallets where in place way before the JUNO project even existed, and indeed many of the wallets held 100K ATOM each in them, which was double the whale cap imposed of 50K.

Still, something does need to happen, however forcibly removing these funds via governance and a chain upgrade feels like the wrong solution to me. I feel that negotiations between the Whale, the core team, and some respected validators to find a peaceful solution. Surely there is another way, one that will recognize that the drop design itself was flawed, and also the Whale's actions have been shady, but that compromises can be found that will be acceptable to all parties.

Signs of division.

The most concerning thing in this whole saga for me, apart from the willingness to alter the chain state to remove funds from a specific wallet, is the emerging signs of division at Core-1 (the lead dev's behind JUNO). Early on in this saga, it was Wolfcontract who lead the charge on Prop 16, and they have been to my mind the most visible member of Core-1 team. The proposal text indicated that it came from Core-1.

However, just under 24 hours ago, Multichain Maximalist, another prominent member of Core-1 released this detailed tweet thread. I won't go into all the detail here, but will drop one quote from the thread that causes concern:

Most annoying to me personally, is that the proposal says "Proposed by Core-1", and yet it didn't come from the actual core1_official multisig. If it doesn't have the signature of the core1_official multisig, it did not truly come from Core 1.

Next, with barely 24 hours remaining on the vote time limit for Prop 16, the official Core-1 account releases this tweet thread basically calling for people to switch to a "NO" vote on the prop. The tweet thread has caused much confusion and further division in the community, with many declaring they would not change and committing to retaining the YES vote.

One final twitter thread of note come from Wolfcontract, who returned to twitter a couple of days after saying he was done with it. In this tweet he simply reaffirmed that his personal vote and his Validator vote (SG-1) was remaining as YES. He also released this thread in response to discussions around contacts he had with the Whale in question.

Where to now?

The now infamous Prop 16 has less than 24 hours to run. Currently, the YES vote looks like it will still prevail, with just over 50% of the vote. One impressive thing to note from this whole saga is the turnout, with over 93% participation in the vote. The thing to note ultimately is that Prop 16 is merely a signaling proposal, it of itself is not immediately enforceable. The likelihood is high that now there will be further votes, and possibly proposals from the Whale themselves, for solutions to this. Also, the final upgrades required to implement prop 16 into code will likely need a vote, I think.

With so much water already under the bridge, there is still much yet to play out in this saga.

I think the one thing that is clear is that the internal workings of the Core-1 team needs tightening up. For one member to put out a proposal claiming its from the team, only to be contradicted by another speaks to a clear need for roles and responsibilities to be clarified. With the JUNO chain now having shown so much potential, and already having grown so much, the dev team behind it need to ensure they are clear, rational and considered in their communications.

Thanks for reading, feel free to express your thoughts in the comments below.

Cheers,

JK.

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