The battle for ROME's treasury

Houses of Rome has not even launched its first campaign against the Etruscans and the barbarians are already at the gate, ready to sack the treasury of Moonriver's major GameFi project.

DCF GOD, investor-entrepreneur-Twitter personality-podcaster, routinely scouts the cryptoverse for failed or failing OHM forks in search of tokens under RFV (risk-free value), so that he can dissolve their treasuries and scoop up the profits. It's a valid, extremely speculative but potentially lucrative strategy, taking advantage of the chaos that almost inevitably ensues after any project attempts to fork OHM. On the other hand, it's a strategy that can be disruptive to projects that have distanced themselves from being a pure OHM fork, like Rome, which pivoted from its initial proposal of being an “OHM fork with GameFi elements” to a “GameFi project that used OHM-like bonds and rebases to capitalize the project and initial token distribution". The project has moved on, the community has moved on, and we don't see ourselves as an OHM fork, but as a GameFi startup with a healthy balance sheet.

$ROME, which had severely plummeted since its late 2021 launch, has been appreciating in value ever since DCF GOD publicly expressed his interest, with a group of RFVers circling like vultures around Houses of Rome's juicy treasury, consistently pushing the price of the token upwards in a period in which everything else is mostly going down only.

Problem #1: since ROME has pivoted from being an OHM-fork, talking about RFV is no longer relevant. The project has a healthy treasury, enough runway to survive the bear market, and very responsible financial management. Nonetheless, there IS a treasury, tokens are undervalued, can be feely traded, accumulated, and used for voting (Houses of Rome used to be called RomeDAO), and Rome governance is...kind of a mess. A previous, less consequential conflict involving part of the community wanting to move from Moonriver to Avalanche, is still a sour memory to many, particularly those who invested in the project following its self-declared intentions to be a major ecosystem player in Kusama/Moonriver. Discussions can be toxic, the project's direction is sometimes opaque and unpredictable (the previous hard pivot came out of the blue), and governance is dominated by whales, as is the case with many DAOs, with no checks and balances to provide even a modicum of control over proposals that can drastically alter the fundamentals of the project.

Problem #2: House Sempronia, in charge of game dev, proposed a compromise solution that would reserve 4 million USD (out of approximately 20) for development, while dissolving the treasury and allowing token holders to exit their positions at around US$ 12 per token:

"Liquidate the treasury at a set # of assets less the assets necessary to commit to x months of runway. We believe 24-36 months of runway is an appropriate amount of capital for a project of our size and progress to operate. Anywhere between 12-24 months can also work but having cash on hand to build through a prolonged bear, low revenue, and capital dry environment is obviously preferred.

24 months would mean $4M in remaining assets, preferably FRAX. This would also put the redemption value per token at roughly $12 if you include the dollar value of the LP, the stables, and the risk assets minus $4M." (see post by SempContributors, in the comments section)

This seems at odds with the mission of working towards a fully fledged, 3D gaming experience during a bear market. Why not simply expand the dev team, and reserve the rest of the treasury as a war chest? Why capitulate so easily in face of a hostile takeover? Is this out of a fear that RFVers will inevitably outvote the community, given how low the price of $ROME was when they started accumulating?

We, from House of Chaos, are trying to come up with alternatives that would preserve the best interests of the project, making it less prone to further attempts of treasury takeover, something we feel is unfair to those who have stuck with Rome since the beginning, and believe in the long term potential of the project. We are not here for a rebasing token, we are here because we believe in the the game and the team.

This is a developing story. We'll get back with more news as the battle for the treasury continues!

It turns out that the game that we were promised has already started, and it's called DAO GOVERNANCE.

[read part 2 of this series here]