The battle for Rome's treasury, part 4

In hindsight (and naming conventions aside), it was kind of a bad idea calling Rome improvement proposals RIPs. The project is pretty much dead now, following the catastrophic liquidation battle summarized in parts 1, 2, and 3 of this series. The team still affirms that a game will be shipped next December...but there are many things that just don't add up. Beyond the evident loss of trust incurred by the team, we have a history of unfulfilled promises, backtracking, gaslighting and questionable decisions that make it hard to believe that anything substantial is ever going to be delivered.

RIP-028 passed, as predicted, despite the best efforts of community members who wanted to preserve the treasury from liquidation. These community members had to fight not only whale RFVers who accumulated Rome at the bottom, but the team itself. House Sempronia publicly welcomed the RFVers proposal, acting as if nothing could be done in order to defend against it, despite well documented instances in Rome's past where unilateral actions fundamentally altering the nature of the project were taken by the team without a DAO vote. The team also chose to ignore that clear governance rules had not actually been voted on (RIP-001, formalizing governance, was never submitted to a vote), and that there was ample room for maneuver in blocking a liquidation attack

Community reaction was predictably not good, and there's a lot of bad blood going around. A considerable number of token holders argue that the team, at best, managed the project with gross negligence; at worst, with deliberate fraudulent intent.

Here's just a small sample, taken from Discord:

Another good example of community outrage is RIP-030, proposing the liquidation of the entire treasury:

Unfortunately, members of the core team have washed their hands off of any responsibility. Discord mods continue to act in passive-aggressive, gaslighting mode — a Rome tradition dating back to its inception — pushing the narrative that the team was victim of an unavoidable attack, while throwing around the words "DAO governance", "decentralization", and "plutocracy" as if they were unquestionable and definitive answers to any posts questioning the team's responsibilities. When messages seem to gain traction, mods resort to banning users, claiming they are being toxic. Even worse, treasury defenders have been accused of speeding up the liquidation process because they "forced the hand of the RFVers" by posting counterproposals as RFCs. Talk about blaming the victim...

Let's be clear here: the team knew about the possibility of governance attacks. Raiders have been taking advantage of failing OHM forks since earlier this year, exploiting weak communities and poorly designed governance rules, in order to slurp up whatever is left in these projects' treasuries. The threat to Rome was easy to see from miles away, and the team was alerted by a community member about the possibility of an attack in April of this year. Instead of taking the threat seriously, team members just brushed the possibility off, neglecting several preemptive measures that could have been taken. Governance could have been strengthened in order to block attacks, inverse bonds implemented to equalize backing per token, or liquidity withdrawn to stop big whales from accumulating $ROME.

Nothing was done.

"The game", or yet, part of the frontend for the game (the only major thing shipped so far), serves as plausible deniability against accusations of malicious action. The same can be said in relation to the game development updates that have been posted by Houses of Rome, though they sometimes read, as one member of House of Chaos pointed out, like "game dev fanfic". Still, even if we assume that these diaries depict an honest account of development, the 1.0 version of the game, promised for December this year, seems a long way off.

Personally, I decided to just exit my position when the price was close to 11 dollars —1 dollar below the target liquidation price of 12. There is a lot of confusion right now about how and when the liquidation will be carried out, with team members disagreeing on the subject (one has claimed that RIP-028, while vague, gives the team carte blanche to decide on execution, while another has the view that further RIPs will be necessary).

So why bother sticking around? There is nothing worthy of redemption here besides the treasury itself.

RIP, indeed.