While team members prepare for what may be an upcoming token release, DefiLlama is immersed in internal conflict. Over the weekend, one of the platform’s employees forked the decentralised finance analytics dashboard. That is the decision of a single co-founder, much to the chagrin of most of the core DefiLlama community.
On Sunday 19 March, one of the project’s pseudonymous co-founders, 0xngmi, took to Twitter, to direct the users to a forked version of the blockchain data platform, warning of a hostile takeover. Accusations of issuing the token without employee approval were also made towards the creators of DefiLlama. “There is an ongoing attempt to launch a token that does not represent us,” said 0xngmi. “We don’t want to be associated with it.”
0xngmi also included an etherscan transaction to verify that the information was not a result of any Twitter hack. As a result of the whole drama, Llama.fi was born, a website that is a new iteration of the core DefiLlama team who have no intentions of issuing the token. Except for the absence of links to a few tools, such as the DefiLlama-branded news website DLNews and Web3 infrastructure provider LlamaNodes, the website largely resembles defillama.com.
The new Twitter account associated with the fork has gained almost 9,000 followers at the time of writing. Yesterday, the account hinted that there could be “some nice surprises” in the future for anyone who contributes to and utilise the project’s services, closing off the statement with a parachute emoji—but without mentioning an airdrop.
Despite 0xngmi being the first to allege that DefiLlama was being hostilely taken over, a statement posted in one of the project’s Telegram channels stated that 0xngmi had “gone rogue” less than an hour after 0xngmi’s original Tweet. “0xngmi and a few team members have gone rogue, they are actively looking to seize Defillama IP and community while inaccurately claiming the rightful owner to be doing a hostile takeover,” the statement said.
Apart from going against the wishes of an alleged bulk of the team, Tendeeno, A pseudonymous DefiLlama contributor stated that a token launch would impede how the project now runs. It would not be surprising to see the new Llama.fi offering gains the traction it requires to maintain the good momentum that DefiLlama has built. In response to such DeFi concerns, numerous countries have been contemplating the introduction of a ‘CBDC,’ or central bank digital currency to strengthen the relevance and trustworthiness of DeFi products.
