[Proposal] VSP-1 - Rage Quit

1

[VSP-1] Rage Quit Proposal

Proposal

Atum and Midnight Rage Quit from vesta

Summary

-Founders Atum and Midnight “Rage quit” from their position at Vesta to ensure better future for all Vesta related members

-Demand treasury value buyout of their vested shares

-All unvested tokens will be returned to the treasury or burned

-Vesta continues un-impacted with current assets and IPs

Intro

In the last year in Vesta, there has been an unhealthy amount of internal conflict, bad structure and management, and bad faith behavior directed towards two of the co-founders, Atum and Midnight. Multiple attempts have been made over the year to fix the problems, but due to the lack of cooperation, lack of trust and general cultural differences, these attempts have not led to anything fruitful. The impact on the development of the products and on the Vesta brand have been significant.

Founders Midnight, Atum have taken the decision to “rage quit” from Vesta and let Mikey run it in the way he sees fit. In this proposal we are demanding fair compensation for the work, value and shares that was brought through the inception, the engineering of the products, the support and management of the company and the continued good faith towards the members, participants and co-workers at Vesta.

The Motivation

The motivation of this departure is to ensure the smooth operations and future at Vesta. As stated before, the current environment supporting all founders does not work efficiently and it is detrimental to the development of the protocol. By dissociating and compensating the current parties, we remove the friction brought by the conflicting opinions and mindsets and also make the removed founders whole for their significant contribution.

Methodology of Compensation

If we evaluate current Vesta treasuries, they have a total value of $10,414,603.27

ETH Mainnet Treasury

Arbitrum Treasury

Founders Atum and Midnight have not sold a single VSTA since the inception of the protocol, each accumulating a total of
1,693,692.14 $VSTA vested tokens (taken at block 129355810)

Current circulating supply of VSTA is roughly

25,514,788.88 $VSTA (snapshot taken at block 129356661, snapshot can be re-evaluated)

Evaluating current treasury value of VSTA would be:
Value of treasury / Circulating supply
= 10,414,603.27 / 25,514,788.88

= ~$0.40817 / VSTA

This would equal a total of $691,329.714 for each respective leaving founder. Both founders would agree on an amount of 650,000 USDC in order to leave a bit more resources to the protocol to operate.

Any member from the taken snapshot who holds VSTA that decides they want the same treatment as the leaving founders will also be able to redeem their VSTA as same as the leaving founders. The assets of redemption will be a mix of what is available in the treasuries (ETH, USDC, ARB) , The methodology is also subject to debate if this proposal is accepted by governance and will also be subject to another snapshot before being enforced. There is a one month period where users will be able to redeem

The founders would agree to ship the current V2 in progress before being compensated and will not be taking any salary to preserve the treasury resources as good faith towards the users of the protocol, the members and the remaining founder of Vesta. Once the V2 is shipped and stable, Atum and Midnight relieve themselves as founders and any other roles they occupy at Vesta, their association is officially over and they will receive their compensation.

Note: If this proposal were to be edited, deleted or not posted to snapshot in 48h, both leaving co-founders (Atum and Midnight) will be twapping their tokens to the market within 48 hours. In the eventuality where proof of bad faith is necessary, we will post a timeline of said proofs where nefarious actions were taken at Vesta.

While commenting on this proposal, please use the provided template.

Template to comment

: Status (Retail / LBP / Angel / Team)

: Opinion

: Preferred proposal (VSP-1 or VSP-2)

: Estimate amount of VSTA

For: V2 finishes development by the leaving co-founders and the team, Atum and Midnight rage quit, as well as any member who wishes to follow.

Against: Leaving co-founders will twapping their tokens to the market

2

Note: I already commented on the other proposal, but still wanted to share my thoughts here as well.

Status: Retail

Opinion: As much as I regret to see two founders leave the project, if this is the right decision for the long-term success of the project so be it. I think that given the amount of voting control by the 2 founders, their opinion about which one of the two solutions has their preference would be helpful. I would be supportive of any solution deemed the right one if the snapshot block is moved to the block the proposal is posted to snapshot voting.

Preferred proposal: Dissolve

Estimate amount of VSTA: 500k tokens

3

Hey all

I am an angel investor in Vesta and an angel investor in multiple companies in crypto and traditional markets. I’ve also started companies and sold companies in the traditional market.

This situation happens more often than we think. Multiple co-founders having different visions and leaving or splitting. This is unfortunate but not an isolated case.

Now, I am 100% against this proposal on both side. Let me explain myself. The 2 co-founders, Atum and Midnight, are looking to “rage quit” and get paid at the same time. This proposal makes no sense and is most likely illegal.

When you start a company, a lot of people take risks. Angel investors take risk by giving you money in exchange for a potential return on investment. Founders take risk by giving their time for a potential return on investment. Normally in the traditional market, founders and investors get equity or options. These shares are worth nothing until the company sell to a bigger entity or does an IPO. In crypto, everyone is lucky. This process is accelerated with token creation.

The price of Vesta token before this proposal (which makes people buy the token, which is bad since they will lose money) was 0.14$.

The 2 co-founders are asking to leave at 0,40 for no reasonable reason. If they were in the traditional market, they would only be able to keep their equity and hope the third founder brings the company to success so that they can sell their share. We also know that 90% of companies that have founders that leave will fail. Which means the success of the company after they leave is really low and therefore they would have a really low chance of getting anything from the company.

The normal way to wind down a company is well known and fair for everyone based on the risk they took during the project. In traditional market, the founder would take the remaining cash (around 10M$ for Vesta) and send back the money to angel investors with a pro-rata of what they have invested first. The team gets nothing since their equity is valuable only if the company is successful.

Now, this is crypto and like I say above, we are lucky. The creation of a token already gives everyone a chance to get some money.

This is my proposal:

  • Burn every team unvested token and token that are not yet in circulation.

  • Return the amount of money to all angel investors. In total since the treasury is worth more then the initial investment.

  • Take the LPB snapshot and reimburse everyone the amount they invested in the LPB. LPB investors are like small angel investors that believe in the project.

  • Buy every token of the team at 0.14$ (This is the lucky part, normally team gets 0)

  • Buy the remaining token on the market at the fair market value. Create a Rage Quit page for everyone to get part of their money back.

I hope both parties will make the right choice to protect their reputation and wind down the right way.

4

Hi Atum,

Currently on the go and so will keep this short and will write a longer thought piece later on.

Thank you for your well-thought out proposal. I have a few adjustments that I think will improve it substantially as a starting point. I believe the main adjustment that needs to be made is the snapshot clause. With a dynamic proposal such as this and a live LP, it is inevitable that free market participants begin purchasing the token with the expectation of redemption. We shouldn’t penalise these buyers as this not only gives prior holders significant convenience by allowing them to sell at close to intrinsic value (whatever that may be) but also, and more importantly, the ambiguity inherent in VSP1 and VSP2 proposals as well as the rift in the team means that buyers are currently taking commensurate governance risk, execution risk and so forth. This is by no means a free-arbitrage trade and we shouldn’t treat it as such.

Secondly, based on prior rage quit proposals set forth by other DAOs which included some of the largest treasuries, the main tenet to live by is 1 token = 1 vote = 100% of Backing. Holders are treated equally. This means that by no metric should LBP holders be preferentially treated over non-LBP open market participants. We would not clawback profits from them if VSTA was a success and as a corollary they should not be seen as senior in a liquidation scenario. Similarly with the Angel round, it does not make logical or economic sense to offer more favourable investment terms at the start of the project (at the expense of retail) AND follow on by protecting their downside as well at the end. The clear loser in this case is the retail open market buyer, which, I suspect, is the class that lost the most here and whose interests should be most guarded.

It would be great if we can have some more time to flesh out the mathematics for each proposal (as well as any other creative suggestions by the community) to see which may yield the most favourable result for the VSTA token, all the founders AND the future of the project.

1 Like
5

Reposting on second post

Status: Team Member

Background:
I joined Vesta in April 2022 as Community & Awareness Lead, so not a founder. Since then, I have been involved in a wide range of responsibilities, encompassing community management, marketing, content creation, governance, and more. My commitment to Vesta has been total, and I’ve consistently been available seven days a week, every day of the year.

Opinion:
Firstly, I want you to know that I wasn’t even informed about this situation by Atum or Midnight. I found out about it just like everyone else did this morning. Although there have been clear issues with our shipping speed due to multiple changes in our roadmap, I was never told about such problems by the founding team. I’m genuinely shocked by this turn of events taking place in public.

I understand now how serious this situation is and the desire to move on, but remember, our team isn’t just about the founders. There are others like me who have a lot at stake here. We’re talking about real jobs and real people.

Imagine making a decision like this within just 48 hours. I mean, you could potentially lose your job in less than a week because of an internal dispute. So, I’m kindly requesting more time to think about possible solutions or, at the very least, to receive more clarification on what’s happening.

1 Like
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I am of the opinion that one token = one token regardless who holds it and when they bought it. When a vote is posted, every current holder gets a single vote. To align incentives means aligning outcomes. No one party should get more than another, everyone should be treated in the exact same way allowing those who want to continue to continue and those who want to leave to leave. I think VSP-1 with no block snapshot is the way to go.

For privacy reasons, I am not going to share my status or exact token amount but I hold a significant number of VSTA and hope my voice is heard.

3 Likes
7

Thanks Fair. Apt username.

1 Like
8

There have been a lot of very fruitful discussions happening during the last 24 hours. We heard from team members who want to leave, team members who want to stay, and tokenholders who think there should be a solution offered to them to rage quit along with team members who would like to separate from the project.

This isn’t surprising at all and this is pretty usual when a project faces failure and plans to operate a complete change of leadership along with a pivot.
But this doesn’t mean the project should be instantly killed. I think it should be up to tokenholders to decide if they want to quit at fair value (treasury assets divided by circ supply) or support the development of V2 and change of management that could include integrating a system to support the fair value price until V2 demonstrates product-market fit.

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To hopefully increase discussion quality, I created a topic here.

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I have been holding my VSTA for a long time and this project is going nowhere. I would like to rage quit too.