Wonderland co-founder revelations spark market sell-off for associated tokens

A number of tokens linked to the DeFi protocol Wonderland sold off on Thursday, following allegations that the project was co-founded by Michael Patryn, the surviving co-founder of the now-defunct Canadian crypto exchange QuadrigaCX.

Wonderland was launched in September 2021 by Daniele Sestagalli and 0xSifu as a fork of the Olympus protocol on the Avalanche blockchain. Participants in the Wonderland community refer to themselves as “frogs” or as a “frog nation.” Frog Nation also encompasses Abracadabra, Popsicle Finance and now Sushi (the community behind the SushiSwap decentralized exchange).

Wonderland’s token (TIME) has seen its market cap drop from $511.8 million to $352.6 million in the last 24 hours, according to data provider CoinGecko. 

Abracadabra Money (SPELL) also saw its market cap tank, falling from $645.2 million to $495.4 million over the last 24 hours. 

Meanwhile, Popsicle Finance’s (ICE) market cap fell from $98.9 million to $57.4 million. 

When it comes to tokens like these that are based on the OlympusDAO protocol, it’s more relevant to talk about market cap than the prices of the tokens because of how they work. This is due to a rebasing system that increases the amount of tokens on an ongoing basis and hands them to token holders.

The moves follow a post by a crypto sleuth, who goes by Zach on Twitter, about their conversation with Sestagalli — the other co-founder of Wonderland. Screenshots revealed that they had identified Wonderland’s other co-founder OxSifu as Patryn.

At the time, Sestagalli confirmed his conversation with Zach about 0xSifu but did not directly say that 0xSifu is Patryn. This was followed by a blog post by Sestagalli, which stated Patryn would be asked to step down from his position until a vote of confirmation. “I am of the opinion of giving second chances, as I have mentioned on Twitter,” he said.

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