Letter from LIP Author/Advisor Kieran Warwick
Greetings, fellow lizards!
Firstly, I want to thank everyone who has stuck around throughout the past year; I know that many of you have entrusted me to oversee this project and ensure it reaches its potential. This proposal aims to do precisely that.
Before we get into the content of this proposal, I want to take the time to explain how Ethlizards were formed and why they are so important to me.
You could say trading is my hobby. It's no secret that I love trading, and the more degen, the better; it stems back to when ETH was considered a shit coin, back when that term hadn't even been coined. I traded almost every food coin and meme coin in existence. So much so that I decided to create a degen trading channel in Illuvium (my full-time project).
When Illuvium took off, my time became limited, and I couldn't spend as much time in the degen channel. Once a day, I would spend an hour chatting with people, looking for alpha, and just having a good time without worrying about what I was saying or the language I was using. After not attending for over a month, I finally decided to jump back in and see what was happening. To my shock, nothing was happening, and it was a barren wasteland. I asked the few people who were left what had happened, and they said everyone had left to join the lizards. The what? The fuck are the lizards, I asked.
One hundred degens freshly minted from investing in ILV early were using Lizards as their online identity inside a new Discord called The Underground Lizard Lounge. I was blown away. They had hijacked my channel and created an NFT collection. Too good, I said. If you can't beat them, then join them. I reached out to the team and told them I was super impressed with their prowess. It was then that I found out that someone else had created the collection (0xDrs), but he had just moved on and passed the keys to the new members. I found it interesting that the founder was willing to leave, but it didn't stop me from wanting to get more involved. A couple of days later, I had a meeting with the team and explained my idea of a GameFi DAO, it only made sense as I had access to gaming investments, and the Lizard community was predominantly Illuvium investors, and they agreed to start building. On Jan 14, 2022, the team officially announced that I had joined as an advisor to the Ethlizards. I authored LIPs 2-4 in collaboration with the team to get things moving.
I met with the team (0xSp1cySauce, 0XDupree, 0xExpress) a couple of times, and it started to become clear that they were very green across the board; between tech, business development and art, most were at a junior level. As I was extremely busy with Illuvium, I didn't have the time to recruit a team with more experience. I wanted to give them a chance, in any case.
After six months, I have reviewed the team's progress and believe that the progress made is not satisfactory. We have seen very few updates, communication has been abysmal, and overall the community sentiment is down and well below general market expectations.
I accept my share of the responsibility for not being as active as required, but I also acknowledge that it will probably not change any time soon. Therefore, it's unfortunate but necessary to replace the current team with a new, more experienced team that can deliver on my overall vision of the GameFi DAO. We have an extremely ambitious goal to become one of the largest NFT collections in the world. We can only achieve it with a team with years of experience coding, trading, investing and operating businesses. As such, I have selected a team that I believe will be able to deliver (details below). I have met with each team member personally and intend to regularly meet with the CEO and CTO at my office (ops manager joining via video). One thing that is missing right now is a clear communication channel between myself and the team. Having access to them in person will alleviate a lot of these issues. If this proposal passes, the new team will be instated immediately, and the keys to the vault will be transferred to the below replacement team. I will remain as a signer as a backstop to any nefarious activity.
I want to clarify that I appreciate everything the current core contributors have done for the project; many of them have spent hours dedicated to building, making this a complicated proposal to write. You can see this reflected in the buyout strategy I have proposed. Let me reiterate; this is not meant to be a hostile take-over; it's simply a change of pace, which I believe is beneficial for the community, the old and new team.
I committed to the community long ago to do my best to make this work. We have unprecedented access to some of the biggest names in crypto with the most extensive networks; it's time to tap into that potential. Now, let's get into the fine details:
This vote is to change to a new Ethlizards core contributor team, as outlined below.
After the DAO was formed with a junior-level team, progress and communication were limited. After six months, the project is behind on primary goals and initiatives.
This document proposes a change to replace the existing team of core contributors with a new team to realign the DAO on the track to becoming the premiere GameFi DAO and a blue chip NFT collection.
(Kmao) & (Jumbo) are aiming to join the lizards as lead devs, with Kmao handling solidity & the business aspect whileoperates full-stack development. They have been following the lizards for a long-time and are keen to step in and take things to the next level. Here's an excerpt from Kmao on what needs to be done/changed:
"We believe ETHlizards lacks a clear identity & direction.