The Illuvium DAO just keeps winning. In true decentralized fashion the DAO strikes again in a major way leading up the Illuvium Beyond sale. With Illuvitars just one week away we had quite a dilemma on our hands with the Illuvium DAO and Su Zhu. Illuvium’s fearless leader, Kieran Warwick, had put out this tweet and set the Illuvium Universe on fire.
Upon seeing this tweet, I immediately put my tinfoil hat on. To this point, Kieran had put on a marketing masterclass. Live Twitch streams with Brycent, countless AMAs and hundreds of interviews. He even launched the Escape Pod live show on Twitter Spaces so people could learn more about the Illuvium team members. The dude was everywhere to the point where he lost his voice. I can’t say it enough, he rarely had a misstep.
A Major Decision
Yet here we were two weeks out from the sale with a decision to make as a community. This Illuvitar battle was such a glaring mistake that I thought there must be another angle. However, as the bullets flew, Kieran stood his ground. Taking shots left and right in discord, here is what he had to say about it.
We’ve infiltrated nearly every single large-scale crypto, particularly DeFi projects. I faced the same resistance when I said we would airdrop communities and also when I said we would give a staking pool to other communities; I know marketing, and I know how to bring people to our project. The thing about exposure is when you have something compelling, it doesn’t matter why you arrived. You derive your own conclusion. We have a fantastic product. My battling a guy who went against my brother will make people look into ILV, which is precisely why I’m doing what I’m doing. You aren’t educating me on who Zhu Su is…
He knew full well what he was getting into and at the end of the day I think he simply wanted to battle a guy who had feud with his brother and Synthetix founder Kain Warwick, while also bringing attention to the upcoming sale. It couldn’t be that simple, could it?
The conversation did not end there. The community quickly sprung into action led by Council Member and Rhamphyre.io contributor Deraji. He kicked it off with a Twitter Poll.
This spilled over into the Illuvium Discord and ultimately led to the drafting of an IIP. Here is what Deraji had to say in the ideas channel of discord to kick off the discussion:
While Zhu Su is a well known figure in the web3 community and does have a larger follower count than Illuvium, direct association with him risks the reputation that the DAO has worked to curate.
Illuvium has constantly sought an image of being different and doing things right. The original presented “battle” not only places an Illuvium co-founder in direct connection with a controversial figure, but does so with the perception of an invitation from the DAO, on a stage provided by the DAO.
To ensure first introductions to Illuvium are not establishing a direct connection between a new, exciting product and a controversial figure representing arguably the perception the DAO has fought to separate itself from, the originally presented “d1sk battle” shall be canceled.
During this tenuous time for web3, it is important to avoid the risk of “scam by association.”
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you’ll do things differently.” — Warren Buffett
There were a lot of good points made by Deraji in this post and it ultimately led to an IIP and Council vote. The end result was 4 Yes votes to cancel the Zhu Su vs Kieran battle. A unanimous decision with Kieran choosing not to vote.
All Publicity is Good Publicity?
The news of the decision caught wind on multiple crypto platforms. Most noticeably, Cointelegraph wrote about the spat and tweeted it out to their 1.8 million followers.
For those keeping score at home, that is almost 4x the number of followers that Zhu Su has. This brings me back to my original conspiracy. Was Kieran Warwick playing puppet master all along?
We will probably never know. In the end, that doesn’t really matter. Illuvium got a ton of headlines from this move, the DAO showed it’s strength and it ended up being a win for all parties, except Zhu Su of course, but no one is crying for that dude.
Illuvitars are coming March 7th
The Illuvium Beyond Sale will start on March 7th at 8am UTC! The sale will happen on Layer 2 with Immutable X and D1sks can be bought with ETH and sILV2.
Thank You
As always, thank you for reading my article! You can follow me on Twitter (@Rhamphy) to keep up with the latest Illuvium news, leaks and more.
Everything I write is purely my opinion and should not be taken as financial advice.
