LVT Leadership Conflict
It is with deep regret, that we (two founders of the Louverture team) announce that we have lost confidence in our co-founder, Omega, to lead Louverture.
This article describes Omega’s failure to honour agreements, his negligent management of the team, and repeated failures to act in the best interests of Louverture. For these reasons, our positions at Louverture have become untenable. As controllers of 2 out of 4 multi-sig votes for the LVT treasury, the terms of our exit are essential for the future direction of Louverture, and we feel obliged to involve the LVT community as part of this discussion.
We describe the series of events below, and outline our proposal to resolve this issue and protect the investments of the LVT community.
The founding of Louverture
We (the writers of this article) are two founders of the Louverture project: DevTheApe (aka ‘Ape’), the sole smart contract developer, and BeMyFriendPls (aka ‘Friend’), the tokenomics expert.
Omega’s first request for us was to build a Thor/Ring fork. In response, we recommended a number of improvements to Thor/Ring including any size nodes and compounding nodes. In total, this development changed 40% of the Thor/Ring code. We worked 16–20 hour days to ensure a prompt and secure launch.
As remuneration for building the coin, we initially asked for a 5% share of the team wallet each. Despite our request, we received a 2% share each, with assurances that the remaining share would be used to assemble a large team of experts to support and expand LVT.
Following launch, Friend and Ape continued to commit 16–20 hour days to sustain Louverture whilst waiting for additional support. Tasks included moderating the main chat, managing marketing discussions, supporting website design, advising farming strategies, and writing Medium articles. Friend informed Omega that the workload was unsustainable and by far over and above the initial agreement. In response, Omega increased our share to 3.5% each and agreed to accelerate efforts to grow the Louverture team.
Reducing rewards for LVT holders
Louverture initially rewarded their holders with 7% of their investment per day. Our advice from the outset was clear: this was not sustainable. A mere $10 investment at that rate would make you the richest person in the world within a year. A quick search of the LVT Telegram will show Friend repeatedly telling people that the 7% must reduce at some point. This reduction was not clearly communicated by anyone else associated with the project. Unsurprisingly, the reduced rewards shocked the community. We saw this as an oversight, and a lesson for the future: clear communication from Omega and the LVT mods was essential.
With hindsight, this was the first of many red flags. Omega repeatedly tweeted vague announcements, despite requests to stop on multiple occasions. When clarity and guidance for the community was urgently required (such as reducing LVT rewards or Mistel’s migration), Omega was silent for hours.
A series of self-inflicted crises
Omega would frequently take actions that were not discussed. Sometimes making decisions against what we previously agreed. One instance included Omega selling 3% of LVT in two transactions from his personal dev wallet. Despite being warned by Friend that the dev wallet is public and would cause a panic, Omega did it anyway.
In another instance, Omega announced that we would use a “majority” of MP funds to buy back LVT despite a previous agreement to use 25% (this announcement was later deleted). Omega also published questionable ‘governance’ proposals despite requests not to do so (this was also later deleted).
Without consulting the LVT team, Omega persistently contradicted agreements and pursued grandiose ideas, which were inherently impractical. Despite the obvious risks of crashing the coin value, Omega would begin executing his unconsidered plans in team group chats and through public Tweets. We started to feel like he cared more about building a cult of personality around himself, rather than acting in our community’s best interests.
To prevent the implosion of the project, Friend and Ape worked tirelessly to fix these self-inflicted crises. On several occasions we had no option but to work through the night to address concerns in the community. Omega’s impulsive acts required the LVT team to work 120 hours a week to protect our community’s investments. Inevitably, this uphill battle to protect our community had decimated team morale and ultimately damaged our health.
Omega’s failure to support the LVT team
Friend and Ape built the smart contracts and tokenomics for LVT, MP, Mistel, and LVT’s 2nd project alone. This is in addition to sustaining the viability of each project and fighting the fires caused by Omega’s impulsive tweeting.
It has been more than six weeks since we joined LVT. Since then, we have not received a single additional person to provide support. Friend even had to personally recruit the CTO for the application-related work for LVT’s 2nd project. Omega did hire someone to help Ape with his duties, but this person was not a smart contract dev with insufficient solidity development experience. In effect, Ape was still doing everything by himself.
Community funds and a lack of accountability
The screenshot below reveals Omega’s commitment to Friend that he would split $2m between Omega, Friend and Ape in recognition of our contribution to the project:
Until this point, Omega had paid us 3,300 AVAX combined after expenses (approximately $200k). He instantly converted his AVAX to stable coins around $110/AVAX. He withdrew 18,000 AVAX from the dev wallet to his personal wallet (approximately $2 million) and also withdrew 16,000 AVAX from the marketing wallet, (approximately $1.8 million). In addition to this, Omega has access to funds amounting to approximately $1 million that are not protected by the multi-sig. This means Omega has and can receive approximately $4.8 million of value from community funds.
We have repeatedly requested accountability about how the marketing money was being used (and whether it was actually being used for marketing at all). To this date, we have received no information or assurances.
Please note, that Omega has paid us a combined $150,000 bonus, bringing our combined compensation to $350k ($175k each) whilst Omega has walked away with more than 25x that amount. You can see an exact break down here.
For the previous few weeks, Omega was only available for a couple of hours per day. This does not come close to the time required to successfully perform the tasks required to lead an ambitious project like Louverture. When asked about his whereabouts, he would tell us he was preoccupied with “doing big things”. We still await information and evidence as to what those “big things” might be.
The conflict
Raising concerns of our working hours, leadership direction, and the interests of our community, Omega ‘fired’ us. He decided we had been paid “enough”, and would not be paying us any more.
It is important to note that our remuneration agreement was not based on a salary, but on equity. The exact amount of equity we received was based on guarantees by Omega that: (i) we would expand our team; and (ii) the marketing budget would be used for marketing purposes. We agreed to receive less equity because we would have more team members to support us, and a successful marketing campaign would raise the overall value. In effect, we received less equity for working more hours, whilst Omega took control of the marketing budget as his personal finances.
We acknowledge that our compensation to date is significant. However, it pales in comparison to the value we have contributed to these projects. We have worked continuous 120-hour weeks to build all four of his coin projects from scratch. We successfully managed two migrations, and took care of the every-day tasks required to maintain the community.
Meanwhile, Omega has received 25x more in compensation. In response to our challenges, he argues that he is “the founder” and is therefore entitled to keep most of the rewards, even though we were also there from the beginning and built everything from scratch.
Why are we writing this article?
To protect the interests of our community, we feel obliged to involve LVT holders in this discussion. We currently control 2 of the 4 multi-sig votes for the LVT treasury. Omega’s negligent management and impulsive actions make it irresponsible for us to hand him back control of the treasury.
For these reasons, we look to our community for consensus on the best way to resolve this dispute.
Our proposal
⦁ Unless Omega commits to working towards a satisfactory resolution, we intend to hold a community vote to decide what should happen to our multi-sig votes.
⦁ We encourage the community to demand accountability and transparency about where development and marketing payments have been allocated. If our suspicions are correct that Omega has used these as personal finances, then we encourage the community to demand a compensatory refund to the treasury. If we consider 30% of team funds to be reasonable compensation for Omega, then the treasury is due compensation of over $2million.
⦁ We request Omega to provide both Friend and Ape $500k each, which equates to approximately 10% of the team funds he has taken for himself. This amount would compensate us for our previous work building and protecting the project, as well as renouncing our future equity in all four projects. Our loss of confidence in the leadership of this project means we are no longer interested in equity as compensation.
We will be available on Twitter if anyone has any questions.