Thread by @0xsurferboy

1/34 The Ardana and Orbis catastrophe.

Was it a rug or poor strategy & planning?

The 2 Cardano projects swept under the rug while CT was focused on the FTX saga 👇

🧵

2/34
Cardano is a public blockchain focused on providing a secure and scalable platform for developing and executing smart contracts and dApps.

Being in development since 2015, Cardano has one of the most diverse ecosystems with over 1,000 active dApps.

3/34
Cardano's decentralized team is spread across 3 entities:
1. EMURGO - commercial arm
2. IOHK - tech & engineering
3. Cardano Foundation - oversees Cardano

4/34
The cFund and Project Catalyst are the ecosystem's funds that support new Cardano projects.

cFund is a more traditional VC-style backed by IOHK and Wave Financial

Catalyst is essentially a "DAO VC" where the community gets to vote on the winning projects to get funded.

5/34
From what I know, Project Catalyst is divided into a series of funds deployed every 6 weeks, with the amount doubling each round

Each proposal is in a category. Each category has an amount of funding for its proposals

e.g. In Fund 9, Dev ecosystem has $1M, dApps has $7.9M

6/34
The project that got the highest net votes gets the entire ask.

The next highest checks to see if there is enough funding left for it to be fully funded.

If so, it is funded, if not, it is skipped.

e.g. below:

7/34
Ardana and Orbis are built on the Cardano ecosystem, founded by Ryan Matovu in Jan and Oct 2021 respectively.

Of the over 1,000 Cardano projects, founder Charles Hoskinsons has never seen such a big failure.

8/34
Let's dive into Ardana 🅰

Ardana was working on stablecoin minting and forex services, and aspired to be “the MakerDAO and the Curve Finance of Cardano"

Users can deposit ADA or other supported tokens as collateral into Ardana Vaults to borrow Ardana stablecoin (dUSD).

9/34
The forex part comes with their DEX, Danaswap.

Danaswap lets users exchange fiat currencies by minting fiat-pegged stablecoins (dUSD, dEUR, dGBP) & swapping them for #Cardano stablecoins like $dUSD, $DJED etc.

They valued this market at $6.6T

10/34
To clear up the air:

The dUSD here is by Ardana, NOT Defichain's dUSD stablecoin.

11/34
Ardana raised $10M led by 3AC, the cFund and Ascensive Assets from Aug to Oct 2021, vested over 20 months

Their ICO of 1.67M $DANA tokens worth $11M took place in Nov 2021, these were linearly vested over 7 months with each investor capped at $500.

12/34
$DANA is the utility & governance token of Ardana that allows $DANA stakers to receive a proportional share of the fees accrued.

Also, they can participate in the governance of Ardana by voting on parameter changes

13/34
The 125M $DANA supply was distributed as follows:

14/34
Ardana's proposed roadmap from Q2 2021 to 2023+

15/34
$DANA has been tanking DoD since 3AC's collapse (Ardana's largest investor)

Over 13 mths, millions of vested $DANA tokens could have been liquidated on the open market or sold in OTC deals.

The problem is the overwhelming lack of transparency

16/34
How did their $10M coffer dry up in 1.5 years?

Ardana cited development costs.

For reference, Ethereum raised $18M in an ICO, but lost $9M to market volatility - they worked with $9M.

17/34
Ardana's "world class" team consists of 13 people.

Even if each member receives a $250K annual salary, they would still have over $5M in funds.

The reality is 90% of startups fail, perhaps >95% in crypto.

The biggest reason for failure: Lack of capital.

18/34
In Ardana's case, they raised more money than any other Cardano project.

Nobody knew where the funds went (investors or community) - a complete lack of transparency.

In their Twitter space, it sounds like they blamed Cardano for being too complicated, thus high dev cost

19/34
Community members highlighted how Ardana did not get help from other projects, the community or reach out to the cFund.

If Ryan really believed in the project, why wouldn't he try to raise if money was the problem or at least get help if dev power was the problem?

20/34
As outlined in their roadmap, the dUSD stablecoin and Danaswap should've been released in Q4 2021.

They failed to execute - from Q4 2021 onwards, it seems nothing was launched.

In each release of Ardana's development diary, the status is always "almost done"

21/34
Link to medium: medium.com/@ardanaproject
Link to docs: docs.ardana.org

22/34
Orbis is another project by Ryan aimed to address the scalability of Cardano by utilizing zkSNARK rollups.

Transactions occur off-chain on the Orbis L2 and are bundled together into a single zk proof submitted on-chain to the Cardano L1 and verified.

23/34
According to Orbis' roadmap, Orbis V1 is on track to be launched in Q4 2022 with work scopes broken down into 3 primary categories:

1. zk-SNARK
2. Protocols
3. Compilers and emulators

24/34
Similar to Ardana, monthly updates can be found on their blog: blog.orbisprotocol.com/posts

In their August 2022 Monthly update, the launch date was pushed back to Q2 2023.

On 12 Nov, they abruptly announced a $HALO token for a community private funding round.

25/34
$HALO is their native utility token for fees, rewards and governance purposes.

Full details can be found here: blog.orbisprotocol.com/posts/announci…

TLDR;
- You are purchasing an NFT exchangeable for $HALO when it launches
- Conversion multipliers incentivize early HODLers

26/34
According to an interview with Ryan, Orbis was largely self-funded.

In Mar 2022 they applied for Fund 8 under the scaling category but was unsuccessful in a $1M raise.

An egalitarian approach would be to ask for 25% across 4 rounds so they are not steamrolling others

27/34
Leading up to Orbis' token sale, I assume they were either 1) self-funding or 2) they used Ardana's funds. Once those dried up, they opted for a private round.

The tokens (or NFTs) were sold via JPG store on 17 Nov (jpg.store/collection/orb…)

28/34
1 Week after the private round was announced, Orbis announced that it is "halting development due to constrained funding"

29/34
Reddit user u/demesisx highlighted the many red flags of Orbis:

1. Scaling solutions category was allocated $1M in $ADA, which Orbis decided to obtain the full amount, albeit unsuccessfully.

2. Their Github repo is almost non-existent: github.com/Orbis-Tertius/…

30/34
3. Misinformation to convince the community to vote for them

4. Supporters shilling the project and attacking people raising 100% valid concerns.

31/34
The entire situation does look like a rug, from the lack of transparency to the unannounced departure, to essentially nothing being launched.

But one can argue that open-sourcing Ardana for other devs makes it legit - it's a similar situation with Telegram's Tonchain.

32/34
Similarly, Orbis halted just 1 week after announcing the private round.

But 2 days later announced a full refund for participants of the NFT sale

The biggest loss was Ardana's $10M investment, which imo is pure horrible planning (and maybe some sus parts)

33/34
Key takeaway:

Launching tokens before any significant utility is sus.

A token on a chain needs an app to add value to the chain, otherwise, it should just utilize the native chain token until it is ready to have its own governance and unique fee token.

34/34
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