Thread by @TheRyanLion

I am seeing a lot of anger in the community about @StarTerra_io and wanted to articulate some thoughts.

It seems things are getting increasingly hostile with personal insults and, in some cases, xenophobic comments being made. Firstly - this needs to stop.

I am NOT one of the “influencers” that was paid. I was however lucky enough to make the public sale whitelist - I made this list through persistent attempts (begging) both on Twitter and Telegram to make contact with the team because I knew the price would rocket post launch.

I knew the price would rocket because the $0.14 per token valued $STT project at a market cap of around $600K - this valuation level would clearly not be sustainable given the comparative project, @pylon_protocol has a market cap of >$100M

As well as being persistent in trying to get my own whitelist spot I also helped several others to gain access to the whitelist, particularly members of the UK Lunatics group. I wanted to try and help as many genuine LUNAtics get access as possible.

I wanted to help people as I was personally extremely dismayed and disappointed by the spammy link referral approach that was taken initially. I was pleased to see this was rolled back and many genuine LUNAtics were given the opportunity to participate.

The launch on Terraswap was clearly not particularly well thought through. The liquidity provided was extremely low which resulted in the price pumping even beyond my own expectations, I had openly predicted it would go to 25-50x (based on my expected market cap prediction)

The “anti-bot” measures seem to have not actually existed and were communicated to “try and put off bots from participating” - it was inevitable that bots would front run the market and we saw this when a bot was able to buy in the same block as the liquidity was released.

I do however think that it was relatively well communicated that there would be an initial pump and not to just ape in regardless of price. Slippage restrictions were available to protect people from getting REKT by fast moving prices.

It is not unusual for any project to have a huge pump initially, before the price settles. Part of the problem is that we only have 1 DEX on Terra currently but with @loop_finance & @astroport_fi coming soon (+ LBPs) this type of launch will be smoother in the future.

A lot of the anger seems to stem around the ability of those who had vested tokens to be able to dump onto the market achieving high profits. I myself sold my 10% vest (~350 tokens) at around $5 per $STT around 10-15mins post launch. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I do think there should have been more restrictions on those with large amounts of tokens to have those tokens vest over a longer period of time with a lower % of TGE vesting - but it’s too late to take that back now. Some holders sold thousands of tokens for huge profit.

However if some vested tokens did not enter the market - the price of the small amount that were available via the DEX listing would be trading at a dangerously high price. After selling my initial vest, I have added every subsequent token to the LUNAtics LP.

The @StarTerra_io team are looking to compensate anyone who was severely affected by apeing in early at a high buy price following community feedback - and will allow those people access to the second upcoming IDO where tokens will be available at a fixed price of $0.14.

This will disappoint others who were more diligent in their approach to the public sale and I would like to see those who were not able to participate in whitelist public sale 1 to be given priority to the second sale - although ultimately not everyone can get into a public sale.

The second area of controversy stems around the faction entry limits.

Giving 30% of a token sale to the top 30 $STT holders is a bad idea. IMO this tier needs to be reconsidered by reducing the % available and the number of participants increased - or scrapped completely

The factions - it does seem that given the price of $STT 3k tokens is a high entry point (currently $21K @ $7 per $STT) - it sounds as thought this will be reduced, although I would point out it is comparable to the 100K $MINE staked that got preferential access to $TWD sale

The Starterra (entry) tier - holding 500 $STT only allows lottery entry to IDOs - at $3.5K value, this is again a high entry point for no guaranteed access. This tier needs to be given some guaranteed access to IDOs to encourage max community participation.

If the current tier structure stays in place I could see numerous projects seeing a @StarTerra_io launch as a “whale platform” launch where the IDO tokens would be concentrated in a very small number of wallets, which is a terrible way to gain wide adoption of a new protocol.

I would suggest a distribution closer to the following:

5/10% whale (top 100 holders)
50/60% factions (3k $STT entry reduced)
20/30% Starter tier (500 $STT)
5/10% lottery for small holders (100 $STT)

The final concerns seem to be around the number of tokens being vested and the speed at which those tokens will vest. It seems to me we will go from around 3.5m circulating tokens at launch to 20m tokens in circulation within an extremely short amount of time.

I would like to see a clearer vesting schedule so that holders can see how many tokens will enter the market & when. Anyone who is “shilling” $STT in the community should also be more transparent about their own interests - people should not be pumping with intentions of dumping.

I am happy to see that the @StarTerra_io team are listening to community feedback and adjusting to make things fairer and more transparent, although there is clearly a long way to go to regain trust. I hope that we can have a more civil discourse moving forward. Comments open👇🏻

$LUNA $UST $ANC $MIR $MINE $STT $LOOP $NEB $PSI $PRISM $OZ $ORION
@PanParagraf @ProfesoreFarmer @loop_finance @NexusProtocol @orion_money

I would encourage the @StarTerra_io to address serious concerns being raised by the community directly (as I have seen @PanParagraf doing) and not blocking/ignoring fair criticisms.