DeFi protocol Wonderland has announced it is to shut down after a twitter user unmasked its treasury manager 0xSifu as none other than Michael Patryn, a convicted fraudster who had previously pleaded guilty to a range of charges including Burglary, grand larceny and computer fraud.

Michael Patryn, who was also the co-founder of the QuandrigaCX crypto exchange, which collapsed after $190M of client funds somehow went ‘missing’, had spent 18 months in a federal prison (although he was not directly accused in the QuandrigaCX case as he had stepped down 2 years earlier).

Wonderland’s co-founded Daniele Sestagalli admitted he had known about Michael Patryn’s past but believed in “giving second chances”, which of course will make everyone who’s ever used Wonderland feel just fine about!

However, Sestagalli went on to say that Patryn was asked to step down after the inevitable outrage from the community exploded. A community vote was taken on the future direction of the Wonderland DeFi protocol, and over 55% of the participants said it should be wound down, with treasury funds being returned to their owners. Let’s hope that happens.

Wonderland: The end of $TIME

Announcing the closure of Wonderland, Sestagalli said he was determined to find a new home for users who still believed in his vision, but past history generally teaches us that this is probably unlikely to happen. Wonderland’s sudden demise has sent ripples out into the wider DeFi world, with Terra, LUNA and other protocols getting smashed, even whilst other top 20 cryptocurrencies saw a rally.