Greetings,
I am a long-time silent investor in Terra and wanted to share some thoughts on what I believe is necessary for the survival and security of the long term viability of the ecosystem. I am not sure exactly how this is going to come across in a forum post, but things can’t really get much worse at present so I’m gonna take my best shot. I hope that this can spur conversation.
It is clear that we have been targeted by a well-funded, sophisticated and highly co-ordinated assault. This strike has the hallmarks of a malicious actor. A circumstance or vulnerability was systematically identified over the course of several months and plans were laid with the goal to strike at the core of our protocol and inflict maximum pain.
Terra has always appeared to me to be a mainly warm and fuzzy community. We have a bit of a soft underbelly. In a utopian world, this is an idealistic well-intentioned quality, but it is a double-edged sword when we lack a perception of cavalier strength and stoicism.
We lack steel.
I understand that we want to be welcoming and accommodating to all, I get it. We need to try and drive adoption and awareness. We lack the hard-nosed, wildly talented developers at eth, or the abundant resources of bsc.
Economic arenas are modern day battlegrounds.
I have heard Do Kwon share his vision of the multi-chain web 3 future and how the various blockchains co-exist and evolve into pseudo-geographic city-states . Terra is Seoul, Solana is Hong Kong, Eth is New York etc etc… It is a tantalising vision. A Utopian world of cyberglobal society, trade and interaction.
For me, there is a small problem with this vision.
A nation or city state needs to protect and defend its territory Let me elaborate.
What protection do we have?
Well, we have code encryption. That’s our firewall, or fortification. Cool.
We have bug bounties. White hats or I guess our rogue scientists. That’s great.
Every now and then we have a comprehensive audit. A piece of paper we hang on the wall. Firm handshakes all round.
Where is our defense?
What about our Military? Our Spies? Our diplomats?
I think as a protocol, our theoretical front line has been severely overlooked. We spent a lot of time building a proverbial moat, but left the drawbridge wide open.
If we are creating the digital city state of the future, then we owe it upon ourselves to ensure that an ongoing portion of the tokenomics is dedicated to forging a well-rounded digital military and defense. A war fund not just to secure our ecosystem, but to also defend and combat attacks. Not just to inhabit our high ground enclave, but to journey and seek out adversarial actors. To assess the battleground for foes. To negotiate hostile takeovers. To claim contested territory. To repel fud campaigns with the power of AI and algorithms, combined with trained community members.
Do Kwon leads from the front, but he is only 1 man. He is often battle weary from the endless fud onslaughts and potato questioning from interviewers. He cannot defend the entire ecosystem with both sword and pen/keyboard.
I come to you with my thoughts and ideas. I do not know how these concepts could be bootstrapped and implemented, brighter minds than me should ponder these items and assess the possibilities.