Dune Foundation released an official report regarding the allegations made to a member of their team, Fabien Dureuil , about not respecting the one year locking period of preallocated tokens for his personal benefit:
It's a quite long reading but I think it's worth being posted here.
Dune Foundation ReportPossible misconduct of a team memberNovember 27
th, 2019
AbstractLast week, the Dune Foundation heard of allegations regarding one member of the
Dune Network teams, Fabien Dureuil, spreading on social media. These allegations
were reporting that:
- the Team Member did not follow the one-year locking period for preallocated tokens and sold parts of his tokens;
- the Team Member used these tokens for personal benefit.
As of today, some rules appear to not have been respected by the Member of the
team. This is a matter of importance for the community, but also for the Foundation.
We have already taken some decisions to avoid this kind of issues in the future, like
locking all pre-allocated tokens. We also identified some improvements to be
implemented in the coming weeks to help the Dune Network going forward.
SummaryAbstract... 2
1. Introduction to the report .............................................................................. 4
2. Context ... 4
2.1. Project genesis ...............................................................................
...... 4
2.2. Project organisation ............................................................................. 5
3. Findings ... 5
3.1. One-year locking period ...................................................................... 5
3.2. Purpose of the transfers......................................................................
.. 5
4. Impact on the network ...............................................................................
... 6
4.1. The network size ...............................................................................
... 6
4.2. The low liquidity......................................................................
............. 6
5. First decisions......................................................................
.......................... 6
5.1. Locking period ...............................................................................
...... 6
5.2. Account management .......................................................................... 6
5.3. Member exclusion......................................................................
.......... 7
6. Zaddex and DuneDex........................................................................
............ 7
7. Areas of improvement....................................................................
............... 7
Contact ... 8
1. Introduction to the reportAs soon as they became aware of the allegations on social media, the Dune
Foundation members met to discuss these facts on Thursday November 21, 2019
and Friday November 22, 2019. During a meeting held on Monday November 25,
2019, the Dune Foundation, which took these allegations seriously, decided to issue
this report.
Transparency is one of the main features of a public blockchain, through which
everyone is able to monitor transactions made on the network. Since Dune Network
is a public blockchain, anyone can inspect any transaction made on the network.
Thus, any potential misconduct may raise questions.
The Dune Foundation’s first role is to develop Dune Network, to protect its
independence and to protect its community. Therefore, the responsibility of the
Dune Foundation is to address any concern, by bringing forward the appropriate
information to the community.
The redaction of the report is within the competence of the Dune Foundation.
This report’s purpose is to disclose the findings of the internal investigation, to
evidence the potential failures of the different stakeholders and to suggest
improvements in the Dune Network’s governance.
2. Context
2.1. Project genesisTo offer a good and comprehensive picture before going through these elements, it
appears useful to give some context: the Dune Network project was initially created
by Starchain Capital, an investment fund in the blockchain ecosystem, and Origin
Labs, a blockchain software company. The project was funded by selling 5% of the
tokens to private investors, and the funds, collected by the Dune Foundation, were
used (1) to develop the software and infrastructure and (2) to develop the ecosystem.
The Foundation, together with Origin Labs and Starchain Capital, decided not to
conduct any ICO to collect funds. Tokens of the Dune Network (DUN) were
airdropped, for free, to each Tezos account, according to its stake in the network.
The Foundation’s goal has always been to create long lasting value, instead of
collecting funds from the public.
As an incentive, and a possible future reward for their contribution to the project,
the development team (Origin Labs) and the funding team (Starchain) both received
pre-allocated tokens. When mentioning this pre-allocation, the Whitepaper states
that "The tokens allocated to the Development and Business teams are contractually
locked until September 2020."
Though Origin Labs is mostly focused on Dune Network, Starchain Capital follows
an independent activity from Dune Network, with investments in many projects not
related to Dune Network.
2.2. Project organisationThe project is managed by the Dune Foundation. The Dune Foundation president is
Fabrice Le Fessant and the co-president is Cyril Paglino.
The Dune Foundation works closely with Origin Labs and Starchain Capital, each
contributing its own expertise to develop the project. Each team remains
independent and the Foundation’s role is to coordinate the work.
This work breakdown may have led to miscomprehension and, therefore, to the
facts denounced on the social media.
3. Findings
3.1. One-year locking periodThe first allegation was that the Team Member, Fabien Dureuil, did not obey the
one-year locking period for pre-allocated tokens. Indeed, it happens that the
contract and statement in the white-paper are ambiguous. When receiving their
pre-allocated tokens, Starchain Capital decided to keep an account of 8 million
DUN (1% of the total supply) unallocated to any of its team members, and to use it
to help and incentivize projects in the ecosystem.
Compared to other blockchain projects funded through huge ICOs, the Dune
Foundation received very little initial funding, it is actually a good initiative by a
founding partner to use a part of their pre-allocated tokens to support the
ecosystem, in the limit that the usage of these tokens can be checked and confirmed
in the sole benefit of the project.
However, this early use of these tokens independently of the Dune Foundation
raises a doubt on the locking period for the rest of the pre-allocated tokens. We can
affirm without any doubt that the other founders of the project, either the
engineering team or the business team fully control their pre-allocated tokens, and
that they didn’t sell them or transfer them to a third party.
3.2. Purpose of the transfersThe second allegation was that the Team Member sold the pre-allocated tokens for
personal benefit. We reviewed all the transfers done from the 8 million DUNs
account (KT1NwrTJhKZ6GB8Sq4Dx3cbaM1WPJJRniYGz) by the Team Member on
behalf of Starchain Capital. We found the following elements from the provided
explanations:
• The account still holds 1.8 million DUNs unspent;
• 3 million DUNs were granted to important contributors in the ecosystem
(start-ups, bakers, external and internal collaborators);
• 1.5 million DUNs were sold to projects in the ecosystem, for a value of
36kUSD, i.e. 0.024 USD per token. The received money/token were used to
pay internal contributors and external contributors/developments to the
project;
• For 1.8 million transferred DUNs, the Team Member has not provided any
details yet.
Though we expect the remaining transfers to be in the benefit of ecosystem, we
could not get confirmation for the moment without additional details from the team
member.
For the 4 million DUNs sent from KT1NG8cE6SyBA56UGjT1LzJ6jiPr5jdWuYJc, the
destination address belongs to the team: it’s one of the bakers set up for investors’
tokens.
4. Impact on the networkThe financial impact of the above-mentioned transactions is expected to be
marginal for various reasons.
4.1. The network sizeThe network is live since September 11, 2019. The circulating supply, to date, is
811.7 million DUNs. The unexplained transactions represent a volume of 1.8 million
DUNs, and the project financing transactions account for 1.5 million DUNs,
respectively 0.22% and 0.18% of the total volume.
4.2. The low liquidityWe want Dune Network to be valuable before the DUNs being evaluated and sold.
The current low liquidity prevents both a pump and a dump, since there are
difficulties to trade important volumes of DUNs at the moment.
5. First decisions
5.1. Locking periodAs a consequence, and as announced in a previous statement, the Dune Foundation
has decided to lock all remaining pre-allocated tokens within smart-contracts on
the blockchain, vested progressively over a period of 4 years. This operation should
happen within the next weeks, the time to write, review and deploy the smart
contracts.
We will publish a list of the locked addresses and the corresponding balances,
allowing everyone to audit the smart contracts and to verify that we comply with our
commitments.
The tokens belonging to the Foundation will not be locked, as their role is to support
the ecosystem.
5.2. Account managementThe Team Member’s actions were made possible by a lack of control on the preallocated token accounts by the Foundation.
We are currently working on a collegial decision-making process to ensure the
tokens allocated to the Dune Foundation will be spent with the sole purpose of
developing the project and its ecosystem.
5.3. Member exclusionThe Dune Foundation has decided not to collaborate anymore with the Team
Member who initiated these transactions, without proper accounting and
coordination.
6. Zaddex and DuneDexIn addition to the allegations made on social media, the Dune Foundation also got
some details regarding Zaddex and DuneDex. The first one is a former project of
the Team Member. The second one is also led and negotiated by the Team Member
on behalf of his own company.
For the Dune Foundation, the Team Member used the image of the Dune Network
to advertise for unrelated projects like Zaddex buyback. The Dune Foundation is not
affiliated in any way to Zaddex project or promises made by this Team Member.
The Dune Foundation does not support Zaddex, either technically or financially, and
has not taken any decision yet concerning the possibility to create a decentralized
exchange on Dune Network. Any eventual connection between Zaddex and
DuneDex has been solely decided by the Team Member without discussing it with
the Dune Foundation or with the teams working on the Dune Network project.
7. Areas of improvementAccording to our findings, there are ways to improve the project’s governance.
Solely relying on the blockchain as a trust space is not enough because conducting
a real business requires more than trust. We need to implement compliance
processes.
Our contract management should also be improved. We will hire the necessary
advisors and staff to perform a legal due diligence and improve the legal framework
of the network, since it appears that the Whitepaper wasn’t as clear as we wanted
it to be.
We will come back in the next weeks to let the community know of the decisions
that have been taken to improve the governance and the transparency of the Dune
Network.
In Paris, November 27th, 2019
Dune Foundation
By Fabrice Le Fessant, its President
ContactFabrice Le Fessant
President of the Dune Foundation
contact@dune.network 
