Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick has pledged $18m of his own Illuvium tokens to an emergency fund to calm anxious members of the blockchain game’s community.
“To demonstrate my personal commitment to [ensuring the health and longevity of our DAO], I propose to create a safety pool of 300,000 of my tokens, which can be used by the DAO in case of emergency funding needs,” Warwick wrote in Illuvium’s Discord server on Wednesday (UTC).
“At the time of writing, this loan is valued at $18m in ILV, which according to our latest projections, will give us an additional 17 months of runway, totalling 31 months.”
Warwick said the tokens would come from his unvested ILV and could be unlocked via an approved Illuvium Council proposal. He also said the proposal was contingent on him receiving tax and legal advice.
Images of Illuvium’s male rangers were released on Wednesday.
Warwick on Monday (UTC) released financial data showing Illuvium had over a year’s worth of funding left in response to community concerns about the project’s expenditure. A proposal had been put forward suggesting the project’s “top management” should begin selling off game tokens to extend the funding runway.
It’s not clear how effective Warwick’s tokens could be as a financial back-up, given their value is tied to the fortunes of the project. Any emergency situation would presumably impact the value of ILV and therefore the size of the fund.
The token sell-off proposal stirred intense debate in the community and, according to Warwick, also caused a “massive amount of unrest” among Illuvium’s core staff.
Warwick said he had made his decision to loan his ILV to the project independent of this week’s debate.
“As I have stated repeatedly over the past two days, I made this decision even before launching the DAO. Why? Because it is essential for my tokens to have value.”
“I will not allow the actions of a few individuals to undermine the fantastic team we have assembled.”
Monday’s release of the financial data did little to quieten the mood in Discord, but after a favourable response to Warwick’s loan announcement, it was agreed by moderators and the member who made the proposal that the matter had been dealt with and the thread was shut down.
“Bottom line was that we have been asking nicely for [roadmap and financial reports] for a long time,” one community member said. “Getting angry was the thing that finally made it happen.”
Warwick has said new dates for the various releases of all three of Illuvium’s games would be out this week.
Illuvium is working on three games simultaneously: Illuvium Zero, Illuvium Overworld and Illuvium Arena.
All three are still in beta and are being built out as a game ecosystem with a shared economy and game world.
Disclosure: Polemos holds Illuvium assets. The holdings have not influenced this reporting. Please see our Editorial Policy.
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*Note that the portrait image heading this article is AI-generated, based on Kieren Warwick’s likeness (Polemos/MidJourney)
