Are we going to the Moon? My Thoughts

It’s hard not to notice the recurring front end issues lately… the staking APRs have been showing 0% again for a few days now, and I see the community asking questions and grumbling…because this isn’t the first time. These kinds of bugs and UI inconsistencies have really shaken community confidence in the Moonwell protocol and $WELL — mine included.

We all remember the “bug” that allowed a few wallets to claim rewards meant for the entire staking community. While it was said that “no user funds were lost” and that stakers still received what they should have in the end, I’m not entirely convinced. This was bad for confidence. If the APR is showing zero, and nobody on the team is making any statement of acknowledgment or explanation about it, that’s bad for confidence.

Anyway… the deeper concern isn’t just the UI or bugs — it’s what’s happening behind the scenes.

Every major question, whether technical, governance, or strategic, ultimately gets deferred to Luke (aka Lunar Labs). The admin team and community managers, even those on governance calls, often can’t answer basic questions about how the protocol works, or what’s going on. Their default response is always, “I have to ask Luke.” then of course there’s no follow-ups, nobody gets back to anybody…

The dev team is spread out … in Brazil and elsewhere , but all work directly under Luke. Let’s be honest — Luke has control over basically every major and minor aspect of Moonwell’s development and direction, funding, and how the community is rewarded. There’s really only one core contributor driving this project, while everyone else largely follows and obeys orders. That’s not meant as an insult; it’s just the reality of how things are currently structured. Some might like to pretend there’s a layer of decentralization and the proposals come from “independent contributors”…okay sure, I’ll play along.

Luke is brilliant and clearly dedicated, and I have a lot of respect for what he’s built. But as it stands now, if anything were to happen to Luke Youngblood — if he got sick, burned out, or simply lost interest, Moonwell, as it stands, would struggle to function. I would say it would be game over in short order actually. All ideas, proposals, and meaningful actions seem to come directly from one person. That’s not sustainable for a protocol that’s supposed to outlive any individual.

I’m sharing this not as FUD, but as an honest concern from someone who’s been here, observed, and cares about Moonwell’s long-term future. Also someone who is holding a meaningful bag of WELL,( that was once a lot more meaningful)
I don’t have a solution, nor do I expect anything to change in the short run. But if I’m honest, it’s concerning when days go by, people are voicing frustrations and there’s radio silence from Luke or ‘the team”

I don’t blame him… if he’s anything like me, he might still be feeling the sting from the Oct 10 flash crash. I got liquidated on hyperliquid that day too, and it wasn’t fun. I can imagine how much worse that felt for someone carrying the weight of an entire protocol, and who I’m sure is also a degen like some of us.
But I’ll digress.

On a related note, I did check moonwell funding wallet (private more for vault backed by well tokens) from which it deposited 566m WELL and borrowed $4.78m.

Right now, the main credit facility, and how the dev runway gets funded. Supplying WELL and borrowing USDC has a health rate around 1.59 . The health Factor did drop to about 1.4 Friday when the market was bleeding, and well was down 20% to ≈0.019

Liquidation would start if WELL dropped roughly 35–40% from here (around the $0.013–$0.014 range). That assumes no new loans, but in reality the borrowed amount grows over time as interest accrues, even if no new borrowing happens. And it’s likely more borrowing will occur from that vault. In other words, the buffer is smaller than it appears. If price pressure pushes WELL lower, that position could trigger a cascade of forced liquidations, putting unbelievable sell pressure on the token. It would create its own spiraling liquidation effect. Don’t get me wrong, right now I would much rather fund the protocol and Dev from borrowing then from continuing to dump the token on the market. But it’s a risk I think about.

Here’s a link to the wallet.

Moments like this highlight why we need a structure where the community, contributors, and developers can operate independently — where knowledge, execution, and leadership aren’t bottlenecked through one person.

Curious to hear what others think. Am I the only one seeing it this way, or do others share these concerns?

4 Likes

I am pretty much in agreement with this sentiment. I know growing Lunar Labs is Lukes priority, so things are slipping in between the cracks. Hopefully, new people can onboard quickly and tighten things up. Delegating trust is always tough for founders. I hope we get back to shipping features on the regular, and like you, rebuild a more robust staking platform. As far as the recent liquidations, I look forward to Anthias Labs update and maybe even an update from Luke.

2 Likes

For many months, and to include the FUBAR of few accounts claiming all the WELL rewards for stakers that period. Where is the Oversite? The Quality Control? well staking is in shambles because there is lack of leadership and Quaklity Dev work. Double Check the work! Do it right the first time!

I get it… it’s tough for founders to let go of control. But if this protocol ever wants to be truly decentralized and autonomous — it needs to happen, not just be talked about.

Here’s what I think we need: (would be good to see any of your thoughts on this, especially the honorable chairman of the decentralized protocol LUKE YOUNGBLOOD )

  1. More community involvement.
    We need open discussion, real MIP creation, and transparent voting. Luke needs to listen to the community — answer questions quickly, be open, be visible. Governance can’t just be a compliance checkbox to say “we’re decentralized.” It has to feel that way.

The last few governance calls? Luke’s been half-present — driving somewhere, taking deliveries, connection dropping. Mods try to fill in but clearly don’t know what to do. If X Spaces isn’t working, move it to Zoom. Show faces. Do AMAs. Answer questions, follow up. That’s how you build trust.

  1. Build community trust — open the books.
    Make everything public, with clear, crisp, smart, beautiful dashboards.
    — All Moonwell-related wallets (Foundation, Lunar Labs, insiders).
    — Show which Insiders are buying and who’s dumping WELL and MAMO.
    — Show token unlocks, collateral usage, and borrowing positions.
    — Let the community see what’s really happening. If the foundation or the Insiders are dumping their tokens, Community would love to know.

For MAMO:
— Show all pools, fees, and where the assets came from. Show exactly how much was generated from which pools.
— Were pairs built from sales, loans, or swaps?
— Were some of those assets lent or fronted by Luke personally? Transparency matters.

For Moonwell:
— Show each market, TVL, average APR, liquidation revenue, Morpho vault yields, and borrow/lend spread. Everything’s on-chain. Just make it visible.

  1. Stop recycling incentives.
    High staking APRs are nice visually, but price stability is better. Need a more smart and sustainable use of revenue besides token incentives that are farmed and sold. I suggested before in a write-up to Use a portion of the revenue to accumulate Bitcoin and ETH. Hold some, deploy some back into the Moonwell Core markets.

Should I create an MIP for this? Who’s gonna back me? Obviously there’s only a few wallets that can make or break this proposal… but if there’s enough community support, I’ve got enough staked WELL to put it out there.

  1. Increase marketing spend → to grow TVL.
    More users = more TVL = more revenue = price go up.
    The bottom line — Moonwell needs to show that TVL is growing. Let’s face it, moonwall is a Community Bank, that wants to be a global bank, this is the critical time to focus more on marketing to onboard users to moonwell. Otherwise AAVE is gonna run away with dominating TVL, even on base. We can’t let that happen.

Let’s focus marketing where it actually matters, either the curious or, people deep into DeFi, yield farming, and on-chain borrowing/lending.
let’s use % portion of protocol revenue for a targeted marketing budget: ads on X for the CT crowd, sponsorships with YouTubers and podcasts that speak directly to the crypto and DeFi community.

A spot that sounds like this …

“This episode is brought to you by Moonwell — the permissionless lending and borrowing protocol where you stay in control of your assets.
Have Bitcoin, Ethereum, XRP, or even Dogecoin? Use them as collateral and borrow USD in seconds.
No banks. No middlemen. Just a truly peer-to-peer, decentralized protocol built for the new financial era.
Click the link in the description to watch a quick onboarding video and see how easy it is to borrow against your crypto — in minutes.”

Clear, confident, and professional. It builds awareness, and grow TVL, and strengthens trust.

Just my two WELL tokens (valued at .02 currently).

2 Likes