Early investors of Parrot Protocol stand to lose nearly 90% of their initial investment in the team’s $85 million Initial DEX Offering (IDO).

Solana-based liquidity network Parrot Protocol is at the centre of controversy over a new proposal that calls for a Treasury redemption program through a transition to a “no-token protocol.”

Parrot Protocol raised $85 million from its IDO in 2021 but its plans to disrupt DeFi lending markets never ended up coming to fruition. The protocol’s native governance token PRT has also lost 89% of its value since its IDO ended two years ago, data from CryptoRank shows.

The lack of any real traction for the project led some members of the community to demand an option to recoup their funds, leading the Parrot team to put forth a proposal for users to redeem PRT tokens for the value of liquid assets on a pro-rata basis. 

The proposal calls for nullifying the native token after the eight-week program which would distribute $50 million of its $73 million treasury to PRT holders at a price of $0.0045 per coin. This valuation would mean IDO investors would hardly recoup a tenth of their initial investment.  

Meanwhile, Parrot insiders would retain the remaining $21 million – a figure that could potentially be much higher, based on some investors’ estimates.

Today in governance was a mistake news: @gopartyparrot team takes their $72m remaining in ICO funds and attempts to split it $12m to the token holders, $60m to the team.

Oh they also early unlocked their tokens and will be voting it through regardless of what anybody else says pic.twitter.com/vmhDXJochQ

— Spreek (@spreekaway) July 21, 2023

Despite a significant amount of outrage from the community, who took to Twitter and Discord to signal their intent to reject the proposal, it has already achieved the quorum required to pass, with 99.5% of tokens used to vote in favor.

However, some users described the vote as a “meaningless farce,” alleging that the team themselves accounted for the majority of tokens used to sway the vote, which they prematurely unlocked from their vesting schedules in November. These decisions were also executed at the team’s discretion, without any real DAO governance involved.

The Parrot team has refuted these allegations, claiming that they have not used the treasury tokens to vote, but the community remained skeptical.

A key factual mistake spreading is that the team has 5.4B, and appropriated 6.4B yPRT from the treasury and protocol controlled value. We DO NOT touch or vote with the treasury tokens, and our claim is inflated by about 2x. @0xrooter @spreekaway

— Parr◎t (𓅊,𓅊) 🌔 (@gopartyparrot) July 22, 2023

“Prove it. Show us the math. Present a spreadsheet that shows what the total amount of non team or protocol controlled USDC would be paid out if 80% redemption,” wrote one Twitter user.