Terra interim CEO says any ‘little progress’ made gets derailed by accusations

Terraform Labs recently appointed CEO Chris Amani held a Twitter Spaces with the purpose of separating the operations of Terraform Labs from Do Kwon’s personal affairs.

Terraform Labs faces a “big hill to climb” as the progress of its various projects in development are constantly being impeded by frequent accusations, according to Terra’s new interim CEO Chris Amani.

During a July 20 Twitter Spaces, titled A Terra Community Talk, Amani joined several Terra employees to discuss the challenges ahead for Terra moving forward. This took place shortly after Amani was appointed as Terra’s new CEO, while the former CEO, Do Kwon, continues to battle legal issues.

He noted that the frequent allegations against Do Kwon, who is currently in a jail cell in Montenegro and facing possible extradition to South Korea or the United States, has shattered any momentum that Terra has been building recently.

“Everytime we would make a little progress there would be some accusation or something that would derail us”.

Cointelegraph reported on June 19 that Kwon was found guilty of attempting to leave Montenegro using a false Costa Rican passport. He was sentenced to four months in prison despite reportedly telling the court that he wasn’t aware the passport was allegedly forged. 

Amani further stated that Terra has “maybe 9” different projects at various levels of development to be released over the coming months.

It was noted that no new tokens will be launched with any of these new developments, as it will be focusing on “driving utility” back to its native token, Luna (LUNA).

Amani believes that it is going to be a “big hill to climb,” but stated it is not a unique situation within the cryptocurrency industry. 

“This is not going to be easy rebuilding; I mean nothing is easy in crypto right now” he said.

He explained that the shortage of liquidity is due to a lot of DeFi applications having to compete with risk free rate of returns that are “fairly compelling right now.”

Related: Legal proceedings start for Terraform Labs co-founder in South Korea: Report

He further acknowledged one of the biggest challenges for Terra right now, is it “doesn’t even have a treasury of Luna,” to compete with other Layer one protocols that do.

“Despite the lack of activity in crypto, despite the bear market, it’s still incredibly competitive from a layer 1 perspective. There are still teams with very big treasuries that can pay developers a lot of money to come build on their blockchain.”

However, he claims that most employees have stood by the company, despite the struggles faced by the company. 

“We have been able to hold a large portion of the team that was here before the depeg” he stated.

Magazine: SEC reviews Ripple ruling, US bill seeks control over DeFi, and more: Hodler’s Digest, July 16-22