The chalet’s main room was dimly lit, the fireplace crackling softly. The team sat around the wooden table, laptops open, coffee cups scattered between them. Alias had left the room an hour ago, frustrated, needing air. That was fine. They needed this moment without him.
Sofia leaned back in her chair, arms crossed. “Alright, let’s be real—Alias’ plan is good, but it’s also rigid as hell. If we do this his way, we increase the risk of failure before we even launch.”
Raj nodded, sipping his espresso. “Yeah, I get it—command-and-control works in a Fortune 500 company, but this? This is a financial insurgency. We need resilience, adaptability.”
Chang adjusted his glasses. “We can’t just dismiss Alias’ concerns, though. He’s not wrong about the risks. If we decentralize too much too early, we expose the system to capture or fragmentation.”
Yuki rolled her eyes. “And if we don’t decentralize enough, we create a single point of failure—us. We’re all traceable, we’re all human, and humans are leverageable.”
Amara tapped her fingers against the table. “Okay, so let’s map this out. What’s our red line? What absolutely cannot happen?”
Sofia sat up. “Capture.”
Raj nodded. “Yep. If Pegged can be controlled—by regulators, by a single group, by whales—then we failed before we even started.”
Chang added, “Security. A single exploit, and it’s over.”
Yuki leaned forward. “And usability. If it’s not intuitive, if it’s too clunky, no one will use it.”
Amara raised a finger. “We also have to think about adaptability. If we build something too rigid, and it needs adjustments post-launch, what happens?”
Silence.
That was Alias’ whole point.
Raj sighed. “Alias wants launch-and-forget. But systems evolve. Even Bitcoin has upgrades.”
Chang shook his head. “Bitcoin isn’t controlled by five people in a chalet. Alias’ fear is that if we build in governance, we also build in the risk of capture.”
Sofia tapped her pen against her notebook. “So what if we design it in a way where governance itself is expendable? Instead of governing the system, we could design fail-safes—mechanisms that let the system adapt without giving anyone too much power.”
Yuki raised an eyebrow. “Like self-destruct switches?”
Sofia nodded. “Or a cryptographic deadman’s switch—rules that can only be adjusted under strict, pre-defined conditions.”
Chang looked intrigued. “You mean like governance that can only act in extreme edge cases?”
“Exactly.” Sofia drew a diagram on the notepad. “Instead of a governance council, we set up time-locked contracts that only allow specific parameters to change under strict conditions—like if a catastrophic bug is found. But no single entity gets to make arbitrary decisions.”
Raj exhaled. “I like it. But how do we make sure those mechanisms can’t be exploited?”
Amara interjected. “Zero-knowledge proofs. We can design it so that adjustments can be proposed and mathematically verified without revealing sensitive information.”
Chang nodded. “That would prevent governance abuse. But what about liquidity capture? Alias is worried that over time, big players could dominate the lotteries and distort the peg.”
Yuki cracked her knuckles. “We could randomize participation thresholds. If lotteries have different pools and different rules, no single whale can game the system predictably.”
Sofia tilted her head. “That would help, but it doesn’t solve the issue entirely. What if we tie lottery participation directly to the health of the peg? Adjust payout ratios dynamically—if there’s too much concentration, lower the rewards for large participants.”
Raj grinned. “A dynamic disincentive for capture. I like it.”
Amara leaned forward. “Okay, so we’re looking at:
Limited governance through cryptographic deadman’s switches.
Self-adjusting lottery mechanics to prevent wealth concentration.
ZK-protected proposals to keep decision-making trustless.
“What else?”
Chang hesitated, then spoke. “We need a failsafe for us. If anything happens—arrests, pressure, blackmail—how do we make sure Pegged survives even if we don’t?”
The room went quiet.
Raj exhaled. “Alias has been thinking about that since day one.”
Sofia nodded. “He wants a slow-release deployment—bury the code, let multiple actors launch different parts without realizing they’re part of a bigger system.”
Yuki smirked. “A virus.”
Amara frowned. “More like a meme. Something so simple and inevitable that once the idea is out there, it propagates on its own.”
Chang closed his laptop. “So we launch a system that can outlive us. And one we can’t take back even if we wanted to.”
Sofia exhaled. “Alias will hate parts of this.”
Raj grinned. “Good. That means it’ll work.”
The fire crackled in the silence that followed.
They had something. Now, they just had to convince Alias.
♨️Nifty🔥Tiles♨️
