Itrs a bit of deja vu for victims of the $80 million Rari/Fei attack last April who today voted to disburse funds lmaking them whole.r The marriage between the two decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols, Rari Capital and Fei Protocol, will also be dissolved, marking the beginning of the end to what was once one of DeFirs most celebrated unions.

Last year, TribeDAO, the parent organization of the algorithmic stablecoin issuer Fei, merged with decentralized lending protocol Rari Capital. It was a massive moment for DeFi, involving two rising star developer teams, billions of dollars in capital and a proof-of-concept for on-chain MaA through protocol politicking.

This article is excerpted from The Node, CoinDesk's daily roundup of the most pivotal stories in blockchain and crypto news. You can subscribe to get the full newsletter here.

Rari gained a fast-growing stablecoin, FEI, while the Fei Protocol gained access to Rarirs borrowing and lending pools. And neither project had to dissolve their distinct dev teams. (Itrs worth stating that FEI suffered stability issues at launch and, as one of the few fully crypto-backed (or algorithmic) stablecoins, was always on the more lexperimentalr end of the spectrum.)

See also: DAOs and the Coming InDAOstrial Revolution | Opinion

A16zrs Jeff Amico at the time called the merger la new primitive to align incentives between Web3 communities going forward.r RARI token holders were given the opportunity to swap their holdings for TRIBE, earning staking in the powerhouse project n and allowing both protocols to operate under a shared vision and shared economic interest.

Divided tribes

All was going according to plan until Rarirs core product, an lopen money marketr called Fuse, was attacked. Fuse enabled anyone to create liquidity pools to trade any number of Ethereum-based tokens, often against the FEI stablecoin. On April 30, it was hit with an $80 million re-entrancy attack, all but draining the projectrs liquidity.

A vote was called to reimburse victims of the attack using Tribers treasury. It passed with high participation and about 75% of voters in favor. But details of the payout scheme were scant in the initial vote, and once there was a better sense of who would be paying for whom, Feirs leadership reneged on the vote.

Fei leadership called for another vote a few days later, after declaring the initial lsnapshotr process non-binding because it wasnrt lon-chain.r Rarirs victims would still be reimbursed under a new plan, but only partially. This, of course, led to months of bickering, personnel changes and calls to dissolve the Fei-Rari union.

Sam Kazemian, the founder of Frax Finance (which lost about $12 million in the Fuse attack), called it la new low for DeFi.r Fei, which had earlier raised $1.3 billion in ETH, had the reserves to make all of the attackrs victims square, but began to question whether itrd be the right move considering a worsening lmacro-economicr environment and industry-wide market rout.

Today, the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) are more or less back where they started, after a series of four governance votes over the past months. Itrs a story of partisan politics, self-interested voting and the challenges of community governance in an age where decisions are supposed to follow pre-programmed code.

See also: Calling a Hack an Exploit Minimizes Human Error | Opinion

The final vote passed with 99% in favor of the plan, with no ability to veto the decision. FEI holders will be given an escape hatch to cash out for another stablecoin, DAI, while TRIBE holders will receive pro-rata shares of the DAO's assets. Shared governance is being dissolved.

If there is a wider lesson to the Rari-Fei breakup, itrs one of disaster preparedness. Governance will always be a messy issue, especially in times of crisis. DAO mergers are not impossible going forward, but itrs becoming clearer that supposedly unified communities can fracture whenever there are multiple economically incentivized groups. Therers no shared understanding of whatrs fair when money is on the line. So maybe therers a market for DAO prenups.