- It’s been over six months since the conclusion of the Tezos ICO which raised over 220 million dollars in bitcoin and ETH much to the astonishment of the Crypto currency sphere and delight of the tezos foundation. The record breaking event seemed like the beginning of a promising, relatively drama free project. But so far, following the path as laid out on their roadmap has been exactly the opposite
The tezos civil war
Few months post-ICO the tezos foundation was marred with internal crisis which stalled its development significantly. The in-fighting which started in October was between Tezos founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman (who are a married to each other) and Johnnes Gevers.
At the initial stages of the project the Breihmans hired Gevers to run the Tezos Foundation. Based in Switzerland, the Foundation is charged with managing ICO and project funding. Trouble started when the Breitmans demanded that Gevers step down as the chairman of the Foundation’s board. Responding to the move, Gevers was quoted saying “the Breitmans have attempted to bypass the Swiss legal structure and take over control of the foundation, and have acted destructively, causing months of delays in the Tezos project,” according to a Wall Street Journal article.
But Kathleen was quick to respond to these allegations via email quoted by Fortune, Kathleen Breitman fired back at these claims, accusing Gevers of sabotaging the project and mishandling funds for self-gain.
The allegations in the email caused the foundation to launch an investigation nd according to Schmitz-Krummacher,(one of the three tezos board members) they found nothing.Schmitz-Krummacher described the debacle as nothing more than a witch-hunt.
The matter was eventually settled after Gevers and two other board members stepped down from the project and the board was reshuffled. Gevers claimed he stepped down to the “interest” of the project at heart. The members were replaced by a tezos community member and a researcher.
Tezos faced with legal problems
Since its ICO ended, Tezos has been slapped with at least six class-action lawsuits, which generally charge Tezos with violating federal security laws and defrauding their contributors.
The first of these lawsuits came last November from the Superior Court of California’s San Francisco branch on behalf of Andrew Baker, a Tezos ICO participant. Among others, Taylor-Copeland Law filed the class action against Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, the project’s founders, and Tezos Foundation president Johannes Gevers. The suit accuses the defendants of selling unregistered securities and committing securities fraud.
Subsequent lawsuits echo these same accusations, including one in December and another in November of 2017. Filed on November 13th, one lawsuit out of Florida argues, “[as] a result of Defendants’ fraud, false representations and violation of federal and state securities laws in connection with the Tezos ICO, Plaintiff and the Class Members state their demand that the [ICO] Contract be rescinded and canceled” on the basis that “it appears [participants] cannot, and potentially will not, see any return on their investments.”
By and large, the lawsuits’ defendants are the Breitmans, Gevers, the Tezos Foundation, and Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc., the Breitmans’ Delaware-based company.
Almost there now
Despite all the challenges the Tezos team with the support of the community are resolved to achieve their aims. The foundation released a statement last month updating their community on recent milestones in preparation for their mainnet launch in Q3 2018:
“We’d like to begin by thanking the Tezos community for its incredible support over the past year. We have a number of updates to share today about the Tezos Foundation, development milestones and the planned launch of the Tezos betanet in Q2 and mainnet in Q3 of 2018. A piece from the statement reads:
“The Tezos community has been running the alphanet, a test network, successfully for well over a year. While this provided valuable engineering insight, there is no substitute for real-world experience. To that end, the Tezos Foundation looks forward to helping to support the launch of a betanet. Tezos contributors who opt to use this network should understand that it will undergo unscheduled downtime and may need fixes and adjustments.”
It is unclear how thing will unfold from here on but, it seems that the worst is behind them and could turn out to be a case of “patient dog eats the fattest bone” for the token buyers. Tezos could very well live up to it’s hype.
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