SNEAK PEAK
- Smart Stake announced on January 29 that it would shut down Secret Network validator nodes on February 21.
- The foundation’s governance forum revealed Bair’s allegations on January 27.
- Bair stated that the withdrawals were part of his vested tokens in the same governance forum.
Smart Stake, a prominent provider of staking and validator services for various networks, including Crypto.com, Polygon, Cosmos, and the Secret Network until recently. Smart Stake declared on January 29 that it will shut down Secret Network validator nodes on February 21 after it was discovered that Tor Bair, the creator of the Secret Foundation, was personally benefiting.
The validator explicitly cited “complex/stressful validator operations… cost/effort of validator ops… recent events” as the causes for terminating service.
On January 27, the allegations against Bair were made public through the foundation’s governance forum. Guy Zyskind, the founder of Secret Labs, made the allegations public in a statement.
Zyskind revealed that the “Secret Foundation sold a significant amount of USD worth of SCRT.”
Tor also “cashed out a significant chunk of these revenues… as a dividend.” The general public was unaware of these activities, which cost around $4 million in Q4 2021 alone.
Zyskind planned to eliminate the Secret Foundation by giving everyone in the community a piece of it and starting a new one with new leaders. “Keep your activity open and audited, and send annual funding requests to the chain with a clear budget, milestones, and requests,” says the new organization.
Zyskind closed the piece with optimism for the future of the Secret Network. Last but not least, we’d want to stress that “although we do express and accept these issues, we are at the same time incredibly hopeful about the future.” The Secret community is prepared for the adjustments that must be made, and the platform will benefit from the restructuring as we get closer to our Secret 2.0 goal.
On the same day, Bair offered his version of events to the Secret Governance Forum. He stated the withdrawals were from his vested tokens.
Instead of receiving my vested tokens in December 2021, I changed them to USD at the OTC rate and received the money as a dividend from the Secret Foundation.
This information is verified in our 2021 tax filings, which have already been inspected by labs and to whom I have previously informed it.
he continued.
The ongoing leadership conflict inside the company has shaken at least one network validator provider and the ecosystem’s community.
A dispute erupted in the comments and on Twitter over whether the community feels malpractice occurred or whether people are more worried that Bair appears to have sold the top for more than $7.
