The team behind blockchain bridge protocol Across has been accused of funnelling $23 million worth of treasury funds into its own company, Risk Labs, via underhanded governance voting tactics.
The heavily disputed claims come from pseudonymous post-hack negotiator Ogle, whose X bio reads “outing crooks in the crypto space.”
Ogle is also the founder of the recently-launched Glue blockchain and an advisor to Trump-backed crypto project World Liberty Financial.
Read more: Who is behind World Liberty Financial, Trump’s new crypto?
The post says that Across appears to be a DINO or “DAO in name only.” This is a common insult thrown around in the decentralized finance (DeFi) community to describe organizations that purport to act as non-hierarchical token-led democracies, when in reality, a few individuals with large token shares effectively call the shots.
Ogle focused on two votes to transfer $15 million and $7.5 million of ACX to Risk Labs. Ogle claims that team-linked but allegedly obfuscated wallets “secretly pushed through” the proposals in what they say amounts to “self-dealing.”
Across CEO Hart Lambur quickly hit back, branding the claims “categorically untrue,” and later published a long-form post entitled “Why are people on crypto twitter such assholes? My response to Ogle’s accusations against Across.”
Lambur states that Risk Labs is a not-for-profit company and that the funds have been used for the development of the protocol’s v3 and v4.
He also goes on to refute Ogle’s other claims, stating that the voting addresses in question are either publicly linked to team members or have accumulated ACX on their own dime.
Despite a long disclaimer in which Ogle admits “a non-zero chance that I’ve gotten something incorrect,” they state that they are long $ACX (and many competitors) and are “in a sense… fudding my own bags.”
The post says that Across Treasurer Kevin Chan and Lambur were involved in discussions before publication to iron out any kinks, but that the project’s head of marketing was “almost completely unhelpful and was (at best) dismissive.”
Ogle also claims to have “left off a very suspicious second half of this report… in good faith.”
Across’s ACX is down roughly 10% since the claims were made, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
In his rebuttal, Lambur also sarcastically insinuates that the accusations may have been made in conjunction with frequent sparring partner Brian Pellegrino, of rival bridge protocol LayerZero.
Pellegrino unsurprisingly took the opportunity to get involved, chiming in with screenshots of Lambur’s wallet buying ACX in the run-up to it being listed on Binance.
Lambur insists the Across team had no knowledge of the listing until “we found out on Twitter like everyone else” and that Pellegrino should apologize.
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Lambur also hit back at his accuser’s credibility, drawing attention to a recent post in which he says the “completely anonymous” Ogle was “accused of insider trading” of the TRUMP memecoin earlier this month.
It’s not uncommon to see projects in the DeFi sector arguing on governance forums or the X timeline.
Raised pulses in the fallout from hacks, rage-quitting over governance votes, conflicts of interest, or fast-forks of carefully-built code can often lead to snarky comments, insults, and even long-running feuds between individuals or projects.
