Across Protocol DAO under fire over $23M fund misuse claims

The founders of the crosschain bridge Across Protocol have been accused of siphoning $23 million of funds to their own for-profit company.

In a Friday X thread, Ogle — the pseudonymous founder of layer 1 project Glue and onchain sleuth — accused the founders of Across Protocol of covertly manipulating decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) votes to fund their for-profit company, Risk Labs. Ogle accused the project of being among the “DAOs that are DAOs in name only.”

Hart Lambur, who founded both Risk Labs and Across, denied the claims in a separate post. He said that Risk Labs is a Cayman Islands-based nonprofit with no shareholders. He shared a certificate of incorporation and claimed that the company operates under fiduciary obligations.

“If the funds are misused, you can sue the directors (me!),” he said.

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Nonprofit status called into question

Talking to Cointelegraph, Lambert also shared the company’s certificate of incorporation. The document describes the firm as a “foundation company.” Cointelegraph was able to independently verify the company’s registration with Cayman Island’s online general registry.

Risk Labs’ certificate of company re-registration. Source: Across Bridge ProtocolStill, law firm Harneys explained in its Cayman Islands foundation company guide that such firms can have any purpose “whether commercial, charitable/philanthropic or private.”

Cointelegraph was unable to verify Risk Labs’ claimed nonprofit status, with its name not included in the list of registered nonprofit organizations.

Cayman Islands-based foundations are not permitted to pay dividends and are generally regarded as “ownerless” entities. That being said, legal firm Ogier explained that for-profit Cayman Islands-based foundation companies allow “distributions to beneficiaries, rather than to shareholders.”

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DAO vote manipulation claims emerge

“It seems the Across/Risk co-founders and insiders orchestrated governance proposals that let them secretly subvert the ‘democratic’ process of the DAO, and extract ~$23m (at today’s value) from the treasury they were meant to protect,” Ogle said.

The first DAO proposal was approved two years ago and saw 13.1 million worth of tokenholders voting in favor, approving the proposal with over 97% of the vote. The second DAO proposal saw Risk Labs ask the DAO for 50 million ACX tokens for “retroactive funding” a year later.

“Had the team not voted on this proposal, it wouldn’t have reached quorum — meaning that it wouldn’t have had enough votes to pass at all,” Ogle claimed. At the time of writing, the 150 million tokens involved would be worth over $22 million after ACX lost around 9.3% of its value in the last 24 hours to currently trade at $0.1362.

Still, Ogle claims that “the proposal did not guarantee the money would be used for Across, there were no formal agreements between the two companies.” He also said that onchain analysis reveals that many Risk Labs team members covertly approved the proposal.

“The second largest voting wallet in the entire proposal, accounting for almost 14% of the total vote, was initially funded by Hart Lambur,” Ogle claimed.

Risk Labs denies misuse allegations

Lambur denied the accusations, saying the token has been live for almost three years and team members have acquired it with their own funds. “My team is free to buy tokens and privately vote in proposals, just like every other DAO out there,” he said.

Lambur further confirmed that Chan voted for the proposal. Still, he denied the secret nature of the addresses used, noting that they “are publicly disclosed and publicly linked.”

Lambur answered all allegations in his thread, describing them as “categorically untrue.”

In a separate post, after criticizing Ogle for anonymity and raising issues with his credibility, Lambur highlighted Ogle’s connections to competing projects like LayerZero and Stargate as potential conflicts of interest.

“Funny enough, Bryan Pellegrino, the founder of Stargate and LayerZero, retweeted Ogle’s post almost immediately after he posted it,” Lambur said.

Cointelegraph reached out to Ogle for further comment but did not receive a response by publication.

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