On Monday, March 29, the AVAX token from the Avalanche blockchain began the day with a decline of 10% over the previous 24 hours and 20% over the previous seven days.
The asset’s depreciation is the result of recent accusations made against Ava Labs, reported on the website “Crypto Leaks”.
According to the website, Kyle Roche, an attorney who was allegedly hired by Avalanche, decided to denounce the claims that he set up a scheme to file legal proceedings against companies competing with Ava Labs.
The actions denounced by Roche would allow Ava Labs to obtain privileged information through legal lawsuits and pass the data on to the creator of Ava Labs, Avalanche.
The complaint reports that Roche was able to obtain sensitive information from Binance utilizing this method. In response, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng “CZ” Zhao” tweeted about the incident.
Zhao said that the entire situation was “too crazy”, and that even he wasn’t sure if the information and videos posted by Crypto Leaks were real or not.
“Of course, Binance was a target, not a competitor.” Changpeng Zhao clarified.
Ava Labs Had access to Delicate Information
In a number of videos, Roche discusses his partnership with Ava Labs on Crypto Leaks. The lawyer said that the scheme’s objective was to bring class lawsuits against the firm’s rivals.
The goal of the alleged scheme was to force competitors to share essential information about their companies in the process of “discovery”, a legal process in a lawsuit where each side can acquire evidence from the opposing party or parties.
The attorney states that by this process, he was able to get valuable internal information from some of the largest crypto-related companies in the world.
Roche affirms that he received AVAX tokens in payment for misusing the legal system in order to allegedly favor one company.
Red Flag About the Accusation
For now, no one really knows wetter the accusations hold ground.
Roche stated that he once proposed to Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, an offer of creating a legal team focused on repeating the unethical lawsuits in order to favor Harlinghouse’s company.
Later, Brad Garlinghouse went on Twitter to clarify that he never even met Kyle Roche:
“Can’t comment on the validity of the slew of allegations in here, but I can unequivocally say that I have never met or spoken to (much less invested in) Kyle Roche.”
Solana Was the Main Target
According to Kyle Roche’s allegations, Solana was the main target of the alleged scheme.
Crypto Leaks posted a document in which Kyle Roche files a lawsuit against Solana Labs, on behalf of investors who purchased Solana’s token (SOL). The lawsuit claims that said investors had been persuaded to purchase the token, but that it was actually an unregistered mobile property.
Ava Labs Denies Accusations
The CEO and founder of Ava Labs, Emin Gün Sirer, went on social media to vehemently deny all accusations.
Sirer claims that CryptoLeaks spread conspiracy theories that are far from the truth. He also says that this is an attack on Avalanche and its credibility.
“First of all, our hearts go out to the Solana community.” Sirer wrote on Twitter. “Attacks like this affect not just the directly targeted system, but everyone in the space indirectly by eroding people’s confidence in the space.”
In another Tweet, Sirer was harsher about the accusations against his company.
“How could anyone believe something so ridiculous as the conspiracy theory nonsense on Cryptoleaks?” Sirer wrote. “We would never engage in the unlawful, unethical and just plain wrong behavior claimed in these self-serving videos and inflammatory article.
Our tech & team speak for themselves.”
