Avalanche Founder Addresses "Dirty Tricks" Allegations

Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of Avalanche, has denied allegations targeting the project following reports that Avalanche hired lawyers to create legal troubles for competitors.

Image: Business Insider

Details: Avalanche Accused of "Dirty Tricks" Against Competitors, Including Binance

After 24 hours of intense speculation, Emin Gün Sirer, the founder and CEO of Avalanche, issued an official statement on the evening of August 30, 2022, to clarify the misinformation surrounding AVAX.

Firstly, Emin Gün Sirer emphasized that Ava Labs never pressured Kyle Roche into making any covert deal decisions, as rumored. The company did not receive any documents or information from Kyle Roche and did not assign Ava Labs' legal tasks to him.

Kyle Roche himself confirmed this in a public statement. In reality, Kyle Roche only represented Ava Labs as defense in a few contract disputes and represented Emin Gün Sirer in a defamation lawsuit. Roche Freedman was merely one of more than a dozen law firms Ava Labs consulted for tax, business, regulatory, and HR issues.

The Avalanche CEO further stated that Roche Freedman handled their lawsuits independently of Ava Labs, meaning AVAX was not the "driving force" behind Roche Freedman's actions. In fact, Ava Labs only learned about the Solana lawsuit through media coverage. Roche Freedman was not responsible for regulatory matters related to Ava Labs. The company maintains legal relationships with regulatory bodies, policymakers, and law enforcement agencies.

Finally, Emin Gün Sirer asserted that Kyle Roche is not part of Ava Labs' core executive team and the company did not seek his advice except for a few minor issues he resolved. Kyle Roche had no influence on business, legal decisions, or the operation of Ava Labs or the Avalanche platform.

Interestingly, after CEO Emin Gün Sirer's statement, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao quickly shared his own perspective on the matter from a "neutral" stance, despite having expressed a somewhat "sharp" attitude towards AVAX on the morning of August 29, and subsequently deleting the post.

"Both sides of the story. Who is really the 'puppet master' behind all these blockbuster claims?"

Kyle Roche, the lawyer at the center of the scandal, also issued a personal statement on August 29, claiming that he was secretly recorded without consent by someone posing as an interested investor linked to the Internet Protocol (ICP) project. Roche denied having any secret agreements with Ava Labs. However, the lawyer indirectly admitted that the secretly recorded videos were real, not deepfakes, but were taken while he was not fully alert due to alcohol consumption. The videos were also edited to distort the truth to fit the narrative of the source.

My statement concerning the Crypto Leaks story: Link to Kyle Roche’s statement
— Kyle Roche (@KyleWRoche) August 29, 2022

AVAX has shown a clear recovery in the past 12 hours following a sharp drop on the morning of August 29 when the market reacted negatively to the aforementioned scandal.

1-hour chart of the AVAX/USDT pair on Binance as of 08:10 AM on August 30, 2022