It’s been a tough year for ‘SoLunAvax’, once the strongest trio – the often cited term to refer to popular L2s Solana, Luna and Avalanche. Luna, of course, has seen her decline in recent months and has fallen to a much smaller piece than it once was. Solana still has strong growth, but the blockchain still faces challenges this year as it faces criticism over downtime, centralization and use of the native blockchain explorer.
Last weekend, it was Avalanche who specifically ran the Ava Labs team. Unknown reporters at Cryptoleaks have released a report full of secretly recorded videos of Ava Labs legal representative Kyle Roche, which has garnered significant attention, including Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao’s statement on Twitter.
Our team took the time to update the Cryptoleaks report and the latest developments in this bubbling story on Cryptoleaks, Ava Labs and more.
AVAX Under the Microscope
The Cryptoleaks report accuses Ava Labs of using legal teams to file class action lawsuits against competing blockchains. Cryptoleaks reveals a number of ‘secret’ videos of Roche throughout the piece.
Ava Labs CEO Emin Gün Sirer and Roche Freedman founder Kyle Roche made independent statements regarding the Cryptoleaks report. Sirer described the news outlet as “disreputable” and its news as “fraud on us”.
Citing the Roche videos, Sirer said they were part of the law firm’s strategy to “impress a potential business associate by making false claims about the nature of the work it does for Ava Labs.” In this sense, Sirer added:
The claims on this site are absolutely false. Ava Labs believes in transparency and meeting the world, not through behind-the-scenes processes or activities. Neither I nor anyone else at Ava Labs guided Roche in its case selection. We do not accept materials or information from him and do not entrust our legal affairs to him.
Roche’s Answer
Roche agreed with Sirer in his response, accusing the Cryptoleaks report of containing “false statements”. Regarding the videos in which Kyle was shown confirming a “secret” partnership with Ava Labs, Roche said the videos were “highly edited” and presented without “the right context.”
According to Roche, the videos were registered by Christen Ager-Hanssen, a person associated with the Dfinity Foundation and Dominic Williams, the founder of the ICP blockchain. Roche is currently in a legal fight against Williams.
Other details also call into question the report. Cryptoleaks has only two published tracks, both of which advocate ICP. Additionally, at Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse published a statement that he did not meet, talk to, or invest in Kyle Roche – contradicting the Cryptoleaks report.
As such, the Cryptoleaks report appears to be part of a plan to discredit the law firm, according to Roche’s statement. The law firm has had disputes with Ava Labs over some lawsuits brought against other projects like Solana, but the company, led by Sirer, has tried to “solve” the merits of the case.
Sirer concluded his words as follows:
Let me be absolutely clear: we are not interested in or supporting any of the stealth tactics suggested in the article or video clips. We believe in what we’re building and we don’t need collusion or behind-the-scenes machinations.
The market seems to have reacted positively to the announcements, as AVAX, the native token for the Avalanche network, has gained in value over the past 24 hours. The price of AVAX has bounced back from its weekly low of around $15, trading at $20 and posting a profit of 8% on the lower timeframes.
