Breitman gives nothing away as Tezos saga rumbles on

Breitman said nothing about the foundation dispute, which is entering a critical phase swissinfo.ch

Anyone expecting fire and brimstone from a Zurich address by Tezos founder Arthur Breitman on Thursday went home disappointed. Breitman flatly refused to speak about his public row with Johann Gevers at the Tezos Foundation.

Breitman gave the impression of ‘business as usual’ as he updated eager investors, packed in the city’s Volkshaus, about technical developments to the blockchain smart contract system. The message was clear: while the Zug-based foundation may be shaking under the weight of allegations of financial misconduct, the business end of Tezos – Dynamic Ledger Solutions (DLS), which is building the platform – is fully functioning.

As Breitman delivered his address on Thursday, foundation president Gevers may well have been perusing an audit into its financial conduct, due to be delivered around about now. From this evidence, Gevers and his two other board members must decide if there is anything amiss, and what to do about it.

The foundation is packed with investors’ assets now worth around $500 million. It is charged with spending it on marketing the Tezos technology, building up a team of developers, funding research projects and finding partners who will utilize Tezos in future.

Investors may like to learn the following from the ongoing investigation:

How long will the investigation process last given that the project has already been put back two months by the governance row?

What was the scope of the independent audit and did it cover allegations that Gevers tried to pass off a $1.5 million bonus as a mere $300,000?

What value of assets has already been syphoned off to hedge against cryptocurrency volatility?

How much has been spent actively pursuing the foundation’s goals?

Will the foundation’s board be expanded to five or seven members as suggested by the Breitmans?

Will the foundation set up a separate entity, Tezos AG, to help speed up their work, which would give the Breitmans a more hands-on role in the foundation’s work (again a Breitman suggestion)?

Will Gevers stay or go as president of the foundation?

This is all the more relevant as the foundation will assume a bigger role once Tezos has been rolled out. It will then incrementally buy out DLS and the intellectual property rights to the technology.