The Swiss foundation that conducted the ICO for the embattled Tezos cryptocurrency project today announced the expansion of its board of directors with the addition of four new members, according to a statement from the foundation.
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The most notable appointment was Olaf Carlson-Wee, chief executive officer of San Francisco-based cryptocurrency fund Polychain Capital. It also hired Pascal Cléré, Marylène Micheloud and Hubertus Thonhauser which effectively expands the entity’s board from three to seven members.
The news comes less than a week after the head of Switzerland's Tezos foundation Johann Gevers stepped down amid a prolonged spat with the inventors of the Tezos technology, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman.
Mr. Carlson-Wee and new president Ryan Jasperson were founding members of the T2 Foundation, which was formed last month in order to take over the ICO funds that were paid in bitcoins and ether and have recently soared in value. The T2 foundation, which also features seven board members, announced it will organize the launch of ‘tezzies’ tokens if the Tezos Foundation was unable to do so in “an adequate and timely manner."
The management spat and the limited progress in developing its product has promoted anxious investors to unwind bets that the project would be launched while the actual tokens have yet to be created.
Tezos has set up a complex governance structure whereby the token’s developers own the code, but the $232 million raised in the ICO, which has now grown to more than $1 billion, will be managed and controlled by an independent Swiss foundation – the foundation now headed by Ryan Jesperson.
The Tezos project and its founders are facing several class-action lawsuits in the United States. Plaintiffs accuse them of fraudulently Marketing the sale of their tokens as charitable, non-refundable contributions in order to avoid governmental and private scrutiny.
