Alameda Research is seeking to gain $90 million in frozen funds stuck in the Waves ecosystem.
The bankrupt trading arm of the defunct FTX exchange, Alameda Research, is going after Alexandr Ivanov, founder of the Waves platform. This legal action is one in a broad effort by the FTX bankruptcy estate to recoup as much funds as possible as it heads into paying back creditors who lost their funds when the exchange collapsed.
Alameda is asking for about $90 million, which it deposited with the decentralized liquidity protocol Vires.Finance—a dApp managed by Waves. A court filing reveals that Alameda deposited at least $80 million in USD Circle (USDC) and USD Tether (USDt) in the Vires protocol but fell victim to Ivanov’s self-serving tactics. The Waves founder allegedly siphoned funds from Vires and manipulated the protocol and the broader Waves ecosystem in such a way that it left its users reeling with $530 million in losses.
Ivanov Allegedly Planned to Prevent Alameda From Receiving Its Assets
“To divert attention from his involvement in the fraud, Ivanov attempted to publicly blame Alameda for destabilizing the Waves ecosystem,” it continued to state. He then tried to extort it by asking it to provide more liquidity, or he would freeze the funds it deposited in Vires by using his influence over the ViresDAO.
“When Alameda did not give in to his demands, Ivanov used his control of the Vires DAO to introduce and approve new proposals that blocked Alameda and other lenders from utilizing or withdrawing the assets that they had deposited to Vires,” the filing added. He then continued to “blackmail” Alameda for “capital and public support,” but it refused.
Ivanov has publicly stated that Alameda deposited $90 million into his protocol–$80 million in USDC and USDT, which were converted to $90 million in USD Neutrino (USDN), Waves’ algorithmic stablecoin. He has even proposed to the ViresDAO that Alameda’s funds remain frozen “until such a time as the incoming liquidators are in contact with us, and guarantees can be made that the USDN will go to repaying FTX users affected by this insolvency.”
Alameda is seeking to get these funds back. The FTX bankruptcy estate has filed over 20 complaints to the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware in an aggressive campaign to recoup all the funds it has left on other protocols and exchanges. That includes big-name entities like Crypto.com, Binance, and more.
