Meteora co-founder resigns over ‘lack of judgement’ on LIBRA project
The LIBRA project fall-out has been a PR nightmare for the Solana leadership.
- Meteora’s co-founder Ben Chow has resigned from the platform.
- LIBRA fall-out has put the Argentinian President and Kelsier Ventures under pressure.
Meteora co-founder Ben Chow has resigned from the Solana-based DEX for listing the controversial LIBRA on the platform.
In a statement released by his co-founder, Meow, who also doubles as founder of the DEX aggregator platform Jupiter Exchange, said,
“While I am 100% confident about Ben’s character, as a project lead he has also shown a lack of judgement and care about some of the core aspects of the project (Meteora) (given its current size and reputation) over the past couple of months.”
He further noted,
“And this is unfortunately unacceptable. Ben understands this, and has chosen to resign.”
LIBRA blame game
LIBRA was launched on 15th February and was promoted by President Javier Milei as a way to benefit Argentinian citizens.
Its market cap jumped to $4.56B but later dropped 95% after 4 hours of its launch. The dump was accelerated by the insider team dump, who cashed out $87M, per a blockchain analytics report by Bubblemaps.
The revelation that the ‘pump and dump scheme’ was driven by Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures intensified the fallout. This team was also behind TRUMP and MELANIA tokens.
The Argentina President is now under pressure from the opposition to resign due to his alleged involvement in the LIBRA project, which he has denied.
He blamed the LIBRA team and stated that he didn’t “promote it, only shared it.”
On his part, Hayden Davis, admitted to snipping Official Trump [TRUMP] (insider trading). But he blamed Meteora and Jupiter for playing a part in the LIBRA scandal as well.
In a rejoinder, Meteora and Jupiter denied having prior knowledge of LIBRA or engaging in insider trading.
In fact, Ben Chow recently stated that Meteora’s role was limited to ‘IT support’ and that Hayden Davis appeared to be a ‘trustworthy’ market maker/deployer for tokens.
“Hayden Davis of Kelsier Ventures is one of the deployer/market makers that I have referred projects to over the past few months. There was nothing exclusive or unique about our relationship with Kelsier.”
That said, the Davis team was reportedly eyeing expansion to Nigeria and other countries, further irking the community. Helius Labs founder Mert Mumtaz stated that the team should be jailed.
“I have no idea who these people even are or why they’re “trusted” — and I supposedly know Solana. Straight to jail, no hyperbole.”
That said, the story has shown just how hard it is for non-insiders to win in Solana memecoins, especially if you’re not a fast trader.
At press time, LIBRA was valued at $0.33 with a market cap of $338M, down 92% from its peak size of $4.5B.
