Recently, Michael Kong(
@michaelfkong) posted that “
@soniclabs published a notice stating that my relationship with the company had been ‘terminated with immediate effect.’”
This is the same kind of message that I received in April 2019 from Michael Kong of the Fantom Foundation, now Sonic Labs. At that time, the Fantom Foundation informed me that “all relationships with Byung-Ik Ahn and Korea had been terminated.”
Fantom Coin (FTM), now Sonic’s S token, was originally a Korean project that I conceived and planned from the beginning in early 2018. I wrote the whitepaper, designed the technical algorithm, and created the project with the intention of using it within Korea’s food-tech ecosystem.
Michael Kong and the Australian team, including David Richardson and Steve Bellotti of DCH/TCM, were originally advisers who were supposed to help me with ICO consulting and the establishment of an overseas legal entity. In March 2018, I entered into a consulting agreement with them for that purpose.
However, in June 2018, when the Fantom Foundation was established and it appeared that the ICO would be successful and that the value of the token could rise, the Australian team deceived me, the other team members, and investors, and secretly appointed David Richardson, rather than me, as the founder.
They also created an extraordinary governance structure in which the founder was given extremely powerful authority, including the right to remove directors.
At the same time, however, they publicly presented me, Byung-Ik Ahn, as the founder.
On the Fantom website, they listed me, Byung-Ik Ahn, as the founder. Even after forcing me out in early 2019, they continued to promote me as the founder on the website until the end of 2019, and they continued to use the whitepaper that I had created.
When FTM was listed on Bibox in September 2018, it was listed with Byung-Ik Ahn identified as the founder. When FTM was later listed on Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, in 2019, I was again identified as the founder. Even today, Binance’s Fantom Coin information page still lists Byung-Ik Ahn as the founder.
In other words, an ICO advisory firm that had entered into a consulting agreement with me ended up becoming the party controlling the Fantom Foundation.
In my view, this was clearly fraudulent conduct intended from the beginning to take away the foundation that I had intended to create and to obtain control over the operation of Fantom Coin.
The Australian team, including Michael Kong, who I believe engaged in this conduct, is currently under investigation for alleged fraud by the Virtual Asset Joint Investigation Unit of the Seoul Southern District Prosecutors’ Office in Korea.
However, Michael Kong and the other members of the Australian team have instructed their Korean legal representatives to handle only the civil litigation, while they themselves have not entered Korea and have avoided appearing for questioning by Korean prosecutors.
In July last year, Sonic Foundation posted an announcement on X regarding a standalone meetup event in Seoul, stating that Foundation CEO Michael Kong would attend the event. However, he did not actually visit Korea and, as a result, did not appear for questioning by prosecutors.
Related article:
enewstoday.co.kr/news/articl…
Moreover, they instead attacked me and portrayed me as an unethical person.
I have never acted unethically.
I only wanted the project to succeed, and I did everything I could for that purpose.
However, in early 2019, they forced me out and stopped providing support to the Fantom Foundation’s Korean office, causing more than a dozen employees who had been working in Korea to lose their jobs. They also engaged in abnormal actions such as shutting down email access.
The algorithm I created was not plagiarism.
Technological advancement is achieved by modifying and improving existing technologies.
If similarity alone is enough to call something plagiarism, then virtually every technology in the world would have to be considered plagiarism.
I simply developed the existing theory one step further.
Michael, if you claim that the Lachesis algorithm was plagiarized, why did you keep the technical whitepaper containing that algorithm on the website for such a long time?
And why did Fantom continue publishing papers that modified and developed that algorithm?
A mainnet is something that is completed over at least three to five years following an ICO.
Yet they claim that I failed to develop it.
They say this even though they took away all of my development authority immediately after the ICO.
If they had not forced me out and had allowed me to retain development authority, I would certainly have completed it properly.
And I would have applied it to Korea’s food-tech ecosystem and used it there, exactly as I had originally intended.
So what, then, did Michael Kong actually build properly while serving as CEO?
Did he complete the DAG mainnet?
Is there any proper, real-world use case?
Or has the project simply continued announcing project after project while focusing primarily on increasing the value of the token?
Michael Kong boasts that he almost single-handedly led the company to victory in the approximately $150 million lawsuit against me in Korea.
Yet this came after forcing out the founder, taking control of the Foundation, and then continuing for a substantial period to mislead the public by presenting Byung-Ik Ahn as the founder, including when listing the token on Binance and other exchanges.
These were, in my view, deliberate and malicious actions.
And this happened while I was not even paid the legitimate share of tokens that I was supposed to receive.
In fact, I did not properly receive the tokens that I was entitled to, while Michael Kong and the Australian team associated with TCM received the entire 10% allocation of the total Fantom Coin supply, amounting to 317.5 million FTM.
The previous lawsuit was deeply problematic.
There were also aspects of the case that I did not handle well in my own response.
However, during the court proceedings, the Australian team made a substantial number of false claims.
I firmly believe that the truth will eventually be revealed.
For that reason, new proceedings are now underway in the Seoul Central District Court in Korea.
I intend to fight this matter to the end for justice and for what is right.
I believe that justice will ultimately prevail.
Even now, I hope that Michael Kong, David Richardson, and Steve Bellotti will apologize for their wrongdoing and restore matters to what they should have been.
And if they truly believe that they acted properly and have nothing to hide, then I ask them to come to Korea and face the prosecutors head-on.
The Korean prosecutors are waiting for them to come to Korea.
Why can you not come to Korea?
If you truly have nothing to hide, come to Korea and face the prosecutors head-on.