If this really was implemented entirely by one person, they have no moat.
>Instead the anonymous owner of Aeternity is deciding how the money is spent.
Yeah, that's how capitalism works. The person with the capital owns you. And now, I look into my crystal ball... I see the anonymous owner is going to sue you for running off with his intellectual property and starting a competitor with it.
Never heard of Aeternity, but this isn't going to end well for the author.
"If Aeternity is going to use the technology invented, and they wont pay me to make their software secure, then my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity."
Should of never written that one sentence, that is at the very least a plain as day admission and now he will hold any blame for any exploits used against Aeternity, whether involved or not.
While that is true, it is also alarming that he would have to relocate completely over this whole matter. Curious where in the world your own words involving Computer Misused (or similar law) being admitted are not legally binding, especially considering the implications.
The irony. He rants about the unethical behavior of his associates and then clearly states that he will himself engage in unethical behavior. The only thing this rant proves is that the ICO space is over run by ethically challenged scammers much like the Bitcoin ASIC space was 3 years ago.
Well... isn't that is whole thing about it? I mean, ICO is a vehicle for scams, just another way to nicely package a Ponzi scheme? This is why they exist.
Honestly to me, it sounds like a junior (or at least, a non-business-savvy) person tried to extort somewhere in the area of $3.5 million from the owner of their company.
In this instance, "trying to break his leg" may have been more like "got shoved and fell over" (Which to be fair, could be a reaction someone might have if their employee came into their office demanding several million dollars - who knows).
I don't know, I'd like to hear the other side of the story.
I was kinda more thinking the other person kicked a garbage can or chair and it banged the authors knee or something. Had similar happen at a start up years ago and seems more plausible than being attacked.
If he were attacked like I think he wanted it to sound then a lawsuit would probably get him the money he wanted
Junior? He has worked on the codebase since 2015 alone, then Aeternity stole his code and raised 77 million USD entirely based on his own work. He is the sole reason the company even exists so definitely not junior. And they stealing his code and starting a company based on it was how they got started so they are clearly not nice people.
Junior/younger/etc. Don't need to get too caught up in the terminology.
They also didn't 'steal' his code from the sounds of it. It sounds like he was in some form of verbal partnership to help develop a company (which they were clearly fairly far along with) but hadn't signed any real contracts. After two years someone isn't stealing your code, and you should be savvy enough to realise that the business world isn't really about being nice people - you need to cover your bases.
I don't care about terminology/title. That's irrelevant. My point is that the company raised 77 million of dollars based entirely on technology invented by this developer. Him asking to own a small part of that is totally reasonable.
I agree that he should have signed a proper contract with them and not rely on verbal agreements (but after reading little bit about him online he seems to be some sort of extreme libertarian, he doesn't believe in lawyers and contracts, just in voluntary exchanges).
But that doesn't mean it's not a bit evil for the company to just throw him away after using his name and technology to get people invest in them.
Yes, I agree about stealing the code. They did not literally do it as it seems they had some verbal agreement and he worked on the code for them voluntarily. But still they haven't paid him anything and I think if he actually decided to get a lawyer and sue he has a pretty strong claim on the company ownership as the whole funding round was based on his IP.
The company has hastily deleted all his code and replaced it with new repositories starting from scratch so apparently they are also at least little bit worried he might legally be entitled to own part of the company.
I never said or implied ends justify the means. I simply said it is not necessarily unethical to to engage in what would otherwise be unethical actions against actors who engage in unethical actions against ethical actors.
If they did a token sale and already have $77M from it in the bank... there will be very little need for a moat. Many of these teams are out to get a quick buck with little accountability.
I didn't get that based on the fact that he moved to a whole other place where he felt safe. No one goes through that kind of hassle without having a good reason. His later actions justify or make me believe his story about the assault.
Did I read this correctly, he was physically assaulted? Can he not press for criminal charges?
What's also interesting is I was approached by Aeternity at the end of June to join their team. Wonder if the timing coincided wtih the author's troubles
That's at least assault if not battery. Assault is the threat of physical violence, and battery is the actual physical act. It sounds like the owner has physically assaulted him. Either way, it's a felony. That's totally unacceptable.
> that he did something to me that both scared and injured me. I no longer feel safe working with this person. I am walking with a limp a week later.
OP is happy to spill some pretty high-level corporate beans, but not detail a physical assault... I don't really know what to take from this article in all honesty. I feel there's a lot being left unmentioned.
How does a lawyer resolve anything if there's no contract? And by extension, why should he refrain from publishing zero days if there's no contract? It's his software.
He may be able to argue that the statement is not a threat, merely a statement of fact. Saying:
> my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity.
could seem like a Mafia goon saying "nice shop, shame if something happened to it" but it can also be read as "it's terrible that the employer has shafted the employee so hard there are no lawful ways for the employee to get paid".
I think he's just omitting embarrassing details to be nice, as can be expected of someone who's just learning what entrepreneurs are like, and/or to avoid having to prove accusations in court.
He's proved himself naively optimistic enough to make very valuable work before getting a good contract rather than after.
I'm not sure why the negative reaction to this post. I found it completely plausible and have no reason to doubt the author. It sucks that there are crappy people like this but unfortunately that's the real world. People will exploit you if you allow them to.
That said, threatening to sell exploits on the black market is a terrible way to fight back. Everything up to that point suggested the author had a case he could argue in court. If he does indeed proceed down that path he would likely find himself on the wrong side of the law.
threatening to sell exploits on the black market is a terrible way to fight back
My guess is that this is a clever way of destroying confidence in the coin and subverting the organization. He need not exploit the vulnerabilities; hell, they need not even exist. If he was really going to sell 0-days, it's not in his interest to announce it.
As someone who once had the experience of being forced out of an organization by someone who thought software teams could be swapped out like the janitorial staff, I love this. It won't make you rich, but sometimes it's nice to just watch something burn.
It seems to be a mistake on the author's part to allow himself to be exploited at first (working without having any of the promises in legal writing). It's unethical but not uncommon and alone wouldn't produce the outrage for an article detailing it.
The missing piece is why he doesn't feel pressing criminal charges and suing for IP is an option. The language seems to imply that the answer is for his physical safety. If he's writing this article because he feels safe enough to, then maybe he thinks battling in court requires people to be present and closes the distance safety net.
He's able to list pretty concretely his contributions but is suspiciously vague about the cause of his fear. I'm inclined to believe that it's because he might not think the public would unequivocally agree his fear is sound.
From what I've gathered from some people working in the blockchain community, some of the altcoins that are geared towards being a ponzi schemes have investors with Russian oligarch/mafia or similarly shady backgrounds. I wouldn't be surprised if that isn't completely contained to the obious scams.
> my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity.
It sounds like a typical situation where a startup screws over a key early employee. Typically there are legal avenues to pursue if the author truly was taken advantage of. Threatening to sell 0-day exploits smells of immaturity and anger though. I'm not sure how the tech stack works or how long it was developed but $3.5MM to keep working there exclusively sounds either like the author insanely overvalues his work and skills or the technology is revolutionary in which case, they'll likely get huge and he could sue them for far more.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that it is written by someone who is highly immature and/or unstable. I mostly feel sorry for their investors who purchased yet another block chain hoping to make a quick buck with likely little to no diligence on what they buy. The more I hear about blockchains, the murkier it looks to me.
The author is effectively ousted from the "company", physically assaulted, signs nothing, then spends '5 days' with 'the Aeternity lawyer' mulling over a contract? All of this after not being paid while their colleagues are being 'paid regularly.'
My question is what/where is the legal void that this company existed in?!
Assuming you believe the OP. Things like "I didn't get paid so I am selling 0 days", or "I had to leave Europe to be safe because I fought with a guy", don't help me taking it seriously. Might be true. Might not be true. The only certainty is that this guy is a nutter.
> If Aeternity is going to use the technology invented, and they wont pay me to make their software secure, then my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity
Here's who would write it: A person sane and honest enough to realize how insane the proposition and their position is and who decides to state it to illustrate the point that they're completely out of options.
You're jumping to wild conclusions that say more about you than you're trying to say about him.
Europe is large. Not sure what European country he's exactly in. Also even in the most advanced countries there are certainly still risks of the police not upholding justice.
Aeternety website says they are based in Lichenstein, even if their police was corrupt (which I seriously doubt) you could literally run to Switzerland or Austria. The way he talks about his allergies and they would be handled makes it seem he was in a 3rd world country which makes me question the veracity of the whole thing.
I had a brief conversation on github with Zack few years ago over cryptocurrency implementation, great guy and really knowledgeable about cryptocurrency. Knowing Aeternity had him on the team, I immediately told my friends who invest in cryptocurrency they should pay close attention to it.
I also wanted to look into its code and help, but I'm not an erlang programmer.
To be honest, when I checked Ae's official website and found out that only one member is a technical person, I thought the structure is weird. I too have been approached by non-technical people who wanted to form a team, but rely on me to come up with both the idea and the product. I don't trust people who can only talk.
> As a programmer, I'd be happy in a team to be the only programmer as long as the rest of the team are experts in their domains.
As someone in that position right now, let me just tell you that it's not all roses (not that I think you'd necessarily assume it was!). For one, you have to deal with the stigma of being 'the nerd' in the team. You'll also end up doing a lot of menial tasks because "you're the technical one" (e.g. trying to fix the printer, explaining basic tech to other members of the team).
Finally, most importantly, other members of the team don't really understand what you do. They might devalue it, expect you to complete tasks in an unrealistic amount of time, or get frustrated when you're the bottleneck.
There can be benefits of course — you can probably plan your work yourself without being told, quite as much, what to do — but, contrary to expectations, I've found it quite problematic: you are in a very isolated position.
When you are in that role it's also your task to define the role. I can't fix your printer, I can take it apart (and it's usually 5 a year that suffer this faith for my hunger of cheap motors and axis to hack thing with). Your task is to implement a core asset of the company, not to fix a stupid printer.
Estimates is a skill barely anyone is good at, put a higher estimate on tasks and tell the team that stuff is always work in progress and subject to change but change requests are the cheapest if the come early. Also, involve the team so they see the current state (and make it clear that this or that tiny functionality is still simplistic and will be improved later on).
I'd hire them as PA's and customer support tbf, making sure I'd get the main stake (at least 51%) of the company. But you'd need an independent third party (like a lawyer) to make sure they don't screw you over, unfortunately. Make sure they work for you, not with.
> I too have been approached by non-technical people who wanted to form a team, but rely on me to come up with both the idea and the product. I don't trust people who can only talk.
I like these words, especially "I don't trust people who can only talk."
This is probably obvious, but the easiest way this can be avoided is by investors not investing millions of dollars in something when the ownership of that thing is not clearly defined.
Alternatively, if you don't know how ownership is to be divvied up, don't raise tens millions of dollars until you iron out the details.
If his mental state of enthusiasm for working in this field is not completely wrecked by this occurrence... Your github is inspiring work Zack - I've ran across it several times in the past - I hope you get paid reasonably somehow or whatever you need to be happy.
A scalable blockchain for financial derivatives. Optimized for scalability via smart contracts inside state-channels. Has a build-in oracle for integration with real-world data. Written in Erlang.
> There are no zero days. And we are not using any of Zack’s code in the new repo. Take a look at our Github. Zack’s leaving has zero effect on our technology and we are not using any of his code.
> We have been working alongside Zack for quite some time now and understand the code. We felt that this is the right time to dump some accumulated and unwanted technical baggage. We are starting with a clean source code repository and will be bringing in pieces of code from the old repo as needed.
Fascinating. That seems to confirm a lot of Zack's claims (not the physical assault parts, of course).
Highly unusual to start over with an empty repo when your lead developer quits. Which makes me suspect that the answer to the asked-but-unanswered question:
> Is this down to IP issues / lack of any contracts or legal agreements?
Sure sounds like it. I've been through a somewhat similar (but less jarring) situation, mine was a customer silently started hiring people to clone a kind of trading system they licensed from us at the time, but the strangeness tastes the same way.
A bit of story, might entertain someone:
It started with them started asking somw weird questions, and generally behaving odd in our meetings about fixes and new features. Somehow, I came to the conclusion they had to be working on a clone, which I told everyone on the team. They were quite surprised by that, especially as I wasn't myself present at the strangest meeting. Que a year or so later, when my boss walked in. One sentence that said it all: - How the hell did you know ?
Turned out I was right. But truth to be told, I couldn't answer his questions. It was simply the only possible reason I could imagine.
I don't understand why he didn't nail down his equity situation before doing any work. Yeah, it's pretty shifty of the 'founders' but then it's pretty basic for techies, especially early startup engineers.
I've been there. Verbal agreement to substitute most of my usual pay for three months in exchange for shares, only that part of the agreement wasn't written down, the shares never came, and when the three months ended the CEO was shocked, shocked, by the significantly higher invoice.
Fortunately, I had written proof that I'd told them this was going to happen (the bottom of the previous invoice), so I did get paid, but I never did see those shares. Shares are a gamble anyway, and if the CEO doesn't read invoices I don't see them lasting very long — I don't loose sleep over this mistake, just use it as a lesson for the future.
> August 17- Aeternity finally makes an offer to hire me that I am comfortable with. In the process of negotiating my employment, the owner of Aeternity was asking me technical questions, and the honest answers I gave made him angry. He wished that universe worked differently, and he blamed me, the messenger of bad news. The owner of Aeternity was so upset by the technical limitation, that he did something to me that both scared and injured me. I no longer feel safe working with this person. I am walking with a limp a week later.
He implies that a violent struggle took place but without saying so explicitly. Which is odd since a detailed description of a physical assault would draw immediate sympathy from we, the public-at-large.
When I read this I though a violent struggle didn't happen but that he wanted to imply that it did. The reason is that it reminds me of similar techniques that my more drama-loving acquaintances use,and based on the way this is written, this guy has a flair for drama. My guess is that something happened where the author got scared and as a side effect hurt himself. Meaning he can garner sympathy and still not technically lie about what happened, but make you fill in the blanks with stuff that didn't happen. I would love to stand corrected on this, though.
The vagueness of that part reminded me of a time I worked at a small startup several years ago, and the owner got angry about something and kicked a chair which partly hit a couple of us. The damage was pretty mild but one of us did get banged in the knee so he limped slightly for a couple days.
I can only really imagine something similar happened in this case too
So if someone walks into your office and demands $3.5 million or they walk, and you don't think they're worth it, two reasonable responses are to laugh in their face or to calmly explain why their expectations are unrealistic.
Kicking something across the room, punching the wall, yelling and screaming, or other displays of violent temper are not. I think it is reasonable to be scared for your physical safety if someone becomes violently angry around you, even if they do not initially direct that violence at you.
It’s amazing how we, geeks, fail to negotiate and secure our equity before delivering our work and lose all leverage.
After countless examples where tech people have been exploited by business people, Tesla pops into mind as the most famous one, we still haven’t learned our lesson!
It's all fine when your startup is not making any money, but when millions of dollars starts to roll in things can get ugly. So always make sure you have the vesting worked out beforehand, and put it on a paper and have everyone sign it.
Upvoted this submission because it contains three very important lessons for technologists:
1. Never, ever accept a cofounder arrangement where you deal with the code and someone else deals with all the money.
2. If someone starts trying to exploit you, get a lawyer. The last thing you want is for the law to be on your enemy's side.
3. If this is your hard lesson in the first two rules, and the bad guys offer you a substantial chunk of cash to walk away (and $300,000 is a substantial chunk of cash), take it. It's by far the least bad outcome for you.
104 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 123 ms ] threadIf this really was implemented entirely by one person, they have no moat.
>Instead the anonymous owner of Aeternity is deciding how the money is spent.
Yeah, that's how capitalism works. The person with the capital owns you. And now, I look into my crystal ball... I see the anonymous owner is going to sue you for running off with his intellectual property and starting a competitor with it.
Never heard of Aeternity, but this isn't going to end well for the author.
"If Aeternity is going to use the technology invented, and they wont pay me to make their software secure, then my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity."
OK.
In this instance, "trying to break his leg" may have been more like "got shoved and fell over" (Which to be fair, could be a reaction someone might have if their employee came into their office demanding several million dollars - who knows).
I don't know, I'd like to hear the other side of the story.
If he were attacked like I think he wanted it to sound then a lawsuit would probably get him the money he wanted
They also didn't 'steal' his code from the sounds of it. It sounds like he was in some form of verbal partnership to help develop a company (which they were clearly fairly far along with) but hadn't signed any real contracts. After two years someone isn't stealing your code, and you should be savvy enough to realise that the business world isn't really about being nice people - you need to cover your bases.
I agree that he should have signed a proper contract with them and not rely on verbal agreements (but after reading little bit about him online he seems to be some sort of extreme libertarian, he doesn't believe in lawyers and contracts, just in voluntary exchanges).
But that doesn't mean it's not a bit evil for the company to just throw him away after using his name and technology to get people invest in them.
The company has hastily deleted all his code and replaced it with new repositories starting from scratch so apparently they are also at least little bit worried he might legally be entitled to own part of the company.
What's also interesting is I was approached by Aeternity at the end of June to join their team. Wonder if the timing coincided wtih the author's troubles
OP is happy to spill some pretty high-level corporate beans, but not detail a physical assault... I don't really know what to take from this article in all honesty. I feel there's a lot being left unmentioned.
I can probably think of 77-million potential reasons that he might not be able to / want to.
> my only way to get paid is by selling zero-day exploits for people who want to attack Aeternity.
could seem like a Mafia goon saying "nice shop, shame if something happened to it" but it can also be read as "it's terrible that the employer has shafted the employee so hard there are no lawful ways for the employee to get paid".
That said, threatening to sell exploits on the black market is a terrible way to fight back. Everything up to that point suggested the author had a case he could argue in court. If he does indeed proceed down that path he would likely find himself on the wrong side of the law.
My guess is that this is a clever way of destroying confidence in the coin and subverting the organization. He need not exploit the vulnerabilities; hell, they need not even exist. If he was really going to sell 0-days, it's not in his interest to announce it.
As someone who once had the experience of being forced out of an organization by someone who thought software teams could be swapped out like the janitorial staff, I love this. It won't make you rich, but sometimes it's nice to just watch something burn.
https://coppermind.net/wiki/Hoid
Cheers to this. :)
The missing piece is why he doesn't feel pressing criminal charges and suing for IP is an option. The language seems to imply that the answer is for his physical safety. If he's writing this article because he feels safe enough to, then maybe he thinks battling in court requires people to be present and closes the distance safety net.
He's able to list pretty concretely his contributions but is suspiciously vague about the cause of his fear. I'm inclined to believe that it's because he might not think the public would unequivocally agree his fear is sound.
It sounds like a typical situation where a startup screws over a key early employee. Typically there are legal avenues to pursue if the author truly was taken advantage of. Threatening to sell 0-day exploits smells of immaturity and anger though. I'm not sure how the tech stack works or how long it was developed but $3.5MM to keep working there exclusively sounds either like the author insanely overvalues his work and skills or the technology is revolutionary in which case, they'll likely get huge and he could sue them for far more.
Talk about blaming someone for slapping a guy ready to shoot you.
My question is what/where is the legal void that this company existed in?!
No sane or honest person would ever write that.
You're jumping to wild conclusions that say more about you than you're trying to say about him.
I also wanted to look into its code and help, but I'm not an erlang programmer.
To be honest, when I checked Ae's official website and found out that only one member is a technical person, I thought the structure is weird. I too have been approached by non-technical people who wanted to form a team, but rely on me to come up with both the idea and the product. I don't trust people who can only talk.
As a programmer, I'd be happy in a team to be the only programmer as long as the rest of the team are experts in their domains.
As someone in that position right now, let me just tell you that it's not all roses (not that I think you'd necessarily assume it was!). For one, you have to deal with the stigma of being 'the nerd' in the team. You'll also end up doing a lot of menial tasks because "you're the technical one" (e.g. trying to fix the printer, explaining basic tech to other members of the team).
Finally, most importantly, other members of the team don't really understand what you do. They might devalue it, expect you to complete tasks in an unrealistic amount of time, or get frustrated when you're the bottleneck.
There can be benefits of course — you can probably plan your work yourself without being told, quite as much, what to do — but, contrary to expectations, I've found it quite problematic: you are in a very isolated position.
I like these words, especially "I don't trust people who can only talk."
Alternatively, if you don't know how ownership is to be divvied up, don't raise tens millions of dollars until you iron out the details.
A scalable blockchain for financial derivatives. Optimized for scalability via smart contracts inside state-channels. Has a build-in oracle for integration with real-world data. Written in Erlang.
https://github.com/zack-bitcoin/amoveo
No contract.
"For about $3.5 million I was willing to work exclusively on Aeternity."
This sounds very weird.
The relevant parts:
> There are no zero days. And we are not using any of Zack’s code in the new repo. Take a look at our Github. Zack’s leaving has zero effect on our technology and we are not using any of his code.
> We have been working alongside Zack for quite some time now and understand the code. We felt that this is the right time to dump some accumulated and unwanted technical baggage. We are starting with a clean source code repository and will be bringing in pieces of code from the old repo as needed.
Highly unusual to start over with an empty repo when your lead developer quits. Which makes me suspect that the answer to the asked-but-unanswered question:
> Is this down to IP issues / lack of any contracts or legal agreements?
Is "yes".
A bit of story, might entertain someone:
It started with them started asking somw weird questions, and generally behaving odd in our meetings about fixes and new features. Somehow, I came to the conclusion they had to be working on a clone, which I told everyone on the team. They were quite surprised by that, especially as I wasn't myself present at the strangest meeting. Que a year or so later, when my boss walked in. One sentence that said it all: - How the hell did you know ? Turned out I was right. But truth to be told, I couldn't answer his questions. It was simply the only possible reason I could imagine.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15155068
Fortunately, I had written proof that I'd told them this was going to happen (the bottom of the previous invoice), so I did get paid, but I never did see those shares. Shares are a gamble anyway, and if the CEO doesn't read invoices I don't see them lasting very long — I don't loose sleep over this mistake, just use it as a lesson for the future.
> August 17- Aeternity finally makes an offer to hire me that I am comfortable with. In the process of negotiating my employment, the owner of Aeternity was asking me technical questions, and the honest answers I gave made him angry. He wished that universe worked differently, and he blamed me, the messenger of bad news. The owner of Aeternity was so upset by the technical limitation, that he did something to me that both scared and injured me. I no longer feel safe working with this person. I am walking with a limp a week later.
He implies that a violent struggle took place but without saying so explicitly. Which is odd since a detailed description of a physical assault would draw immediate sympathy from we, the public-at-large.
I can only really imagine something similar happened in this case too
So if someone walks into your office and demands $3.5 million or they walk, and you don't think they're worth it, two reasonable responses are to laugh in their face or to calmly explain why their expectations are unrealistic.
Kicking something across the room, punching the wall, yelling and screaming, or other displays of violent temper are not. I think it is reasonable to be scared for your physical safety if someone becomes violently angry around you, even if they do not initially direct that violence at you.
After countless examples where tech people have been exploited by business people, Tesla pops into mind as the most famous one, we still haven’t learned our lesson!
https://medium.com/@yanislav/king-of-bitcoin-godfather-of-et...
1. Never, ever accept a cofounder arrangement where you deal with the code and someone else deals with all the money.
2. If someone starts trying to exploit you, get a lawyer. The last thing you want is for the law to be on your enemy's side.
3. If this is your hard lesson in the first two rules, and the bad guys offer you a substantial chunk of cash to walk away (and $300,000 is a substantial chunk of cash), take it. It's by far the least bad outcome for you.