The History of Tezos: The Infamous ICO Trying to Rebound Amidst Lawsuits and Disputes

On June 30, almost a year after the widely successful ICO - a project that raised $232 million worth of BTC and ETH back in July 2017, setting a record at the time - which was followed by an internal dispute and several class-action lawsuits, the Tezos Foundation has finally launched its beta network.

The pair decided to hold the Tezos ICO in Zug, Switzerland, the famous 'Crypto Valley.

Successful ICO, unsuccessful communicationThe Tezos ICO was held on July 1 and lasted for 13 days.

All of the gathered funds went to the Tezos Foundation, while Tezos' intellectual property, in turn, was controlled through the Breitmans' company in Delaware.

In October 2017, Gevers - the Tezos Foundation president at the time - told Reuters that they had a contract, according to which the Breitmans would sell DLS to the foundation "Within a reasonable point of time" or else the Tezos Foundations would acquire it free of charge, although he declined to provide a copy of the agreement.

The distribution of tokens was delayed, and Tezos - namely, DLS - became the target of several class-action lawsuits after Reuters obtained the aforementioned letter and published an investigation regarding Tezos, arguing that the startup was falling apart amid internal power struggle.

The lawsuits claimed that Tezos tokens should be considered securities under U.S. law, meaning they would have had to be registered with the SEC to be sold legally to investors.

Notably, in February 2018, the SEC refused to release Tezos documents, after it was requested by attorney David Silver via the Freedom of Information Act, arguing that it could hurt "Enforcement activities." In April, SEC Commissioner Robert Jackson famously claimed that he hadn't yet seen an ICO that wasn't a security.

Soon after her speech, two board members of the Tezos Foundation - including its president Johann Gevers - left their positions, and Ryan Jesperson - the founder of T2 Foundation, which is a community-driven outfit that supported the Bretimans in their conflict with Gevers checks for contributors, essentially asking the participants of the ICO - which happened almost a year ago - to authorize themselves.

Ironically, the KYC check prompted the Tezos community to split even before the actual launch, despite the emphasis on unity that was postulated in the original Tezos white papers: nTezos - the self-described "Instantiation of Tezos" - and the "Independent and self-governed" network with an emphasis on the lack of KYC checks emerged, essentially signaling an incoming fork.