Clanker developer was exposed to "stealing Velodrome funds" and quit the team

Author: Weilin, PANews

Recently, Clanker, the AI ​​Agent launch platform deployed on the Base network, has been caught in a public opinion storm. In the early morning of May 5, Jack Dishman, founder and CEO of Clanker, announced on the X platform that project developer_proxystudio has decided to resign immediately. The reason for his resignation was that he was revealed to have a surprising "crime" - he stole about $350,000 worth of funds from his team's wallet while working at the well-known DeFi project Velodrome Finance.

Although _proxystudio later returned the funds, the incident still had far-reaching negative impacts and also affected his work at Clanker.

As of 10 a.m. on May 7, the last tweet of _proxystudio stopped reposting a tweet on May 2, and the developer has not responded to the matter. However, some users pointed out that according to ClankerNews' exposure, due to the conflict with Zora, there was a disagreement within Clanker, and the founder _proxystudio was driven away, but there are also sayings that ClankerNews is the account of _proxystudio.

Warned the public to stay away from scammers, but stole $350,000 from

Velodrome

According to Alex Cutler, a core member of Velodrome and co-founder of Aerodrome Finance, recently exposed on the X platform, _proxystudio's previous identity is actually Gabagool.eth, and some crypto users also pointed out that he is behind ClankerNews. He is a person who has attracted much attention in the crypto industry. He is not only the founder of Information Token, but also was invited by Vice News to show his face in a documentary about crypto scams, warning the public to stay away from scammers. Ironically, after showing his face a few months ago, he planned an internal theft case of DeFi projects.

The $350,000 theft once put the Velodrome team in a nearly collapsed situation. Alex recalls that the Velodrome project was released when Luna collapsed, the crypto market was turbulent, and the team had only $350,000 left. "One day after the launch, we woke up and found that it (the fund) was missing."

At first, the outside world generally believed that the project team "ruled by themselves" (that is, they ran away with the money). Since Alex is the only person in the team who has an open identity, he was once pushed to the forefront by public opinion. "I'm still new to this field, but he's putting me in the responsibility," Alex wrote.

He revealed that before the incident, Gabagool joked that "we dreamed that our funds were drained", and also tested privacy tools such as Tornado Cash. He knew that Alex was stuck in Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was in poor health, so he started when the team was at its weakest.

"What's even more outrageous is that when the Velodrome team was exposed on the spot and asked to return the funds, Gabagool actually said he wanted to 'leave 10% as compensation'," Alex wrote.

On August 13, 2022, Velodrome issued a statement after the theft, saying: "The attacker managed to transfer $350,000 from this (the wallet owned by the team) … To our extreme disappointment, we discovered that the attacker turned out to be Gabagool, a member of our team."

Later, Velodrome confirmed that Gabagool had returned the funds, but ultimately decided to break ties with the developer. However, the impact of this incident is far from over.

Proxystudio warns the public to stay away from fraud in Vice 's documentary

According to Alex, Proxystudio released an "apology" and then disappeared. But he and the team chose not to take legal action at the time for the following reasons: 1) The amount may not be enough for law enforcement to take action 2) We have no money to deal with this issue and there is no way to save the damaged protocol 3) His sister begged us not to do so, saying he might be suicidal.

Things reversed at FarCon on April 30 this year. According to Alex Cutler, he was accidentally recognizing Gabagool at the elevator entrance at a Clanker event in SoHo, New York.

"I saw him - the guy who almost ruined my life," Alex wrote in a follow-up post. He said that after confirming his identity, he questioned Gabagool on the spot and said to him: "You have to announce your identity within 24 hours, otherwise I will make it public."

Faced with Alex's questioning, Gabagool initially tried to deny his identity, but eventually gave up on disguise and tried to "communicate" privately. Alex chose to leave, but decided not to remain silent.

Clanker responded quickly, community users raised the importance of

background review

The Clanker team responded quickly after learning that Gabagool had been involved in the theft. On May 5, founder Jack Dishman said: "Clanker has recently learned about proxystudio's behavior during his past work. After this information was exposed, proxystudio has decided to resign from Clanker immediately."

Jack Dishman said, “We want to assure our community, partners and stakeholders that Clanker’s operations and assets will not be affected by this incident. This matter is only related to the activities that occurred before he joined our organization.” He continued, “Our team is implementing an emergency transition program to ensure continuity of all operations. We will continue to be committed to maintaining transparency and integrity and providing an excellent token experience to the community. Thank you for your continued support and trust during this period.”

Alex Cutler also said that it turns out that proxystudio is our disgraceful former teammate gabagool.eth, and I can personally assure that Jack Dishman is completely unaware of the situation and handles it perfectly. The Clanker team has been fully supported by myself and the Aerodrome team.

There is currently no evidence of any malicious behavior in Gabagool during his tenure at Clanker (the project was launched in November 2024). Clanker's token CLANKER hit an all-time high of $128 shortly after it went online, with a valuation of $128 million. But then the token fell along with the entire AI proxy track and is currently priced at $25.8. Since its launch, Clanker has recorded $27 million in handling fee revenue, with an average daily revenue of about $38,000 in May so far.

Regarding the cause of the incident, @ninja_dev3, founder of Quick Intel, said, "Why haven't we reached the stage where people have not fully reviewed individuals? This is true from a project perspective and an ecosystem perspective. We've encountered this situation many times in other projects. What I care most about is why not do reviews." In response, Alex said he agrees that this is a major issue, but it's also tricky. "The background check won't find this, there is no connection between the characters, I bet the money in his wallet is washed, etc. I have some ideas, but it's not easy."

At present, this incident has brought a warning to the crypto industry. Part of the lack of team member censorship system may cause losses to some projects. Gabagool was once one of the voices praised in the industry, and for this reason, it has a wide impact. This time, the Clanker team responded decisively, but _proxystudio has not responded yet, which has also brought some doubts to the incident. PANews will closely monitor the follow-up situation.