Exclusive interview with Yescoin’s team: Why are there internal strife? Who exactly does the project belong to?

Author: Wu Shuo Blockchain

On March 7, TON ecological project Yescoin released a tweet saying that Yescoin founder and alumnus of Zhejiang University, Zoroo, was taken away from Hangzhou by Shanghai police by Shanghai police due to a business dispute with his partner Wang Mouxin (Lao Wang). The case has been escalated into a criminal case. The Yescoin team said that the product is still operating normally and thanked the community for its concern for Zhang Chi.

Wang Mouxin, a partner mentioned in Yescoin's official recommendation, posted a long word article saying that Zhang Chi has no actual investment relationship with 3WW3 or any other project; since the start of the project from February to early June, Zhang Chi has not participated in any work, and his core energy is devoted to his own Tonverse project; Zhang Chi participated in planning and launching an illegal robbery incident in July, illegally excluding the authority of the founder Wang Mouxin, and illegally inciting members to control the project; on October 31, he conspired to sign-in related code information on online core income on Lark, preparing to illegally grab online income.

Yescoin Hangzhou Zhangchi's team denied that the project belongs to Wang Mouxin, and believed that the team itself had paid more, and no plan was reached for the distribution of interests. In the end, all members agreed to kick Wang Mou out.

Wang Mouxin’s self-defense full text:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1IkVP2CiCrVMQYyBjg5ATutTwZMj5VIt1B0DQ6Lvowg0/edit?usp=sharing

Yescoin Zhang Chi’s Hangzhou team responded to the interview:

Colin: Who is the founding team of Yescoin

Eric et al: I am the only person in charge of brand design and marketing design in the project, and I was the first member to participate in this project. The only information I received about this project from 0 to 1 was its name - Yescoin. After that, all the visual carrying capacity, including color selection, style setting (such as pixel style), styling design and brand tone, were independently completed by me.

During this process, no one has reviewed my design, and all creative and visual expressions are decided by me and presented directly. Therefore, there is no such thing as "other person" or "someone" to complete this whole set of construction. I can provide a record of all the design outputs to prove this. In addition, this project was initially incubated by 3WW3, and I myself was an early member of 3WW3.

Let’s talk about the execution of the project first. From the perspective of personnel, there were 7 people in the earliest core team, including one product manager, two back-end development, two front-end development, one operation, and brand design. Among them, the front-end, back-end and product managers were found by Lao Wang through outsourcing, and belongs to the external manpower he directly recruited. The remaining four people, namely the core front-end development, back-end development, operation and design, were recruited by Chi Ge through the 3WW3 system in 2023. This was the basic composition of the team at that time, and these seven people jointly completed the core construction of the project.

Therefore, Lao Wang said "it was done by him", and we said "it was done by us", and strictly speaking, it should be done by the members of 3WW3. Because there was no clear concept of the company's subject at that time, everyone promoted the project with their contribution and ability.

Let’s talk about the funding issue. If you want to ask who paid the money, I can tell you clearly that the funds mainly come from 3WW3, because there are two levels involved. First, when Mr. Tang, I and other members of 3WW3 (including Zhang Chi) joined the project, they actually participated in the form of "human cost" as investment. In other words, we do not receive wages, but our daily work and labor are essentially capitalizing on equity in the project.

During this process, since the project had not yet produced actual output at that time, it was impossible to discuss the issue of valuation or rights confirmation. But from the actual situation, our contribution is not just physical labor, but has formed real project value. So even if these investments are not cash, they are still practical investments.

Colin: As Lao Wang said, is the money paid by Lao Wang from beginning to end?

Eric et al: We are using financing funds. Some of the funds came from another investor, but it is not convenient for me to disclose his name. It is not only Lao Wang who contributed the investment, but Eric also contributed the investment, and we personally invested the funds into it. Although some of the living expenses are reimbursed, we sometimes don’t care about many business expenses at all, and we just spend what we should spend. Of course, compared to large funds, these amounts are not large. Eric spent about 400,000 yuan. If necessary, we can communicate to see if we can display these records.

Colin: How much do you think Lao Wang actually paid? Including Asia, Africa and Latin America Research Institute and Yescoin?

Eric:0. I can say it's 0. We have counted the data on Zhang Chi before, and there is relevant evidence that can directly show that although Lao Wang has invested funds, he specifically noted the word "borrow" in the investment record. Moreover, when he communicated with our previous members in charge of financing, he specifically emphasized that once the subsequent financing funds are received, he will be given priority to repaying his 1.6 million yuan loan.

Throughout 2022 to 2023, 3WW3, as the main body, received a total of US$1.42 million in financing, which is the actual amount received. This money is mainly invested by individual investors. Known investors include Dashan of Shuidi Capital, and the vast majority of the funds come from individual investors. After July 11, we were officially separated from Lao Wang. Afterwards, Zhang Chi took over all debts in his personal name, communicated with all investors one by one, and signed an agreement that clearly stated that Zhang Chi would assume the financial responsibility of all investors.

Colin: Whether it is Yescoin or 3WW3, does this project have an equity structure? Or is there a formal company entity? Are there any relevant legal documents?

Eric et al: The reason why we had such a fierce argument was that from the beginning, the project never established a formal main structure. Only when Brother Chi realized the necessity of this matter began to cause various contradictions and disputes.

When we first joined the project, it might be out of simple or naive ideas, and everyone worked on verbal commitments. Everyone was told that they were "partners", but the specific equity arrangements and legal agreements have not been implemented. The initial idea was to do things first and discuss these issues when there was a result. However, after the matter was done, Lao Wang began to talk about "dividing up the family", or simply screened out some people and excluded the core members. In other words, after the project really developed, he tried to unilaterally control everything.

Colin: So, all cooperation agreements and financing contracts are ultimately signed with Lao Wang’s company, right?

Eric et al: We don’t actually know who he signed with. We really don’t know about this problem because he is operating many things himself, and the specific details of the contract have never been made public to us.

Colin: How could there be an investment without a formal contract? Whether it is institutional investment or personal investment, this level of capital flow must be supported by contract.

Eric et al: We are really not sure about the specific investment contract situation. You can understand this way - Lao Wang wants to control all the things that involve "collecting money", and we are implementing all the things that "work".

Colin: So for so long, have you not asked him to give you a formal equity allocation plan?

Lao Tang: Of course, this requirement has been mentioned.

Colin: Or, when did you officially make clear equity claims?

Lao Tang: In June, we formally made a request to him. But before that, since the project had not generated actual returns, no one overly cared about these things, and the team as a whole was still united.

Colin: Because there is no actual interest involved, right? So there weren't many disputes at that time.

Lao Tang: Yes, the problem is that in May the project began to show some good results, and we officially began to discuss equity distribution and dividends. But even so, we did not make excessive demands, but just tried to communicate, hoping to reach a reasonable plan. Moreover, we have talked to him three times, but every time he has a perfunctory attitude, constantly making pie, promising that the problem will be solved in a few months. I have recordings here to prove his statement.

However, when the time for his own promise came, he not only did not fulfill his promise, but instead began to look for a new team, trying to transfer the resources and funds of the project to them, so that our original team could "find a job by themselves." It is because of this that on July 11, all members agreed to remove Lao Wang from the management team while still retaining his corresponding rights and interests.

I personally think there is nothing excessive about our handling of this matter. Lao Wang is not suitable to lead this team, nor can he give the project real value in management. His behavior has seriously damaged the interests of the team. Therefore, on July 11, all members of 3WW3 agreed to remove him.

Colin: Then there are two problems now. The first is that Lao Wang questioned that you have actually made a lot of money through this Bot's traffic diversion. Is this true?

Eric: That's it. We can objectively look at the peak of project traffic from May to November last year. During this period, the entire Telegram ecosystem was the hottest, and everyone knows this. During this period, we estimated that the total revenue of all commercialization behaviors and commercial decisions, including traffic diversion transactions with partners, is approximately US$2 million to US$3 million. But all of these business income is in Lao Wang's personal hands, not on our side.

Since we officially took over the project on November 7, our business revenue mainly comes from the exchange and slow volume model in the three months from November, December to January this year. Even if we have income, we will reinvest most of our funds in project development.

Colin: How much income did you earn in total during this period? And how is the cost consumption?

Eric: Total revenue ranges from about $400,000 to $500,000.

Colin: Understand. There is another question, which is about issuing coins, right? You actually missed a good opportunity to issue coins. The situation is becoming difficult now. Is it the main reason for this internal struggle?

Lao Tang: From my perspective, the main reason is decision-making mistakes. The best market opportunity was in May, when everyone was working hard to advance the project, and the real internal conflict broke out after July 11.

Colin: I understand, so after July 11, your Hangzhou team took over the project, and Lao Wang may be trying all kinds of ways, whether it is filing a case, calling the police, prosecution, etc., right?

Lao Tang: No. He sacrificed the opportunity to issue coins, and then deliberately set up various company entities, even claiming that he owns intellectual property rights. In fact, his purpose is to target us, not for the sake of projects or users. He has never really cared about the development of the project, nor has he understood the actual needs of users. He may not even know the basic portrait of the user, let alone really contact and understand them. We have been communicating with users on the front line, analyzing their needs, and knowing how to attract them.

Colin: But from a legal and equity perspective, the questions you raised may not make much sense. For example, if Musk invests in a company, if he is the major shareholder of the company, then no matter how hard the employees work, the company will eventually belong to Musk.

Lao Tang: Yes, but the situation here is different. The employees invested by Musk have formal contracts, and we have not received salary since the first day of the project launch, but have participated together as partners. It just means that in actual operations, we bear greater responsibilities and everyone’s division of labor is also different.

From the beginning, we did not define team members according to traditional employment relationships, but we all acted as partners to advance the project.

Colin: So have similar situations happened many times between your official takeover of the project and the recent outbreak? Or is it relatively stable overall?

Lao Tang: It happened many times. This is also what I want to emphasize. For example, the communication software we used in the past was Lark, and later Lark's management permissions were inexplicably taken away by some "mysterious force".

Not only did the other party take away Lark permissions, we even received an email notification showing that our email login permissions have been modified. This means they can use our account to log in to the system and even post information. Therefore, a lot of information has been taken out of context or tampered with, and we have also lost some historical records, resulting in some key details being unable to be verified. At that time, we realized that the team had been artificially divided and some core resources were artificially cut off.

Colin: I understand, this kind of thing is actually normal. Regarding the so-called equity and control, Lao Wang may continue to appeal, including using various legal means to try to regain control. The power struggle for tools such as Lark is also a common situation in such disputes.

Lao Tang: Yes, we have always been focusing on the project itself, but he has been making small moves behind the scenes and trying to target us. And I think he might have started planning all this more than half a year ago.

Colin: I understand, then what are your current solutions to this situation? Have you communicated with the lawyer and the police?

Lao Tang: Yes, we have taken legal measures to deal with it.

Colin: And now he has taken away the main permissions of the project, right?

Lao Tang: Not exactly that. The subject is still on our side, which is actually a civil dispute in essence. But the problem is that for some reason, this matter was actually upgraded to a criminal case by "some kind of force". This is the most strange thing.

Colin: I mean, have Bot's administrative permissions and Telegram channels taken away by him?

Lao Tang: We still have some of the Bot permissions and channel permissions, but now there is a "hard fork".

Colin: OK, I heard before that in February, Eric said that Lao Wang used the relationship of the TON Foundation to transfer the permissions of the main channel?

Eric: Yes, yes, he transferred the permissions on the main channel.

Lao Tang: However, after the main channel was taken away by him, we also re-established a new traffic channel and retained new Bot permissions.

Colin: So now do users stay on the original channel or transfer to the new channel?

Lao Tang: There are both sides, which is equivalent to the fact that there are two versions of the Yescoin community, real and fake.

Colin: So, this matter seems complicated, but it is not that complicated in nature. In the final analysis, it is because you did not have a clear contract and equity structure when you first started your business, which led to these disputes later. In the end, everyone has their own opinions and their own positions.

Lao Tang: Yes, and the most bizarre thing is that this one should have been an ordinary equity dispute, but it was forcibly escalated into a criminal case without knowing what means it was. Moreover, this project has been developing in Hangzhou from 0 to 1, and the entire 3WW3 has been developing in Hangzhou for the past two years, but now it has been transferred to Shanghai, which is really incomprehensible.

Colin: Actually, this situation is also very common in the Web3 industry, such as Binance. When Binance first started, it gave many tokens tokens to the company, but later the company grew bigger, and Binance refused to admit these early promises. Because when the company grows into a 100 billion-level enterprise, they may not be willing to fulfill the early investment or commitments of tens of millions of dollars.

Lao Tang: This may be the case in business, but we still think that there should be some idealism in the Web3 industry. A decentralized organization should be driven by a group of like-minded people, rather than letting capital manipulate everything. This is also the simplest thing we initially had. Looking back now, maybe this is "bad money drives out good money", and young people with ideals will eventually suffer losses.

Colin: If you can't say that idealism means everything. Indeed, it is difficult to make a conclusion about such a thing, and it is difficult to tell who is right and who is wrong. But judging from your experience, this also sounds a wake-up call for other entrepreneurs - entrepreneurs in the Web3 field need to have legal awareness, equity awareness, and contract awareness, otherwise similar problems will easily arise after the project grows.

Lao Tang: Yes, this is also part of our reflection.

Colin: So, that is, all members of the Hangzhou team did not sign any contracts during the entire process, nor did they participate in the equity structure of any company?

Eric: Yes, that's true.

Lao Tang: It was not until the project was transferred to Shanghai that they began to supplement these structures, and the people who added them were basically members of Lao Wang’s original team. He first introduced his team to us and said that they were outsourcing personnel. Later, he took his outsourcing team to Shanghai and found a group of new outsourcing teams in Shanghai. At that time, he also told us that this was just a temporary adjustment and that we would return to Hangzhou later. We also had relevant video records at that time.

At that stage, we were still discussing incentive plans and there was still a certain amount of trust between each other. Zhang Chi took the lead in helping us advance this matter at that time. But by July, we clearly reached an agreement that all authority will be held by Zhang Chi as an agent to negotiate the final incentive plan. Until November, no incentive plan was reached, and Lao Wang directly isolated us completely. In order to protect our rights, we can only control the core account of the project in our own hands to ensure that our work results will not be infringed.

Colin: Why didn’t a compromise end up reaching? After all, this has been the case, and it is actually a situation of losing both sides or losing more for everyone.

Lao Tang: The specific reasons may only be Lao Wang and Zhang Chi know the most. They communicated many times, but never reached an agreement. Of course, I can only evaluate Lao Wang on my personal standpoint, and I think he is very good at performing. Zhang Chi communicated with him a lot, and Zhang Chi’s feedback was that Lao Wang was very selfish and insatiable. For example, in their negotiations, Lao Wang once asked the team to transfer almost 80% of the benefits. This distribution plan would not leave a reasonable room for profit for the team at all. To put it bluntly, it was worse than the treatment of going directly to work.

Lao Wang, one of the founders of Yescoin, responded to the interview:

I should have met Zhang Chi at the earliest around July and August 2022. At that time, I had an idea to build a community similar to the DAO form.

Zhang Chi's early core direction was mainly HR role, helping to see if there are suitable friends who can introduce them to the community and establish connections. Zhang Chi himself has worked in a community before and knows many people. Therefore, in this process, his role is more inclined to community operations and helps to recommend suitable talents.

The community did not initially involve markets, products or businesses, but only produced some content, such as some official account articles. Throughout 2023, the industry was still in a bear market. By the end of 2023, the Bitcoin ecosystem began to heat up and the community atmosphere also changed. At this time, the flow of people in the community began to increase. Although people were coming and going, some fixed friends stayed and were willing to try to do some business activities based on the community.

At that time, my personal commitment was that I could be responsible for reimbursement for all food, accommodation and entertainment. If anyone has some product ideas, I can also give early support.

By 2024, the market began to pick up, and everyone had their own ideas in cryptocurrency speculation or other aspects. In this process, early team members gradually began to do their own things.

But at the same time, some differences in values ​​have begun to appear within the community, which is harmful to the community. The community itself is not a company. It does not have a strict management mechanism and cannot fire members at will, so I can only maintain a certain balance in it.

As more and more people are, the community has begun to develop towards decentralization, gradually forming some small groups and small gangs, and everyone has formed their own projects. During the same period, multiple different projects can be seen in the community at the same time.

In the initial stage, the financial support of these projects relies mainly on the community reimbursement mechanism. Later, some projects also began to receive independent investment. However, incubating projects in the community is not easy. The decentralized management model makes overall planning difficult and leads to reduced efficiency.

By the later stage, the reimbursement costs in the community become increasingly high. What impressed me most was that at the peak, the monthly reimbursement amount could reach hundreds of thousands of yuan.

In this process, it is inevitable that there will be "not worrying about lack of money but not equality", and even "bad money drives out good money". Because some people have the authority to spend money in the community and some people have the resources of the project, some conflicts inevitably arise within.

In the later community development process of Yescoin, everyone did their own things. But Yescoin's specific project was initiated by me, a partner I have worked with for 9 years and an external partner. It was around mid-February 2024 that my partners and I began to discuss this direction and the project name was determined around February 28.

Yescoin grew extremely fast during the period from March to May. But there is a critical point in time here - the progress of financing. The financing may not be as fast as I was on the front line to promote product, operation and matchmaking cooperation. Judging from all the work records, these things are mainly dominated by me.

Secondly, as the community's influence continues to expand, the project has grown exponentially, resulting in extremely tight funds. The team needed to be expanded, but the initial core members were insufficient, so we were in a state of crazy recruitment at the time. However, in this process, due to the rapid growth, the authority management of some personnel has become relatively extensive, which has laid hidden dangers for subsequent problems.

In this part of the Asia-Africa-La Research Institute, my personal expenditure is more than 4 million yuan. Yescoin spent more than $1 million in total. I prefer to give money directly, and I am indeed negligent about account management. So, at first, Eric had some accounts, a certain developer held some accounts, and another was a developer from our company, who also had some accounts.

Then, around May and June, during this process, they began to continuously adjust their permission configuration and gradually concentrate their account management in the hands of the Hangzhou team. And to put it bluntly, it is because after Notcoin was launched, the atmosphere in the community began to become strange. Because no one would take the initiative to look for Yescoin before, but at that time, the project was paying more attention, and everyone started to grab resources and began to pick problems.

After July, they should have gone through several "rehearsals" and then announced directly that the account belonged to them. At that time, I was on a business trip, and they took this time to cut off all the permissions. This happened very suddenly. I was completely unprepared at the time. When I came back, I found that the control of all accounts was no longer in my hands. I was very passive at that time and could only try to solve the problem. The information gap between the two sides also caused conflicts. On the one hand, the Hangzhou team has been saying that there is not enough money. On the other hand, judging from my work records, they have been using their account permissions to secretly divert traffic and transfer resources. Simply put, the account was indeed in the hands of employees in the early days, but later, the Hangzhou team gradually used various means to completely control the authority in their own hands.

A member of the Shanghai team because he had permission at the time. However, when he arrived at the Hangzhou community, he was affected and might be said to have been brainwashed. The Hangzhou team emphasized the concepts of "decentralization" and "freedom", as well as some interest demands. After being influenced by this concept, he handed over the authority to the Hangzhou team.

In fact, the most core permissions and the most critical part at that time were the Bot account, which was first designed and managed by the Shanghai team. Later, on this basis, the Hangzhou team gradually expanded its permissions, began to take over more project resources, and also launched a new channel. From the overall perspective, some members of the Shanghai team were indeed affected at that time, and later we found that there was a complete series of evidence that could prove how permissions were gradually transferred.

I have financing terms, business contracts, and a series of related documents. The corresponding proof of equity of all companies, including my personal investment records, are included in these materials. I am completely aware of my rights.

In theory, there may be some options or equity among early team members. But the problem is that the matter had not been formally agreed upon at that time, and Zhang Chi had not officially entered the shareholder structure, so there was no way to talk about this matter. At that time, Zhang Chi and the others were not on the shareholder list at all. In the early days, Eric was actually only responsible for community operations, and another one was responsible for design. So, it is impossible for me to sign an equity agreement when everyone joins the company, because this will only amplify the contradictions. Our original intention was to make the core decisions of two or four people, but in fact, the team had grown to more than a dozen people at that time, and the situation became even more complicated.

To be honest, everyone was excited to do this project at that time, and I also felt that this thing could continue in the long run, so in the process, I always wanted to make it operate more sustainable. However, in July, some people were already secretly selling traffic and working with external forces in private. When they realize that things may not be able to be covered, they use this point in time to completely take away the account permissions.

At that time, Zhang Chi came out to negotiate with me, but his information was more important than I did. He used some problems within the team to play with me. In fact, I was talking to the team about equity distribution and salary structure, but in the end, it turned out that they wanted to take the entire project away.