In-depth investigation into the arrest of "Yescoin Founder": In-fighting power, hard forks and idealism

Original title:Odaily in-depth investigation into the arrest of "Yescoin Founder": Infighting power, hard forks and idealism

Original author: Golem, Odaily Planet Daily

On the evening of March 7, Ton Eco Game Yescoin issued an announcement on the X platform stating that "Zeroo, founder of Yescoin and student of Zhejiang University, was taken away from Hangzhou by the Shanghai police due to a dispute with his partner Wang Mouxin (Lao Wang). Yescoin is a project that was more famous in the Ton mini-game boom last year. Its peak period has exceeded 10 million users, so the news of the founder being arrested has also attracted widespread attention from the community as soon as it came out.

According to the Odaily Planet Daily, Zhang Chi was arrested by the police in Hangzhou on February 12, suspected of illegally obtaining computer information system data. He was sent to Shanghai for trial on February 13. At present, no one except lawyers can contact Zhang Chi himself. The dispute between Zhang Chi and his partner Lao Wang did not occur suddenly, but was caused by internal interests and rights distribution issues that have lasted from July last year to the present. The specific timeline is as follows:

• Differences arose on July 11, 2024 due to unclear internal distribution of interests, but settlement was made at the end of July;

• From August to November 2024, Lao Wang and Zhang Chi continued to argue about the distribution of internal equity in the project;

• On November 7, 2024, Zhang Chifang cleaned up the authority of the Shanghai team formed by Lao Wang in the project;

• In December 2024, Yescoin's Hangzhou server was lost, and the Hangzhou team reported the case, but the police refused to file a case;

• February 10, 2025 Yescoin was attacked and telegram bot and main channel ownership was lost;

• On February 12, 2025, Zhang Chi was arrested on suspicion of illegally obtaining computer information system data;

• On March 7, 2025, the Hangzhou Yescoin official recommendation actual control team issued a statement for Zhang Chi.

Interest disputes between partners are problems that many startups will encounter, but it is confusing why this interest dispute has risen to a criminal case of "illegal acquisition of computer information system data"? According to the disclosure of the Hangzhou Yescoin team, the lawyer conducted several rounds of communication with Zhang Chi, accusing Zhang Chi of illegally robbing computer system data owned by Lao Wang. There are mainly three evidences:

• The company under Lao Wang’s name owns the copyright of the Yescoin project software;

• The company under Lao Wang’s name has a formal labor contract with the Shanghai outsourcing team;

• In November 2024, the Hangzhou team removed the data account permissions of Lao Wang, the person who belongs to the software without authorization.

In order to further understand the whole story, Odaily interviewed Lao Wang and the team promoted by the actual controller Yescoin, but found that the two sides had completely different views on the disputes that had been around. From their perspective, two completely different "Zhang Chi" were born...

Lao Wang: Zhang Chi is not the founder of Yescoin and illegally robs the

project control rights

Lao Wangfang believes that Zhang Chi is not the founder of Yescoin and illegally robs the project of control. For detailed accusations, readers can read the complete document . Odaily Planet Daily will sort out the key parts below.

Old wang is the founder and investor of 3WW3 Asia-Africa and Latin community. He said that Zhang Chi joined the 3WW3 Asia-Africa and Latin community in September 2022 and invested RMB 100,000, but on February 20, 2024, he recovered the investment amount on the grounds of tight funds.

At the same time, according to Lao Wang, Yescoin was initiated by Lao Wang and Kevin in February 2024 and officially launched at the end of March. From the start of the project to the beginning of June, Zhang Chi did not participate in any work related to Yescoin, and his core energy was devoted to his own Tonverse project.

In early June 2024, Zhang Chi found Lao Wang and Kevin who wanted to try to intervene in the Yescoin project. After assisting Kevin in making a rejected product function, he was arranged to project management on June 20, but Lao Wang said that on July 1, Zhang Chi wanted to do a new project and lock in order to start funds, but Lao Wang did not reply to him.

On July 11, 2024, conflicts broke out between the two sides. Zhang Chi snatched control of Yescoin, removed Lao Wang 's authority in the project Lark organization, and allowed some members (now the Hangzhou Yescoin team) to control the project . At the same time, according to Lao Wang, Zhang Chi played a "two-faced person" after robbing control of the account. On the one hand, he unilaterally announced to other members of the execution team that he was the general manager of Yescoin, and on the other hand, he deceived Lao Wang and other partners to help him "demine". On July 19, under the leadership of Zhang Chi, all members of the Yescoin team signed a change agreement, which involved changing the permissions of core accounts, establishing a basic salary system, and promised not to hold accountable for the incident on July 11.

However, from the time of signing the agreement on July 19, 2024, the contradiction between Lao Wang and Zhang Chi's rights and interests distribution in Yescoin has not subsided. Zhang Chi repeatedly asked to obtain Yescoin's joint creation status and wrote several organizational reform proposals, hoping to improve his actual control rights in Yescoin, but none of them were recognized by Lao Wang. However, Lao Wang said that Zhang Chi had declared himself the co-founder of Yescoin during this period.

After several months of unsuccessful negotiations, on November 7, 2024, Zhang Chi launched a "hard fork" within the company, removing the authority of Lao Wang and others from the project lark, removing all rights associations between Lao Wang and his Shanghai team and the Yescoin project, and becoming the project leader himself. Before that, Zhang Chi also formulated a salary system for all Yescoin employees on November 4.

But Lao Wang said that although he and his partner Kevin wanted to solve the problem through communication and formally pay salaries, Zhang Chi and his core gang still deliberately chose not to get their salary and wanted to kick the founder Lao Wang out of the team. Since then, Zhang Chi and his main team members Eric and Tang have obtained all rights in the Yescoin project and appointed themselves as founders and partners.

Regarding the salary issues of Asia-Africa and Yescoin, Lao Wang revealed to Odaily that the Asia-Africa and Latin America did not exist in the form of a company in the early days, but was just convened because everyone wanted to do something together, so they did not sign a labor contract, but Lao Wang was still reimbursing the community's monthly (unexpected rewarding) living expenses. At the same time, the Yescoin team's salary was not deliberately delayed, but involved the distribution of early Asian and African members and later new members, which involved many internal issues, and the team has been discussing specific solutions.

Hangzhou Yescoin Team: The core dispute is that Lao Wang doesn’t want to

share the money, so the team decided to fork!

However, the Hangzhou Yescoin team, which published an article supporting Zhang Chi, was very different from the Zhang Chi described by Lao Wang. He said that Zhang Chi was indeed the founder of Yescoin and actively negotiated with Lao Wang to fight for rights and interests for team members, but in desperation, he had to make a hard fork!

Eric joined the 3WW3 Asia-Africa Latin American Institute full-time in March 2023, but all members, including it, did not sign any labor contracts and partnership agreements, and even the 3WW3 Asia-Africa Latin American Institute has no domestic entity. Eric said that as the main operation, it participated in the Yescoin project from March 2024 to the development process. Zhang Chi existed as a product manager. The project Telegram Bot, main channel and official Twitter are all under the name of Zhang Chi. Lao Wang has been doing financing and business work for 3WW3 Asia, Africa and Latin America Research Institute, but Lao Wang did not participate in the Yescoin project from the beginning. Instead, after Yescoin became popular in May 2024, he called himself better to talk about financing to the outside world, and then he designated his identity as the founder of Yescoin.

Eric said that the real reason for the conflict between Zhang Chi and Lao Wang is that since the establishment of the 3WW3 Asia-Africa and Latin America Research Institute, the company's main body and employee rights have not been confirmed. At this time, Yescoin participated in the Open League Hackers' official hosted by TON and has received a reward of about 500,000 US dollars, so Zhang Chi negotiated with Lao Wang on behalf of the Hangzhou team to determine the company's organizational structure and employee rights. However, Lao Wang repeatedly shied and obstructed this issue. After many negotiations failed, Zhang Chifang removed Lao Wang's authority on July 11, but at the end of July, Lao Wang returned to the team because of the signing of the change agreement.

However, during the negotiations in July, Lao Wang had placed the core code of the Yescoin project under his name "Shanghai Budong Network Technology Co., Ltd." and applied for software copyright with the company as the main body. In addition, Lao Wang signed a formal labor contract with an outsourcing team with the company as the main body, and also did some marketing and operation work between July and November 2024, which also became the sharpest spear that Lao Wang stabbed Zhang Chi in the future.

At the same time, as Zhang Chi and Lao Wang 's negotiations broke down in November, the Hangzhou team had lost confidence in Lao Wang and they decided to make a hard fork! Eric said that from beginning to end, Yescoin server, product, operation and design permissions are controlled by the Hangzhou team, and the hard fork only removes Lao Wang's lark permissions again, and removes the code development permissions and database permissions.

However, Lao Wang did not give up. In December 2024, Yescoin's Hangzhou server was lost (unilaterally transferred by upstream service providers). The Hangzhou team reported the case, but the police refused to file a case. In the end, the Hangzhou team migrated the server based on its original code and data, combined with the data backup service that was still running in the server. Later, because Lao Wang was always responsible for Yescoin's external business and financing, he still transferred the telegram bot and main channel permissions of the Yescoin project on February 10, 2025 with the connections of the TON Foundation. During this period, Zhang Chi, as the account owner, did not play a role in his account verification function of 2FA and BOT, and he did not receive any reminders.

Just on February 12, when Eric was still thinking about how to solve the problem, the police arrived at Huasheng Building in Gongshu District around 7:50 a.m. and took Zhang Chi and Eric away. Eric recalled that the police asked about Zhang Chi's removal of Lao Wang's authority in November 2024. Eric was released after recording the transcript, while Zhang Chi was transferred to Shanghai the next day.

The cry of idealistic entrepreneurs

Looking back at Zhang Chi’s personal one-year summary released on January 30, 2025 , the metaphors about July 11 and 11.7 have also been basically clear. In the article, Zhang Chi said, "July is the time when I have the greatest pressure, the most anxious and the most doubtful thing in my life so far." But for Lao Wang, Eric and everyone who participated in this dispute vortex, the feeling must be the same. 3WW3 Asia, Africa and Latin America Research Institute was once one of the most idealistic entrepreneur platforms in the Chinese-speaking area of ​​Web3, but now due to interests, it is believed that everyone is unwilling to see it. Zhang Chi also mentioned in his 2024 summary that "in the melee, most of the core members of all parties are my friends."

Whether Zhang Chi 's confession is just a plan to seize the interests of others under false idealism, the final truth still has to wait for the law to fall, but Yescoin's incident eventually rose to a criminal case, which is also a warning to web3 investors, start-ups and industry practitioners.

The decentralization concept portrayed by Web3 and DAO organizations is fascinating, but if it is built on the soil of short-term common goals and lacks clear equity structure, legal agreements, and management authority allocations, it will lay hidden dangers for future distribution of benefits. How to find a balance between decentralized concepts and real business governance is a question that all Web3 entrepreneurs need to think about early.