AC rời khỏi ban giám đốc Sonic, DeFi Godfather lại một lần nữa thoát thân khéo léo

Original Author: Kuri, TechFlow from Shenzhen

The feeling of being in crypto this year is probably: watching U.S. stocks hit new highs every day, then opening your own portfolio and staring at it in silence for three seconds before closing it.

BTC is down nearly 20% year-to-date, ETH is even worse, and altcoins are not worth mentioning. In this kind of market, a 90% drop for any public chain's token is not news. But colder than the price is the feeling of people leaving and the warmth disappearing.

On June 19, DeFi godfather AC and two other founding directors resigned from the Sonic Labs board. The S token was trading at 0.028 at the time, a mere fraction of its year-high of 1.03. On-chain TVL dropped from a peak of $1.14 billion in May last year to $20 million. According to DefiLlama data, that's a 98% evaporation.

The crypto community's reaction to AC leaving was muted. After all, he had already quit the space once in 2022 before returning. His resignation statement was also standardly phrased, saying he still "believes in Sonic" but will no longer be involved in business decisions.

But the sting came in the next paragraph.

He said that for the past 18 months, his main focus has been on Flying Tulip. This project raised $200 million in a private round last August at a $1 billion valuation, and opened a public sale on CoinList this February. Investors included names like Brevan Howard, DWF Labs, and Susquehanna.

In other words, during the time S dropped from 1.03 to 0.028, AC was busy building the stage for a brand new billion-dollar project.

Even more stinging is Flying Tulip's token design.

Investors in the primary subscription received an NFT called ftPUT, which is essentially a perpetual put option. If the token loses value, they can burn it at any time and redeem their principal at the original price. The CoinList public sale page clearly states that FT (divisible tokens, i.e., regular tokens) bought on the open market do not come with this right—only primary participants have it.

In contrast, S holders who bought on the secondary market are stuck with a token that dropped to 0.028. No floor, no redemption, no one wrote them a safety net...

Not My Problem

AC posted his resignation statement on X. It was short, but every sentence seemed carefully measured.

He said he joined Fantom in 2018 as a technical advisor and only officially became a director in December 2022. He is not Fantom's founder, never was, just the earliest technical architect. He was responsible for the underlying technology, including the core system of Sonic and the cross-chain gateway that came later.

Then came the crucial part, paraphrased:

"I take responsibility for the technical decisions I led. But the migration, airdrop, tokenomics, and handling of the old network—I was neither the initiator nor the decision-maker for those."

In one sentence, he distanced himself from the 97% drop in the S token. The technology was my doing, and the technology is fine. As for why the coin you bought dropped from a dollar to three cents, that was someone else's decision.

I won't judge whether this argument holds water, but I admit the clean cut is admirable.

Most project founders, when they bail, either stay silent and play dead, or send a vague statement full of "we" and "team" to blur responsibility into a mess. AC is different. He defines the boundaries of his responsibility with extreme precision—so precise it's hard to refute, because he indeed didn't handle the tokenomics.

And this wasn't an on-the-spot decision.

In March 2022, AC announced his exit from the crypto industry, citing regulatory pressure and burnout. At the time, Fantom's TVL evaporated by nearly a third within a week, and the community was furious. A few months later, he quietly returned to do the technical restructuring for Sonic.

He left saying he was tired, came back without a word, and when he left again, he said, "For the past 18 months, I've actually been busy with something else."

On Sonic's side, in the six months before he left, executives changed one after another. The CEO Mitchell Demeter, hired last September, resigned this February, along with the business head. After the CEO left, the board stepped in to manage for a few months, and now the board has also stepped down, replaced by a new CEO, Matt Visser, who has never managed a public chain front-line before.

In five months, the entire management layer changed from top to bottom. Sonic's official statement didn't gloss over it either, writing bluntly, "The token price has dropped, and community sentiment has dropped too. We won't pretend otherwise."

This kind of "giving-up honesty" is rare in the crypto industry. But the problem is: the one telling the truth is the new team, while the one who left is the person whose name actually carries weight.

The Cunning Plan

Looking back at AC's trajectory over the past few years, you start to see a pattern.

In 2020, he created Yearn Finance, the flagship product of DeFi Summer. TVL once soared to tens of billions of dollars. He let it go without much management. Later, Yearn ran on its own and did okay, but his connection to it was minimal.

Then he worked on Fantom's technical architecture, and Fantom had a wave. In March 2022, he announced his exit from the space, and Fantom entered a long decline. It was later rebranded and relaunched as Sonic. He returned with the title of CTO. Sonic's TVL briefly exceeded $1 billion at launch, then collapsed all the way down to where it is now.

Every time, he disengages when the hype is at its peak or just starting to cool, to go build the next thing. Every time, the holders of the old project bear the brunt of the decline after he leaves.

Flying Tulip is the fourth project he's currently working on. I feel that this time, he may have truly absorbed the lessons from all previous experiences and built them into the token design.

When you participate in Flying Tulip's public sale on CoinList, spending $0.10 to buy an FT, you don't get the token itself; you get an NFT called ftPUT, with the tokens locked inside this NFT. This NFT is that perpetual put option. You have three paths to choose from.

First, do nothing. The tokens stay in the NFT, untradeable, but the redemption right remains. Whenever you want to leave, burn the tokens and get back your USDC or ETH at the original price. No matter how low the FT price drops on the secondary market, your principal has a floor.

Second, withdraw the tokens from the NFT to trade freely. But the moment you withdraw them, the redemption right is permanently voided. For the portion withdrawn, the principal is released to the protocol for buyback and burn.

Third, withdraw part and keep part. The tokens remaining in the NFT continue to be protected; the others are exposed.

In an interview with The Block, AC himself said something quite interesting. Paraphrasing: Because of the perpetual PUT, the money raised cannot actually be spent at all.

The actual money raised is zero. So where do operational expenses come from?

All the raised funds are deposited into lending protocols like Aave and Ethena for conservative strategies, targeting an annual yield of around 4%. At a full raise of $1 billion, this would generate approximately $40 million in interest per year, used to pay the team, fund development, and execute buybacks. The team has no initial token allocation; all FT must be bought back from the open market using protocol revenue.

I have to admit, this design is quite ingenious within DeFi. It solves the worst problem in the crypto industry over the past few years: project teams taking the money and running, or spending it recklessly, leaving investors with nothing. AC's solution essentially ties his own hands—the money can't be touched, the team doesn't pre-allocate tokens, and investors can withdraw anytime.

But despite the ingenuity, this protection only exists in the primary market. Once FT is listed on an exchange, tokens bought on the secondary market do not come with ftPUT, and this sentence is bolded on the CoinList page.

Buyers on the open market see the same token but receive completely different treatment.

A Microcosm of the Industry

Money is flowing out of the crypto market this year. That's no secret.

BTC is down nearly 20% year-to-date, and the median decline for altcoins is far steeper. People in the space look at the Nasdaq hitting new highs, then switch back to their own portfolios. The feeling needs no description from me.

Many people's real move this year has been slowly shifting their positions to U.S. stocks and stablecoin yield products. On-chain activity is visibly shrinking.

In this environment, AC's exit from Sonic is just the tip of the iceberg. The entire L1 sector is experiencing the same story: shrinking TVL, user churn, founding team replacements, or outright disappearance. Sonic is just a sample case because of its high profile and extreme price drop.

But AC's case has an extra layer that other projects don't.

Flying Tulip's current valuation is around $1 billion. Sonic's current market cap is about $100 million. Same person, same timeframe. One is a billion, the other a hundred million. A tenfold difference. What's the discrepancy? It lies in whose name AC is attached to.

This is a truth in the DeFi industry that few are willing to admit.

The valuation of many projects is not built on revenue, users, or technological moats, but on the name of a certain person. If the name is there, the money is there. If the name leaves, the money follows.

The bear market tore off this fig leaf. In a bull market, all L1s go up; you can't tell whether it's fundamentals supporting the price or just the name. When the tide goes out, what remains is clear.

There's one more detail I find most interesting.

Flying Tulip's first deployment chain is Sonic. AC resigned from Sonic's board and no longer participates in any business decisions, but his new project's first stop is right on Sonic. He left, but his business remains.

The captain has left the ship, but opened a new shop on the dock, selling goods even more expensive than what was on board.