Meteora co-founder Ben Chow resigns amid Libra scandal

Meow, the pseudonymous founder of Solana DEX Jupiter, announced Monday that Meteora co-founder Ben Chow has resigned amidst the recent scandal surrounding the controversial Libra memecoin.“While I am 100% confident about Ben’s character, as a project lead he has also shown a lack of judgement and care about some of the core aspects of the project,” Meow, who also co-founded Meteora, wrote on X Monday. Meow stated that Chow has chosen to resign and that Meteora will be looking for new leadership.The controversial memecoin emerged last Friday after Argentina’s President Javier Milei publicly promoted the token as a project to encourage the growth of the country’s economy. Libra’s price quickly surged to billions and soon imploded as Milei withdrew his support. The Libra team created Libra liquidity pools on Meteora.Hayden Davis, the CEO of Kelsier Ventures, who said he was a "facilitator" to the Libra project, said in a video interview with Youtuber Coffeezilla that the project’s team sniped its own token at launch. The Kelsier CEO, also part of Melania Trump’s Melania coin, said pre-launch insider knowledge is standard procedure with major memecoin launches.Chow previously said in a statement on X that Meteora and himself personally have never received any tokens or insider knowledge behind doors on Libra.“For $LIBRA, although we were made aware of the possibility of it several weeks ago by Hayden, we had no involvement in the project at all beyond providing IT support,” Chow said. “Neither I nor the Meteora team compromised the $LIBRA launch by leaking information, nor did we purchase, receive, or manage any tokens.”The Meteora co-founder, however, said he had referred Davis to multiple projects as a token deployer to help them launch memecoins.“When we launched our new memecoin AMM platform in December 2024, I asked Hayden and Kelsier Ventures if they would be interested in launching a token on the M3M3 platform in order to provide an initial case study on how it worked,” Chow said.Chow explained that this led him to believe Davis and Kelsier Ventures were trustworthy. He then referred them to a “handful” of other projects that would employ them as deployers, including Melania Trump’s MELANIA token.“Like with any other unaffiliated token that lives on Meteora, we did not purchase, receive or manage any tokens on the side related to $MELANIA,” Chow claimed.Chow's video callMeanwhile, a video recording of what is alleged to be an online conversation between DefiTuna founder Dhirk and Meteora’s Chow was posted on X on Monday by SolanaFloor.The video contained Dhirk apparently telling Chow of the misdeeds Davis has been conducting in memecoin launches, also alleging that he physically witnessed members of Kelsier engage in sniping, or insider trading, during his trip to Barcelona by invitation from Kelsier President Dr. Tom Davis.In the video, Chow consistently denied his or Meteora’s involvement in Davis’ misconduct, while expressing his shock at what Dhirk had just told him.“I feel so sick, because I gave him Melania,” Chow said in the video. “I fucked up because I enabled the guy that should not have been enabled …I’m going to have to step down, I’m going to have to quit.”In the latest statement, Jupiter founder Meow said he stands by Chow’s statement that there was no financial impropriety in Chow’s dealings with partners.Meow reiterated that no one at Jupiter and Meteora committed such insider trading and added that the team would hire an independent third party to investigate the issue.Disclaimer: The Block is an independent media outlet that delivers news, research, and data. As of November 2023, Foresight Ventures is a majority investor of The Block. Foresight Ventures invests in other companies in the crypto space. Crypto exchange Bitget is an anchor LP for Foresight Ventures. The Block continues to operate independently to deliver objective, impactful, and timely information about the crypto industry. Here are our current financial disclosures.© 2024 The Block. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.