Tezos foundation completes board revamp

The Tezos project appears to have come through some stormy months Reuters

The embattled Tezos Foundation has taken a step closer to resolving its governance issues with a raft of new appointments – all of whom have jumped ship from the rival T2 foundationExternal link, which was set up earlier this month to put pressure on the dysfunctional original body.

Following the resignation of founder and former President Johann Gevers last week, the Tezos Foundation has now grown to seven board members – completely replacing the original three-member board.

The move has gone a long way to meeting the demands of Arthur Breitman, who along with his wife Kathleen, created the Tezos protocol – a code designed to ensure better governance in blockchain projects.

Last week, Gevers and fellow original board member Diego Pons stepped down to be replaced by Ryan Jesperson (as new President) and Michel Mauny. On Monday, they were joined by Olaf Carlson-Wee (founder of the Polychain Capital investment fund that is one of Tezos’s largest investors), Pascal Cléré, Marylène Micheloud and Hubertus Thonhauser.

The seventh board member, Lars Haussmann, was appointed in January to replace the outgoing Guido Schmitz-Krummacher.

Unanswered questions

Significantly, all of the board members, barring Hausmann, have come from the T2 foundation. This body was created at the start of February by Jesperson in protest at the months-long battle between Gevers and the Breitmans, which has been blamed for putting the project back several months.

Both Gevers and Kathleen Bretitman have expressed satisfaction with recent events, but the developments appear to indicate a victory for the Breitmans. Last October, Arthur Breitman issued a Medium blogExternal link that called for the removal of Gevers and the expansion of the foundation board to between five and seven members.

The restoration of the foundation to functionality paves the way for it to release around $1 billion of contributor funds to developers. There is no indication of whether the T2 foundation will stay in existence or quietly fade away.

It is unclear whether the two warring sides have settled claims in Breitman’s blog post that Gevers had attempted to fiddle an over-sized bonus for himself. It is also unclear how the apparent end of hostilities will affect a series of lawsuits underway in the United States.