Structural failure
Founder Concentration
A founder with non-trivial unilateral control over both the project's assets and its public communications.
Records exhibiting this pattern
Mantra OM Token Crash — April 2025
The OM token, native asset of the Mantra Chain, lost approximately 90 percent of its market value over the course of a few hours on 13 April 2025. The team attributed the collapse to forced liquidations on offshore venues; on-chain analysts identified pre-event token movements from team-associated addresses.
$5.50B affectedMultichain Bridge Disappearance — July 2023
The cross-chain bridge stopped processing transactions and approximately $130M was drained from bridge contracts after its founder and CEO Zhaojun He was reportedly detained by Chinese authorities.
$130.0M affectedThree Arrows Capital Collapse — June 2022
The 10-billion-dollar crypto hedge fund failed margin calls on leveraged LUNA, GBTC and staked-ETH positions, triggering a cascade through Voyager, Celsius and BlockFi.
$10.00B affectedTerra / UST Depeg — May 2022
The third-largest stablecoin lost its dollar peg over four days, taking $40 billion in combined LUNA and UST market cap to zero.
$40.00B affectedPlusToken Ponzi — June 2019
A Chinese-origin Ponzi scheme that operated across China, Korea and Southeast Asia raised an estimated $2-3 billion in crypto before its founders were arrested in 2019. Subsequent Chinese government sales of seized BTC weighed on markets through 2020.
$2.50B affectedQuadrigaCX Collapse — January 2019
Canada's largest crypto exchange collapsed after its 30-year-old founder Gerald Cotten was pronounced dead in India in December 2018, leaving sole access to ~$190M in customer funds. Forensic investigation later concluded the exchange had been a Ponzi scheme.
$190.0M affectedBitGrail NANO Hack — February 2018
The Italian exchange disclosed approximately $170M in losses of NANO tokens. Founder Francesco Firano was later found liable by Italian courts and BitGrail entered bankruptcy proceedings.
$170.0M affected