Original | Odaily Planet Daily ( @OdailyChina )
Author: Golem ( @web3_golem )
On the evening of March 7, the Ton ecosystem game Yescoin released an announcement on the X platform saying that Yescoin founder and Zhejiang University student Zhang Chi (Zoroo) was taken away from Hangzhou by Shanghai police due to a dispute with his partner Wang Mouxin (Lao Wang). Yescoin is a relatively well-known project during the Ton mini-game boom last year. At its peak, it had more than 10 million users, so the news of the founders arrest also attracted widespread attention from the community.
According to Odaily Planet Daily’s understanding from the Yescoin team, Zhang Chi was arrested by the police in Hangzhou on February 12, suspected of illegally obtaining computer information system data, and was sent to Shanghai for trial on February 13. Currently, no one except his lawyer can contact Zhang Chi himself. The dispute between Zhang Chi and his partner Lao Wang did not occur suddenly, but has been going on since July last year due to internal interests and rights distribution issues. The specific timeline is as follows:
On July 11, 2024, there was a disagreement due to unclear internal interest distribution, but the parties reached a settlement at the end of July;
From August to November 2024, Lao Wang and Zhang Chi continued to argue about the distribution of rights and interests within the project;
On November 7, 2024, Zhang Chi cleared the rights of the Shanghai team formed by Lao Wang in the project;
In December 2024, Yescoins Hangzhou server was lost. The Hangzhou team reported the case to the police, but they refused to file a case.
On February 10, 2025, Yescoin was attacked, and the telegram bot and main channel ownership were lost;
On February 12, 2025, Zhang Chi was arrested on suspicion of illegally obtaining computer information system data;
On March 7, 2025, the official controlling team of Hangzhou Yescoin published a statement on behalf of Zhang Chi.
Interest disputes between partners are a problem that occurs in many startups, but what is puzzling is why this interest dispute has escalated to a criminal case of illegally obtaining computer information system data? According to the Hangzhou Yescoin team, the lawyer had several rounds of communication with Zhang Chi, accusing Zhang Chi of illegally occupying the computer system data owned by Lao Wang, mainly based on the following three pieces of evidence:
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 arbitrarily removed the data account permissions of Lao Wang, the owner of the software.
In order to further understand the cause of the matter, Odaily interviewed Lao Wang and the team that actually controls the official account of Yescoin, but found that the two sides had completely different views on the dispute, and from their perspectives, two completely different Zhang Chi were born...
Lao Wang: Zhang Chi is not the founder of Yescoin, he illegally seized control of the project
Lao Wang believes that Zhang Chi is not the founder of Yescoin and has illegally seized control of the project. For detailed accusations, readers can read the full document . Odaily Planet Daily will organize the key parts below.
Old wang is the founder and investor of 3 ww 3 Asia, Africa and Latin America community. He said that Zhang Chi joined 3 ww 3 Asia, Africa and Latin America community in September 2022 and invested 100,000 yuan, but withdrew the investment amount on February 20, 2024 due to financial constraints.
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 launch of the project to early June, Zhang Chi did not participate in any work related to Yescoin, and his core energy was devoted to his own Tonverse project.
It was not until early June 2024 that Zhang Chi approached Lao Wang and Kevin to try to get involved in the Yescoin project. After assisting Kevin in developing a product feature that was rejected, he was assigned to project management on June 20. However, Lao Wang stated that on July 1, Zhang Chi communicated with him about wanting to start a new project and lock in initial funds, but Lao Wang did not respond.
On July 11, 2024, the conflict between the two parties broke out. Zhang Chi seized control of Yescoin, eliminated Lao Wangs authority in the Lark project organization, and made some members (now the Hangzhou Yescoin team) control the project . At the same time, according to Lao Wang, Zhang Chi played a two-faced man after seizing control of the account. On the one hand, he unilaterally announced to other members of the executive team that he was the general manager of Yescoin, and on the other hand, he deceived Lao Wang and other partners that he was helping him clear mines. On July 19, under the leadership of Zhang Chi, all members of the Yescoin team signed a change agreement, which involved changing the core account authority, establishing a basic salary system, and promised not to hold them accountable for the incident on July 11.
However, from the signing of the agreement on July 19, 2024 to November, the conflict between Lao Wang and Zhang Chi over the rights and interests in Yescoin has not been resolved. Zhang Chi has repeatedly requested to obtain the status of co-founder of Yescoin and wrote several organizational change proposals in order to increase his actual control over Yescoin, but Lao Wang did not approve of them. However, Lao Wang said that Zhang Chi had declared himself as a co-founder of Yescoin during this period.
After months of unsuccessful negotiations, on November 7, 2024, Zhang Chi launched a hard fork within the company, removing the rights of Lao Wang and others from the project lark, eliminating all rights and ties between Lao Wang and his Shanghai team and the Yescoin project, and becoming the full person in charge of the project. Prior to this, 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 officially pay salaries, Zhang Chi and his core group deliberately chose not to take salaries and wanted to remove the founder Lao Wang from the team. After that, Zhang Chi and his main team members Eric and Tang obtained all the rights of the Yescoin project and appointed themselves as founders and partners.
Regarding the salary issues of the Asia-Africa Institute and Yescoin, Lao Wang revealed to Odaily that the Asia-Africa Institute did not exist as a company in the early days, but was just a gathering of people who wanted to do something together, so no labor contract was signed, but Lao Wang has been reimbursing the communitys monthly living expenses (without expectation of return). At the same time, the salary of the Yescoin team was not deliberately delayed, but it involved the distribution of early Asia-Africa 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 does not want to share the money, so the team decided to hard fork!
However, the Hangzhou Yescoin team that issued a statement in support of Zhang Chi was very different from the Zhang Chi described by Lao Wang. They stated that Zhang Chi was indeed the founder of Yescoin, and actively negotiated with Lao Wang to fight for the rights and interests of team members, but had no choice but to carry out a hard fork!
Eric joined the 3 WW 3 Africa-Asia Institute full-time in March 2023, but none of the members, including him, signed any labor contracts or partnership agreements, and the 3 WW 3 Africa-Asia Institute did not even have a domestic entity. Eric said that as the main operator, he participated in the Yescoin project from March 2024, from self-initiated to development, and Zhang Chi existed as a product manager. The project Telegram Bot, main channel, and official Twitter were all under Zhang Chis name. Lao Wang has been doing financing and business work for the 3 WW 3 Africa-Asia Institute, but Lao Wang did not participate in the Yescoin project from the beginning. Instead, after Yescoin became popular in May 2024, he identified himself as the founder of Yescoin in order to better discuss financing.
Eric said that the real reason for the conflict between Zhang Chi and Lao Wang was that since the establishment of 3 WW 3 Asia, Africa and Latin America Research Institute, the companys main body and employee rights have not been confirmed, and at this time Yescoin participated in the The Open League hackathon officially held by TON and had 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 companys organizational structure and employee rights. However, Lao Wang repeatedly shirked and obstructed on this issue. After many unsuccessful negotiations, Zhang Chis side removed Lao Wangs authority on July 11, but Lao Wang returned to the team at the end of July because of the signing of the transformation agreement.
However, during the negotiation in July, Lao Wang had registered 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. Lao Wang also 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 became Lao Wangs sharpest spear to stab Zhang Chi in the future.
At the same time, as the negotiations between Zhang Chi and Lao Wang broke down in November, the Hangzhou team had lost confidence in Lao Wang and decided to hard fork! Eric said that the Hangzhou team had always controlled the Yescoin server, products, operations, and design, and the hard fork only removed Lao Wangs lark permissions again, and removed the code development permissions and database permissions.
However, Lao Wang did not give up. In December 2024, Yescoins Hangzhou server was lost (unilaterally transferred by the upstream service provider). 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 on the server. Later, because Lao Wang had been in charge of Yescoins external business and financing, he relied on the connections of the TON Foundation to transfer the Telegram Bot and main channel permissions of the Yescoin project on February 10, 2025. During this period, Zhang Chi, as the account owner, did not use the 2FA and BOT account verification functions, and did not receive any reminders.
On February 12, when Eric was still thinking about how to proceed with the matter, the police arrived at Huasheng Building in Gongshu District at around 7:50 a.m. and took Zhang Chi and Eric away. Erci recalled that the police asked about Zhang Chis removal of Lao Wangs authority in November 2024. Eric was released after recording the transcript, and Zhang Chi was transferred to Shanghai the next day.
The Whisper of an Idealistic Entrepreneur
Looking back at Zhang Chi’s personal one-year summary published on January 30, 2025 , the metaphors of 7.11 and 11.7 have become basically clear. Zhang Chi said in the article that “July is the most stressful, anxious, and suspicious time in my life so far”, but for Lao Wang, Eric and everyone involved in this dispute, the feelings must be the same. 3 WW 3 Asia, Africa and Latin America Research Institute was once the most idealistic entrepreneur in the Chinese-speaking area of Web3, but now it is believed that no one wants to see it go to court due to conflicts of interest. As Zhang Chi said in his summary of 2024, “In the melee, most of the core parties are my friends.”
The Yescoin incident has escalated from an internal dispute of interests to a criminal case, which is a warning to web3 investors, start-ups and industry practitioners. The decentralized concept portrayed by web3 and DAO organizations is certainly attractive, but if it is only built on the fertile soil of idealism, the lack of a clear equity structure and legal agreements may also lay hidden dangers for future profit distribution. How to find a balance between the concept of decentralization and the reality of business governance is a question that all Web3 entrepreneurs need to think about.
