Met a former colleague at an offline event, Clanker developer was exposed for "stealing Velodrome funds" and quit the team

Author: Weilin, PANews

Recently, Clanker, an AI Agent startup platform deployed on the Base network, has been caught up in a public opinion storm. In the early morning of May 5, Jack Dishman, founder and CEO of Clanker, announced on the X platform that the project developer _proxystudio has decided to resign immediately. The reason for his resignation was that he was revealed to have a surprising "criminal record" - he had stolen about $350,000 worth of funds from the team wallet while working at the well-known DeFi project Velodrome Finance.

Although _proxystudio later returned the funds, the incident still had a far-reaching negative impact and also affected his work at Clanker.

As of 10:00 a.m. on May 7, _proxystudio's last tweet was a repost of a tweet on May 2, and the developer has not yet responded to the matter. However, some users pointed out that according to ClankerNews, due to the conflict with Zora, there was a disagreement within Clanker and the founder _proxystudio was driven away, but there are also claims that ClankerNews is _proxystudio's account.

The man who warned the public to stay away from scammers stole $350,000 from Velodrome

According to the recent exposure on the X platform by Alex Cutler, a core member of Velodrome and co-founder of Aerodrome Finance, _proxystudio's previous identity was actually Gabagool.eth, and some crypto users pointed out that he was the man behind ClankerNews. He is a figure who has been widely followed in the crypto industry. Not only is he the founder of Information Token, he was also invited by Vice News to appear in a documentary about crypto scams to warn the public to stay away from scammers. However, ironically, a few months after his appearance, he planned an internal theft case of a DeFi project.

The theft of $350,000 had brought the Velodrome team to the brink of collapse. Alex recalled that when the Velodrome project was launched, Luna collapsed and the crypto market was turbulent, leaving only $350,000 in the team's account. "One month after the launch, we woke up and found that it (the funds) were gone."

Initially, the outside world generally believed that the project team had "rugged themselves" (i.e., absconded with the funds). Since Alex was the only person in the team whose identity was public, he was once pushed to the forefront of public opinion. Alex wrote, "I was still new to this field, but he asked me to take responsibility."

He revealed that before the incident, Gabagool had joked that he "dreamed that our funds were drained" and tested privacy tools such as Tornado Cash. He knew that Alex was stranded in Europe due to the COVID-19 pandemic and was in poor health, so he took action when the team was at its weakest.

"What's even more infuriating is that when the Velodrome team called him out on the issue and demanded the return of his funds, Gabagool said he would 'keep 10% as a reward,'" Alex wrote.

On August 13, 2022, Velodrome released a statement after the theft, saying: "The attacker managed to transfer $350,000 from this (team-owned wallet)... To our great disappointment, we discovered that the attacker turned out to be our team member Gabagool."

Velodrome later confirmed that Gabagool had returned the funds but ultimately decided to cut ties with the developer. However, the fallout from the incident is far from over.

Proxystudio warns against scams in Vice documentary

According to Alex, Proxystudio posted an "apology" and disappeared. But he and the team at the time chose not to take legal action for the following reasons: 1) The amount might not be enough for law enforcement to take action 2) We had no money to deal with this and no way to save the damaged agreement 3) His sister begged us not to do it, saying he might be suicidal.

The reversal of events took place at FarCon, a joint event between Farcaster and Clanker, on April 30 this year. According to Alex Cutler, he was at a Clanker event in SoHo, New York, and accidentally recognized Gabagool at the elevator entrance.

"I saw him - the guy who almost ruined my life," Alex wrote in a follow-up post. He said that after confirming his identity, he questioned Gabagool on the spot and told him: "You have to reveal your identity within 24 hours, otherwise I will make it public."

Faced with Alex's questioning, Gabagool initially tried to deny his identity, but eventually gave up his disguise and tried to "communicate" privately. Alex chose to leave, but decided not to remain silent.

Clanker responded quickly, and community users raised the importance of background checks

The Clanker team responded quickly after learning that Gabagool had been involved in the theft. On May 5, founder Jack Dishman said: "Clanker recently learned about proxystudio's behavior during its past work. After this information was exposed, proxystudio has decided to resign from Clanker immediately."

Jack Dishman stated, “We want to assure our community, partners, and stakeholders that Clanker’s operations and assets will not be affected by this incident. This matter only relates to activities that occurred before he joined our organization.” He continued, “Our team is implementing an emergency transition plan to ensure the continuity of all operations. We will continue to be committed to maintaining transparency and integrity and providing the community with an excellent token experience. Thank you for your continued support and trust during this period.”

Alex Cutler also said that it turned out that _proxystudio was our disgraced former teammate gabagool.eth, and I can personally guarantee that Jack Dishman was completely unaware of the situation and handled it perfectly. The Clanker team has the full support of myself and the Aerodrome team.

There is no evidence that Gabagool engaged in any malicious behavior during his tenure at Clanker, which was launched in November 2024. Clanker's token, CLANKER, hit an all-time high of $128 shortly after its launch, with a valuation of $128 million. But the token then fell along with the entire AI agent track and is currently priced at $25.8. Since its launch, Clanker has generated $27 million in fee income, and so far in May, the average daily income is about $38,000.

Regarding the cause of this incident, @ninja_dev3, founder of Quick Intel, said, "Why haven't we reached the stage where people don't fully review individuals? This is true both from a project perspective and from an ecosystem perspective. We have encountered this situation many times in other projects. My biggest concern is why there is no review." In this regard, Alex said that he agreed that this is a major problem, but it is also tricky. "Background checks won't find this, there is no connection between the characters, I bet the money in his wallet has been laundered, and so on. I have some ideas, but it's not easy."

At present, this incident has brought a warning to the crypto industry. The partial lack of team member review system may cause some projects to suffer losses. Gabagool was once one of the most respected voices in the industry, and because of this, it has a wide impact. This time, the Clanker team responded decisively, but _proxystudio has not responded yet, which also brings some doubts to the incident. PANews will pay close attention to the follow-up developments.