ACX drops over 10% as Across Protocol team refutes 'completely untrue' DAO manipulation and insider trading allegations

ACX fell by more than 10% on Friday morning following allegations that the Across Protocol team misused DAO governance to funnel funds to their private company and insider trading ahead of the token's listing on Binance.

The token was trading for around $0.151 ahead of the allegations before plunging to a low of $0.134, according to The Block's Across Protocol price page . At the time of writing, ACX is trading down 12.5% during the last 24 hours and 41% over the past month.

The first allegations came from Ogle, the pseudonymous founder of modular crypto infrastructure platform Glue, who claimed in a post on X that the team behind Across Protocol — a DAO-based cross-chain bridge backed by Risk Labs — misused DAO governance to funnel roughly $23 million worth of ACX tokens from the community treasury to benefit their "private, for-profit company."

Ogle alleged that proposals appearing to have community support were pushed through using "secret" insider-controlled wallets, including those tied to Risk Labs CEO Hart Lambur, Treasurer Kevin Chan, and other team members. These wallets cast large, undisclosed votes to pass treasury grants without clearly disclosing the financial benefit to themselves, the Glue founder claimed.

"I currently hold a long position in ACX, have done a very large OTC with the Across team before, and hold long positions in virtually all of Across' competitors. So, in a sense, I'm 'fudding my own bags,'" Ogle noted.

The Glue founder's claims were paired with broader criticism that many DAOs are "decentralized in name only," with insiders quietly steering governance for personal gain. Even if no laws were broken, Ogle further alleged that the lack of transparency and disregard for basic governance ethics erode trust, not just in the protocol, but in crypto as a whole.

"The allegations in here are categorically untrue and I will vigorously defend our protocol and our team," Lambur said in response. "In no way has the Across team 'extracted' value from the DAO. That is so insane it's hard to even respond to. I've been building in this space for 6 years. Me and my team are some of the few long term builders that do things the right way. It's frustrating when an anonymous troll attacks us with complete untruths and totally false accusations."

In a more detailed public rebuttal , Lambur denied all claims that his team misused DAO governance to divert the funds for private gain, emphasizing that Risk Labs is a Cayman-based nonprofit with no shareholders and fiduciary obligations under Cayman law, not a for-profit company. "If the funds are misused, you can sue the directors," he said. Lambur explained that the token grants were used to build Across v3 and v4, expand the team, and further protocol development. Lambur added that he draws a modest $100,000 salary from the foundation and hasn't received a token grant in years.

Responding to allegations of insider-controlled voting, Lambur said team members used tokens they personally acquired and voted transparently. He pointed out that Chan's "maxodds.eth" wallet was publicly linked to him, nobody "hid" their involvement, and one of the proposals in question passed unanimously with no objections during a seven-day voting window. Lambur also rejected claims that Risk Labs prematurely sold granted tokens, noting that the multisig wallet still holds more ACX than was allocated. While he agreed that clearer disclosures of voting participation are helpful and pledged to include them in future proposals, he said it was unreasonable to expect full wallet doxxing from all team members.

"Ogle also works closely with LayerZero and Stargate, my arch rivals. Funny enough, Bryan Pellegrino, the founder of Stargate and LayerZero, retweeted Ogle's post almost immediately after he posted it," Lambur noted.

Allegation of insider trading ahead of ACX Binance listing also refuted

Following that repost, a public spat broke out between Lambur and Pellegrino after the LayerZero founder alleged that Lambur may have engaged in insider trading by purchasing ACX tokens shortly before a surprise Binance listing in December 2024. 

"I am simply in SHOCK, total SHOCK, that Bryan Pellegrino is accusing me of insider trading when I can prove this is false," Lambur responded . "This is totally disgusting, vile behaviour from a competitor. I am so disappointed."

"DUDE you owe me an apology," Lambur added . "We had ZERO idea Binance would list ACX. We found out on Twitter like everyone else. It was 2 am in the morning for me when Binance tweeted. Binance will verify this for you. We paid zero listing fee and had zero heads up."

Pellegrino pointed to Across' own past tweet referencing months of communication with Binance's listing team and said that most organizations have trading restrictions when material listing discussions are underway.

Lambur strongly denied any wrongdoing, insisting he had no advance knowledge of the listing. Across spoke to Binance's listing team in early 2024, he explained, but communications had ceased "months" before the listing. Lambur said he purchased the tokens in question openly using his public wallet (hal2001.eth) simply to support the project and still holds those tokens, accusing Pellegrino of launching a bad-faith smear campaign rooted in rivalry.

"Insider trading is an incredibly severe accusation. I should go to JAIL if I do this. I cannot believe you would make this accusation without proof," Lambur said.