Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol Edge Toward Settlement in $120M Token Dispute
Quick Breakdown
- Fetch.ai CEO offers truce: Humayun Sheikh proposes to drop all legal claims if Ocean returns 286 million FET tokens.
- Ocean’s conditional acceptance: Ocean Protocol may comply once a formal written proposal is submitted.
- Token dispute background: Blockchain data links Ocean to a $120M FET swap, which Ocean denies, citing market factors for FET’s price drop.
Fetch.ai offers truce amid token misappropriation dispute
The long-standing feud between Fetch.ai and the Ocean Protocol Foundation could soon come to an end, as both parties move toward an agreement to avoid a prolonged legal confrontation.
On Thursday, Fetch.ai’s CEO Humayun Sheikh announced plans to withdraw all legal claims against Ocean Protocol if the foundation agrees to return the 286 million FET tokens—worth around $74 million at current prices—allegedly sold during their merger .
“You can have my letter tomorrow. The offer is simple: give my community back the tokens, and I will drop every legal claim,”
Sheikh said during an X Spaces session.
He added that Fetch.ai would even cover the legal costs associated with the contract once the tokens are recovered.
Ocean Protocol open to return tokens once offer is formalized
According to GeoStaking, a validator node helping mediate the dispute, Ocean Protocol has signaled its willingness to return the tokens once the proposal is officially submitted. Sheikh said the written offer could be ready as early as Friday, marking a potential turning point in the tense standoff.
The move could spare both organizations the reputational and financial damage of a drawn-out lawsuit, offering a path to reconciliation within the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance (ASI)—a collaboration that has been on shaky ground since Ocean’s exit earlier this month.
Background: $120M token dump allegations
The dispute stems from claims that an Ocean Protocol-linked multisignature wallet swapped 661 million OCEAN tokens for 286 million FET coins, valued at around $120 million, according to blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps.
Of these, 160 million FET tokens were allegedly transferred to Binance, and 109 million to GSR Markets. Ocean Protocol has denied any wrongdoing, insisting the transactions were legitimate.
Ocean founder Bruce Pon argued that the steep 93% drop in FET’s price—from $3.22 in March 2024 to $0.26 today—was caused not by Ocean’s actions but by broader market volatility and heavy token sales by Fetch.ai and SingularityNET.
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