Testimonial Regarding Johann Gevers and the Tezos Foundation

This testimonial is co-authored by James Hogan, former EVP Engineering at PayPal, and Patri Friedman, software engineer at Google. We are also financial backers of Tezos, with a sincere wish to see the Tezos Foundation succeed in its charter of supporting Tezos development.

This letter offers a testimonial of our experience working with Johann Gevers, current Chairman of the Board of the Tezos Foundation. Our goal is to aid the Tezos Foundation Board, community members, regulators, and other stakeholders in making more informed decisions about the right leadership for Tezos-related efforts going forward.

We have been reluctant to share our experience publicly for a variety of reasons. We don’t believe that leadership changes should be decided via Reddit flamewars, and we see the vilification of Mr. Gevers in places like Reddit’s r/Tezos forum comments as unreasonably speculative and unproductive. We believe from personal experience that Mr. Gevers, despite his faults, is a man of sincerity and passion. In addition, we (like many others) have been working in a small way behind the scenes seeking a voluntary, amicable resolution.

Unfortunately, this work has failed, and so we now believe the best thing we can do for Tezos and the cryptocurrency community is to add the testimony of our direct experience to those calling for Mr. Gevers’ immediate transfer of authority. We also see this as best for Mr. Gevers himself, whose considerable drive is wasted in a role that requires rapid execution, community engagement, and strong & effective collaboration, none of which play to his strengths.

Testimonial

In 2011, we co-founded Future Cities Development (FCD), an urban development venture focused on building special economic zones in collaboration with the government of Honduras. We recruited Mr. Gevers as our CFO, initially impressed with his passion and strategic thinking.

In the months of working together that followed, while his enthusiasm continued, a pattern emerged in which his communication and execution were consistently and profoundly unreliable. The issue was severe enough to prompt Mr. Gevers to send a formal apology letter to his FCD colleagues via email, and for us to consider dismissing him, despite the severe negative impact on a startup of losing an early employee.

The final straw was when Mr. Gevers opened FCD’s company bank account with HSBC in Hong Kong. Because he opened the account in person, he received physical custody of the second-factor security token, which could be used to grant or revoke others’ access to the account. As Mr. Gevers was based remotely, Mr. Hogan requested that Mr. Gevers forward the token to Mr. Hogan by courier.

Despite several increasingly strong requests over many weeks, Mr. Gevers failed to deliver the access token, offering a series of uncompelling excuses each time. We found this pattern of behavior so unusual and disturbing that we began to fear the possibility that Mr. Gevers intended to embezzle or otherwise misuse company funds. The company’s Board of Directors shared this concern, and approved an emergency measure to move the company’s funds from the HSBC account to our personal bank accounts to ensure their safety until the company account was fully in our control.

We terminated Mr. Gevers’ employment shortly thereafter for his pattern of poor communication and execution. At the time, we felt that Mr. Gevers was most likely an intelligent, well-meaning individual who had been operating dysfunctionally during a period of hardship, or perhaps was simply chronically disorganized. In retrospect, and in light of the developments with the Tezos Foundation, we believe this interpretation was overly charitable.

We do wish to be clear that Mr. Gevers did not ever take or misuse company funds, despite opportunity to do so both before and after his termination. Mr. Friedman has also spoken with members of the failed Laissez-Faire City project, where he first met Mr. Gevers. Contrary to the current online speculation that Mr. Gevers may have committed improprieties as LFC’s auditor, people with first-person experience with the audit reported no such concerns.

Our personal experience working with him was that he was sincerely enthusiastic about the vision and safeguarded our funds with integrity, yet he accomplished so little, communicated so poorly, and was so unwilling or unable to follow direction that we terminated his employment, as described. So while we have little first-hand knowledge of Johann Gevers’ performance at the Tezos Foundation, our experience working with him was absolutely consistent with the poor execution, communication, and cooperation that has so frustrated the Tezos community.

Recommendation

In our personal opinions, Tezos needs to be led by a foundation with a Board of Directors that:

• Has the strong public track record of collaboration and execution necessary for a project of this complexity and scale.
• Is trusted by the Tezos community, in order to help foster the user and developer ecosystems so necessary to the success of a modern blockchain.
• Is trusted by the Tezos founders, Arthur and Kathleen Breitman, in order to ensure smooth deployment and ongoing development of the Tezos network.

We do not believe the Tezos Foundation’s current board meets these criteria, even after yesterday’s appointment of a new board member.

Fortunately, today’s announcement of the T2 foundation, created by community members with a charter to support the Tezos launch and ecosystem, provides a clear path forward. This new foundation does have a robust, well-qualified board with the trust of the development team and the broader Tezos community. They are well-equipped to further the Tezos mission.

Leadership of a non-profit foundation is not for the benefit of the individuals or the foundation itself. It is for the benefit of its stated mission — in this case, the development and promotion of the Tezos ecosystem. At this point, the T2 Foundation appears extraordinarily better-positioned to execute on that mission.

For this reason, we ardently call on the Board of the Tezos Foundation to fulfill its ethical duty to further the Foundation’s mission by (1) publicly deferring leadership of the Tezos project to the T2 Foundation, and (2) funding the T2 Foundation at sufficient levels to significantly advance both organizations’ shared mission.

James Hogan
Patri Friedman