According to Three Arrows Capital co-founder Kyle Davies and New York State court papers, OPNX, the bankruptcy claims exchange connected to the founders of the now-defunct hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, has launched a defamation action against venture capitalist Mike Dudas.OPNX claimed Dudas made defamatory remarks about the company between February and March 2023, around the time that Davies and his partner Su Zhu announced their exchange venture, in a summons notice filed in early June.What Dudas said that was defamatory is not stated in the paper. Dudas, a well-known figure in the cryptocurrency sector, is the founder of 6th Man Ventures and was previously the editor-in-chief of the crypto media portal The Block.
“Along with my colleagues at Brown Rudnick, we are proud to represent Mike Dudas in defense of this lawsuit filed by 3 Arrows Capital’s ‘ecosystem partner’ OPNX,” crypto attorney Stephen Palley told CoinDesk. “In order to prove defamation you have to show, among other things, reputational damage. We look forward to seeing how the plaintiff plans to prove that in this case.”
The complaint is filed at the same time as OPNX introduces Justice Tokens (JT), a new “meme token” that might help crypto communities that have been “harmed by defamation” by offering them a share of settlements.It introduced the first such token earlier this month under the name $DUDAS.
JTs are deemed useless by OPNX in a white paper as “meme tokens with no intrinsic value, no backing, and no expectation of return.”OPNX may, “at its sole discretion,” opt to give some JT token owners the revenue of defamation settlements, including holders of the Miladies NFT and stakers of OX (OPNX’s native token).Because of their “persistent promotion of moral virtue in an era where the majority pander to social media algorithms,” according to the white paper, Miladies NFT owners have endured “long term defamation” and deserve some benefit via JT.
“Initial JTs will focus on OPNX-specific defamation, then expand to non-OPNX cases,” Davies said in an interview.
Data from Etherscan shows that there are now 43 wallets holding DUDAS coins, however there is not enough liquidity for Uniswap to list them.In the white paper, OPNX made the claim that defamation lawsuits against the cryptocurrency industry harm entire communities of token owners, and that these communities ought to profit from “any settlements.”A “mechanism” to deliver that value to those affected could be justice tokens.