Acier is a new lending and borrowing protocol founded by @MarcZeller (ACI) and @eboado (BGD Labs), both former core contributors to Aave.
As a former ACI employee and a current Acier investor, I am raising several questions about Acier’s alleged misleading and deceptive conduct towards investors.
I have included a direct quote from @eboado . If a founder can treat his investors disrespectfully and unreasonably, he is even less likely to treat his users with respect and sincerity.
I urge everyone not to use his platform in the future.
First, the pitch deck used for public fundraising presents ACI and BGD as the two core teams behind Acier. I am a former ACI employee, an Acier investor, a former co-founder of the Paper Tiger project alongside Marc Zeller, and Marc’s friend and neighbour. Throughout my communications with Marc Zeller, I was led to believe that he was the person leading Acier. However, I cannot entirely rule out the possibility that this was my own subjective misperception. Nevertheless, Acier’s ownership structure was never explicitly disclosed in any of the public materials available to me. It was not until October 1, after my repeated questions, that Marc clarified that he owned one-third of Acier and BGD owned two-thirds.
Second, I question the continued existence of ACI, one of the two entities presented as making up Acier. Apart from Marc Zeller, the ACI team previously included Togbe, Cris, Xavi, Martin, Nandy, Alice and myself. Now, only Marc Zeller remains. I therefore personally question whether ACI still exists as a team. As to whether ACI continues to exist as a legal entity, I ask Marc Zeller to provide a clear answer.
Based on my own observations and knowledge of both teams, my personal inference is that ACI is responsible for business development, corresponding to its previous role in the Aave ecosystem, while BGD is responsible for technology. However, Mark Agranovski, who currently handles business development for Acier, uses a BGD email address rather than an ACI email address. I also personally suspect an element of cronyism here, given his connection to Ernesto as a salesperson who previously sold him AT1 bonds. Ernesto did not deny this in our communications. If ACI still exists as a legal entity, why is this person not employed by ACI? I ask Marc and Ernesto to explain the specific division of responsibilities between ACI and BGD within Acier.
Having raised these concerns, on October 22, I asked Ernesto for Acier’s external promotional materials as an investor. I only had photographs of one document and was concerned that they might be incomplete, potentially causing misunderstandings. Ernesto answered: “ Once again, we have been communicating with Echo (including yesterday during /after discussing with you) on how to proceed with your replacing, and they compromised to come back to us as soon as possible. They are consulting (their legal and engineering team) on how to proceed. We have also told them that we can cover any additional cost on their side in order to make the process faster for you to be happy with the outcome. Now it seems that you are not really reasonable even with us telling you we are doing the best of our efforts on a situation that depends more on Echo (the entity you invested through) than on us and you have some type of ill intentions towards Acier, claiming very serious accusations like that we mislead our investors. Because of that, you should reach your contact on Echo ( Marc, and he can also connect you with the Echo team), and I will stop as of now any communication with you” I consider this conduct a blatant denial of my right to information as an investor.
For the first two reasons outlined above, I clearly stated my position to Marc and Ernesto on October 1: I had invested in the Acier led by Marc Zeller, not the Acier led by BGD, and I therefore requested the return of my investment. They both agreed to my request and did actively contacted Echo to move the relevant process forward. I also made it clear that I do not want any further involvement with Acier thus I want my investment returned as soon as possible; thus I proposed other solutions as well, but they have insisted on their own solution and procedures without providing any firm commitment or timeline.
If any part of the account above is inaccurate, we can each provide evidence to substantiate our respective accounts.
