Wintermute founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy alleges that the NEAR Foundation and Aurora backed out of an $11 million stablecoin redemption deal. In a Nov. 7 Twitter post, Gaevoy claimed NEAR refused to fulfil their commitment to facilitate the sale of $11.2 million worth of the stablecoin USN for the FTX estate.
Wintermute, working with FTX to liquidate assets for creditors, executed the transaction based on an alleged agreement with the NEAR Foundation for USN redemption to Tether on a one-to-one basis. However, when Wintermute submitted the redemption request, NEAR allegedly “refused to honour their commitments.” After two and a half months, Wintermute reported not receiving any USDT.
Gaevoy then said that Wintermute had been offered the final deal of 20% of the $11 million. However, he stated they would pursue “all legal avenues” against NEAR and Aurora – the organisations responsible for approving the transfer of assets from the Ethereum network to the Near protocol.
This dispute comes amid the NEAR Foundation’s $40 million fund to support USN to USDT conversions after USN became undercollateralized. Gaevoy’s post serves as a “last and public attempt” to prompt the NEAR Foundation to complete the redemption, with a warning that Wintermute is prepared to take a confrontational stance if necessary.
“However if [Near Foundation] continues to be unreasonable about this situation, we are fully committed to switching into a full-time adversarial mode.”
As of now, the NEAR Foundation and Aurora have not responded to requests for comment.
