Key Takeaways




Smart Stake stated the move was owing to complex/stressful validator operations, the cost/effort of validator ops, and recent events.



 Secret Foundation’s Tor bair and Secret Labs CEO Guy Zyskind is now engaged in a leadership feud over the network’s transparency.



Azul Collection and Domerium Labs stopped validating on Secret Network in December.




Leading Validator Smart Stake to shut down its privacy smart contract blockchain Secret Network validator nodes on Feb. 21. Reasoning the decision, Smart Stake stated the move was owing to complex/stressful validator operations, cost/effort of validator ops, and recent events.



The latest development comes amid Secret Foundation management, and Secret Labs CEO Guy Zyskind is engaged in a leadership feud. Earlier this week, Zyskind alleged that Secret Foundation founder and CEO Tor Bair in 2021 “sold a substantial amount of USD worth of SCRT” and that Bair cashed out a significant part of them without disclosing this to the community. 




PSA for @SecretNetwork delegates of Smart Stake: Smart Stake will be shutting down its Secret validator on 21st Feb. Please redelegate to another validator. Reasons: 1) Complex/stressful validator operations on $SCRT 2) Cost/effort of validator ops 3) recent events — Smart Stake (@SmartStake) January 29, 2023




Secret Token-SCRT is the native coin of Secret Network. Zyskind also alleged that a supposed mishandling of an OTC sale led to a loss of about $250,000.He further called for the Foundation to be restructured as a non-profit, return all of its current funds to the community, and then be required to apply for grants to carry out activities supporting the ecosystem.



Zyskind further mentioned a $4 million inflow for the Foundation in its Q4 2021 report.



“This action was not disclosed in any financial reports provided to the community by the Foundation, which was introduced by Tor as a non-profit organization on several occasions,” he alleged



Commenting on the allegations, Tor Bair had claimed he received token compensation that was subject to vesting periods and also sold the tokens once they had been vested.



“Instead of paying out my vested tokens in December 2021, I converted my vested portion of tokens to USD at the OTC price, and Secret Foundation distributed these funds as a dividend”, Blair said. Blair further added that token sales were disclosed in its 2021 tax filings, which he states had been reviewed by Labs.



Smarts Stake is not the first validator in recent months to stop Secret Network validator nodes. Recently Kingnodes discontinued validating Secret Network from Jan. 14.




2/ We have procured seven servers over the last several months to run the network, non of which will now run it as we are unable to register new nodes. — kingnodes