Berachain co-founder clarifies the Nova Fund's special refund right claim: it was fabricated by a malicious former employee; the Nova Fund remains a lock-up fund for Berachain token holders and LPs.
Regarding the market news that "Berachain offered a special refund right of $25 million to the Nova Fund," Berachain co-founder Smokey clarified on the X platform: "The story is (A) incomplete and (B) inaccurate. We understand the need for dramatic narratives in a market where everyone is struggling, but this story appears to be directly orchestrated by malicious actors, particularly some very specific and disgruntled former team members. A few weeks ago, we first learned that Jack contacted token holders, former employees, and ecosystem projects, asking various leading questions (many completely unrelated to the final article's topic). During his brief stint as an investigative journalist for Blockworks, he began asking token holders misleading and factually incorrect questions. Although we never received any contact from Jack, our communications team decided to reach out to him and provided the following statement: 'Blockworks' reporting on this matter is neither accurate nor complete. Brevan Howard remains one of Berachain's largest investors. Their investments involve multiple complex business agreements, but they participated in the Series B funding round like all investors, and the documentation is identical to that of all investors. —Smokey the With the end of the Blockworks editorial business and Jack's dismissal, we have no further discussion of Bera prior to this article's publication on Unchained today. To clarify the facts: 1. Brevan Howard co-led our Series B funding round a year ago in our Abu Dhabi office through Nova, a new pure liquidity investment vehicle with the same terms as other investors. Nova led this funding round for Berachain a few months ago. 2. Nova's compliance team requested terms to be included in case BeraChain fails to complete its TGE and go public, thus the locked BERA purchased in the funding round would not qualify as a qualified investment under Nova's liquidity strategy. Therefore, we signed the letter attached to this article, committing to Nova's involvement in further business arrangements, including providing liquidity protocols on the network, which is only possible upon network launch. This attached letter was not created to secure a deal with a party that was not interested, nor was it created to prevent losses after publication, as implied in the article, and there is precedent for this, as noted by the outside lawyers mentioned in the report. 3. Contrary to everything implied in this article, Nova remains part of Berachain. One of the largest token holders, perhaps even the largest. They are liquidity providers, holding locked BERA from the Series B acquisition and liquid BERA assets purchased on the open market, consistently supporting the market through highs and lows. If anything has changed, it's that they've increased their exposure to BERA over time, despite operating a liquidity fund in a challenging alternative asset environment. 4. Several other claims in the story are completely untrue. Despite statements in the article, no other buyer received the best deal in the Series B round. Despite hints to the contrary, Nova remains a holder of locked tokens on Berachain. Apologies to all those outside the company for all the information they've been subjected to due to this media cycle. People love to flaunt their wealth on platforms like BeraChain and Bera PA, and the mix of truth and misinformation here provides a perfect opportunity for some. Ideally, I could speak more explicitly about some of the topics mentioned, but I also have an obligation to respect the confidentiality and compliance restrictions we adhere to, while considering the best interests of token holders.
