Manifold Finance, a onetime buzzy crypto project, has plunged into turmoil.

Its erratic founder is unreachable, the price of its token is plummeting, and frustrated supporters are pleading for updates.

Manifold’s token, FOLD, hit an all-time low of 64 cents on November 8 — 98% off its 2022 peak of $87 — even as crypto markets surged on the election of Donald Trump as the US president.

Fold’s worth peaked at more than $87, and it was trading above $30 as recently as April. In 2022, the venture’s market value topped $128 million. Now it’s only $2 million.

Disappointing response

The token has crashed amid a disappointing response to Manifold’s year-old liquid staking product, which was meant to compete with the likes of crypto giants Lido and Rocket Pool.

It has also suffered as a prominent backer stopped providing liquidity for the token on decentralised exchange SushiSwap earlier this year.

Meanwhile, founder Sam Bacha has not provided regular updates on a forthcoming product meant to reverse Manifold’s declining fortunes. Self-imposed deadlines have come and gone.

Bacha has occasionally commented in a 2,500-person Telegram chat without offering any explanation as to his whereabouts or Manifold’s progress, instead cracking jokes and sharing irrelevant memes, infuriating some supporters.

Lost support

Even one of Manifold’s most prominent investors, crypto influencer Jordan Fish, better known as Cobie, said in the group Telegram chat that he has lost faith in the company.

“I invested in it in 2021, and at the top, it was worth like $5m and now it’s worth 0,” Fish told DL News. “I don’t know what to tell you, yeah, seems like it failed, crypto investments are risky, maybe I should’ve sold the top, it is what it is.”

‘When did you last talk to Sam? He still alive?’

Supporter on Telegram

Philipp Zahn, a co-founder of Manifold partner 20squares, declined to comment to DL News, but called the company a “former client.”

Bacha and Alexander Bradley, Manifold employee, did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

Manifold isn’t Bacha’s first project to go sideways.

His last crypto startup, Block Array, appears to be defunct, and has been dogged by allegations of fraud. What’s more, this isn’t the first time he’s gone weeks without providing the status updates that are de rigueur in the crypto industry.

But with the collapse of Manifold’s token and supporters’ anger boiling over, Bacha’s behaviour has taken a more ominous tone.

It’s the latest example of the pitfalls that come with crypto’s freewheeling culture.

Past trouble

Bacha graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in 2013, according to his LinkedIn account, which noted he had stints at AT&T and Amazon before founding his first blockchain-based startup in 2017.

Block Array’s website and white paper were inaccessible on Friday. The X account for its Freight Trust product has been suspended. Freight Trust’s token, EDI, is seldom traded and, despite a total supply of 600 million, had no market value Friday, according to Etherscan. Block Array’s token, ARY, is also worthless, according to Etherscan.

Malicious bots

Manifold was founded in 2021 to help crypto traders avoid front-running from malicious bots. It raised $2.5 million from P2P.org, Marshland Capital, and several other venture investors.

A version of that anti-front running software was developed for SushiSwap, a decentralised crypto exchange.

But it was quickly shelved due to software bugs. SushiSwap declined to integrate a retooled version of the software, opting to pursue development of an in-house version instead.

After forays into other crypto middleware, Manifold eventually pivoted to liquid staking, a multibillion-dollar business long dominated by DeFi giant Lido.

But Manifold’s liquid staking token, mevETH, saw little uptake after its launch a year ago; the market value peaked at $36 million in March.

Certain transactions

Since then, it has been working in collaboration with German research firm 20squares on a new product, XGA.

XGA is meant to ensure prompt confirmation of certain transactions, which sometimes wallow on Ethereum when a user doesn’t pay a sufficient fee.

Manifold investors held out hope XGA would lift the company from its doldrums. Without warning, however, Bacha stopped providing regular updates on his company’s work.

‘Where were you for the last 30 days? Why not a single reply here in the channel?’

Supporter in Telegram channel

Crypto security firm KebabSec had started an audit of XGA’s code, Bacha said in a September 2 update shared in the Telegram group chat. It is unclear whether that audit has been completed.

Bacha also said Manifold would begin testing XGA on an Ethereum-based test network September 17. A revamp of FOLD’s so-called tokenomics would be detailed by the end of that month, he added.

None of that appears to have happened.

“When did you last talk to Sam? He still alive?” one supporter asked in the Telegram chat on October 28.

Later that day, Bacha broke his silence to ask for feedback on Manifold’s revamped website. And he promised he would promptly share more information.

“I will post the long awaited update today comrades,” he wrote.

That update never came.

Dim mood

On October 30, Bacha took to Manifold’s seldom-used governance forum to propose the Manifold community move its conversation to social media app Discord.

The proposal was panned by supporters, who said that was the least of their concerns.

“Where were you for the last 30 days? Why not a single reply here in the channel? The mood is pretty dim,” one wrote.

“I was being vetted to become Trump’s new Crypto Czar,” Bacha replied in an apparent joke.

Missed deadlines

In a subsequent message, he took aim at supporters who had accused him of blowing past self-imposed deadlines.

“Deadlines proclaimed by me in Telegram do not constitute any sort of binding agreement,” he wrote.

After the November 5 election, Bacha returned to the chat to share a meme derived from the film “Superman II” in which a supervillain commands, “Kneel before Zod!”

Supporters fear the worst.

“We don’t know if Sam is even coding. We don’t even know if there’s anything happening,” one wrote.

Two possibilities

There were two possibilities, the commenter continued: either the company was about to fold and “they don’t know how to tell us,” or “they’re working tirelessly” to release XGA.

On November 11, Matthew Land, a partner at Manifold investor Marshland Capital, said in a separate Telegram channel he had spoken with Bacha over the preceding weekend.

Land did not immediately return DL News’ request for comment Friday.

In his Telegram message, Land said he had told Bacha of “the importance of communication” and of taking measures to boost the price of FOLD.

“As I said before, ball’s in Sam’s court and on Sam’s timeline,” Land said.

“He understands what’s up imo but we have no impact on his decisions/timeline to address them unfortunately.”

Aleks Gilbert is a DeFi correspondent based in New York. Have a tip? Contact him at aleks@dlnews.com.