At least five employees have left BitTorrent, the peer-to-peer networking pioneer, following its June acquisition by Justin Sun, the founder of the controversial blockchain protocol Tron. According to multiple sources with direct knowledge of the acquisition and company operations, the departures were related to concerns about the acquisition, as well as the direction proposed for the company by Tron leadership. Sources said three of the employees left on their own accord, while two others were dismissed.
Among those departed were at least two individuals serving in leadership positions, the sources indicated, performing key roles such as general manager and head of marketing. However, other senior-level employees, including the company’s chief executive, chief financial officer, chief product officer and chief revenue officer, are unable to leave the company due to 18-month lock-in agreements.
The news comes just two months after Sun purchased the San Francisco-based company for $120 million in cash through Rainberry Acquisition, Inc., a company registered to him alone according to publicly available documents. Sun, a former Ripple representative, is best known for founding the Tron project in 2017, which aims to decentralize the internet and boasts controversial miner Bitmain as a backer.
Tron completed a $70 million ICO in 2017, but later returned funds collected from Chinese investors after China banned the fundraising method.
At the time of the acquisition, observers speculated that Sun purchased BitTorrent with the hope of leveraging its extensive user network (about 100 million users per month) for his own project’s ends. Others suggested Sun acquired the company with the hope of lending credibility to Tron – something it has been accused of lacking in the past.
More specifically, last year Tron was accused of failing to properly attribute code that it incorporated into its protocol. This allegation was followed by claims project leaders had plagiarized Tron’s white paper.
Sun’s $1 billion blockchain launched in late June shortly after the acquisition was announced, however, token holders are still in the process of electing the nodes that would make the technology fully operational.