Auditmos KYC Investigation
Recent news about the Terra ecosystem shook the whole crypto sphere as the Luna price hit an all-new low primarily caused by the UST stablecoin losing its peg. The sudden Luna crash took its toll depriving a lot of people not only of their savings but also careers and jobs. It comes as no surprise that a lot of former Lunatics expressed concerns about the situation, as a lot of them were left vulnerable and helpless against everything that happened with Terra. For the last week, Twitter feeds were buzzing with news starting from expressing dissatisfaction about the losses, and ending with questioning the credibility and leadership of Terra founder — Do Kwon.
One of the most concerning information that has been leaked by a twitter member called realryunsu announces that Do Kwon supposedly dissolved the company just before the crash, which triggered a wave of questions within the community.
Our KYC specialist decided to take up the challenge and unravel the secret behind this information. In this article, we will present you with everything that he managed to find. Is it all just unnecessary drama or is there any truth behind it? It’s time to find it out.
Is it a real document?
To be able to go on with the investigation, it’s important to determine if the said photo, indeed, represents an original document released by a Korean authority. That’s why, the investigation started with an analysis of the photograph attached to the infamous tweet. Upon investigation, our specialist managed to confirm, using all techniques available to him, that the document resembles other Korean documents of the same type, and can be labeled as original with 99% percent of probability. However, we still don’t know whom this document is connected with. Is it really the Terraform Labs founder?
Is it the same person?
Even though the authenticity of the document has been confirmed, we still need to investigate its content. Let’s take a look at the most important facts that came to light during our KYC investigation:
- According to the latest version of terra.money’s Terms of use (updated on 14th December 2021), the contracting party, when using the website’s services, is a company named Terraform Labs PTE Ltd. It is a company registered on 23.04.2018 with address in: 80 Raffles Place #32–01 UOB Plaza Singapore 048624 (being a so-called virtual office), that entered in the register under number 201813807M. The total share capital at the moment of registration was no more than 2$ (!) and the type of activity determined in the register is: (1) DEVELOPMENT OF OTHER SOFTWARE AND PROGRAMMING ACTIVITIES N.E.C., (2) DATA ANALYTICS, PROCESSING AND RELATED ACTIVITIES N.E.C. (E.G. DATA ENTRY, STREAMING SERVICES)
- Under the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer section of the company’s documentation we can find the name: Do Kwon.
- The same data was used when registering the terra.money domain on 5.02.2018, however, the country of registration is determined as South Korea.
- During our investigation that took place on 11th of May 2022, we found out that the Singaporean company — Terraform Labs PTE Ltd. invariably continues to be active from the very date of its registration. We can also learn from the financial history of the firm that the first phase of capital raising took place on 29.08.2018, where 32M$ were raised during the seed round.
Now, let’s take a step back and take another look at the document from Twitter. In this document, it’s written that a company named Terrafrom Labs Korea Inc. has been dissolved on 30th of April. However, it is a different, Korean company that shares the same name as the Singaporean one. The name of the responsible person indicated on this document is Kwon-Do Hyung.
Here’s where things start to get interesting because Kwon-Do Hyung is actually a possible Korean spelling of Do Kwon. What’s more, Kwon Do-Hyung is a very popular Korean surname where Hyung can be translated into ‘an older brother’, which, in fact, is how Do Kwon is often being called by the Korean media.
Final questions
Even though some doubts have been dispelled and these two companies are completely different entities, some questions still remain open. Is there any link between these two? Was Do Kwon the person who registered and dissolved the Koren company, or was it someone completely different? And, if it was Do Kwon, did he establish the Korean firm using private funds or Singaporean Terraform Labs’ investors’ money?
