Cosmos Dev Leaves Tendermint, Cites "Untenable" CEO as Reason

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Tendermint Labs director Zaki Manian has resigned from his post. Tendermint is a core contributor to the Cosmos blockchain network.

Zaki Manian’s Recent Hint at a Departure

In early February, Manian tweeted his discontent with Tendermint CEO Jae Kwon, saying the co-founder “has obsessively focused on Virgo while neglecting and under resourcing IBC… threw a painstakingly planned hiring and resource improvement proposal out the window to become @BitcoinJaesus.”

He labeled the CEO’s conduct “an untenable distraction.”

https://twitter.com/zmanian/status/1224384772677390336

Manian intends to continue working on Cosmos, telling Decrypt:

“There are people inside the company that want to portray this as a power struggle between me and Jae, and this as an outcome and me threatening x, y and z. But it was really me saying I don’t see a way in this arrangement to get the work done. And the best way to get the work done was for me to leave.”

Tendermint Continues Development Work

Tendermint is yet to comment on the high profile departure. The company’s vision “to create open networks in order to manage conflict and empower people to align on universal goals to enact positive societal and environmental change” appears to have come unstuck at its own workplace. 

However, it does have a slate of over 100 projects in the Cosmos and Tendermint ecosystems. The Tendermint protocol is an interoperability network, on top of which Cosmos was built.

How Cosmos’ lead developer’s departure will impact the relationship between the two networks remains unclear.

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