Ondo Finance Control Fight Shows Crypto’s Succession Blind Spot, Lawyers Say

On DEX in the City, three crypto lawyers used the leadership battle at the tokenization firm to warn founders about one-person boards and missing estate plans.

Ondo Finance Control Fight Shows Crypto’s Succession Blind Spot, Lawyers SayA leadership battle at Ondo Finance has become a teaching case for crypto lawyers, who say it exposes how often fast-growing crypto companies skip the corporate housekeeping that keeps them running when a founder is suddenly gone.

On the Aug. 11 episode of DEX in the City, the hosts worked through the fight over control of the tokenized-assets firm and drew a blunt lesson about governance gaps.

Ondo founder Nathan Allman, who started the company in 2021, died in late May at 32, while serving as its CEO, only sitting director, and controlling shareholder, according to reporting on the court filings. His voting shares passed into his estate. His mother, Kathleen Allman, was appointed to administer it through Hawaii probate in June, and in July she filed a verified complaint in Delaware’s Court of Chancery seeking control of the company and the removal of president-turned-CEO Ian De Bode. The complaint alleges De Bode improperly presented himself as CEO and moved to make himself sole director without valid board approval, claims that have not been tested in court. A newly constituted board then voted to remove him and install Kathleen Allman as interim CEO.

De Bode has rejected the allegations. Kathleen Allman’s claims “are meritless, and that will come through clearly in court,” he said in a statement, adding that Ondo still has the support of its lead investors and the Ondo Foundation.

A One-Person Board

For the hosts, the corporate setup mattered as much as the courtroom fight. One host said on the show it made little sense for Ondo to “only have one board member and call it a board.” The real lesson, another said on the show, is that founders “always have to think about the hit-by-a-bus scenario to ensure that the organization is long-term sustainable,” a step that gets skipped because “when you have a young founder and/or CEO, estate planning isn’t always on the top of their list.”

Why It Matters for Crypto

The hosts argued the risk is sharper for crypto than the estate-law drama suggests. A company holding tokenized financial infrastructure, one said on the show, has to plan not just for multisig keys and governance attacks but for the “boring” corporate questions, such as clear vacancy provisions, multiple directors, and an unambiguous succession plan, that decide who controls it if a leader dies. Ondo, a real-world-asset platform with billions in tokenized assets and a recently closed SEC investigation, is now navigating exactly that uncertainty, with strategic partnerships and leadership direction in question while the litigation plays out.

Related Listen: Has Control Replaced Decentralization as DeFi’s Legal Test? – DEX in the City