DEX in the City: A Founder's Death Sparked a Fight for Ondo's Boardroom

Nathan Ollman, the founder, CEO, sole sitting director, and controlling shareholder of Ondo Finance, died earlier this summer at age 32. Ondo tokenizes real-world assets including treasuries onto public chains. Because Ollman was the only director and left no documented succession plan, his death reduced the board to zero directors, creating an immediate governance vacuum.

Ian DeVote, Ondo's president, was announced as CEO following Ollman's death. Kathleen Ollman, Nathan's mother and personal representative of his estate, sued, alleging that Ondo's bylaws required the board to appoint the CEO, that DeVote instead claimed the role automatically, and that he used a voting agreement to install himself as sole director. She also alleged that Ondo's counsel and DeVote refused to provide corporate records or recognize the board seat she appointed herself to as personal representative of the estate. Kathleen subsequently added Nathan's sister to the board, and that board voted to fire DeVote and install Kathleen as interim CEO, a role she says she will hold only until a permanent CEO is found. DeVote does not recognize those board actions and says Ondo's investors and the Ondo Foundation support his leadership. None of the disputed facts have been proven in court, and the matter is proceeding through Delaware probate.

The episode notes that no one apparently conducted sufficient diligence on Ondo's board composition before investing in or building with the company. If the estate prevails, replacing DeVote would be difficult given the institutional knowledge he holds, and leadership volatility creates real risk of collateral damage to strategic partnerships and ongoing operations. The Ondo situation is used to illustrate broader governance lessons for DeFi companies, where succession planning carries additional complexity because of multisig dependencies, key holders, emergency councils, and governance attack scenarios. The episode notes that DeFi teams must already coordinate around how many key signers travel together on the same flight, and that TradFi has learned succession lessons that crypto is only now confronting.

The FDIC and OCC are reportedly working with banking and fintech trade groups to create an independent standard-setting organization that would develop baseline third-party risk management standards for fintechs working with banks. The proposed model would allow fintechs to be evaluated by independent assessors and reuse a certification across multiple banks, reducing the repetitive diligence burden when each of ten banks asks slightly different versions of the same questions. The certification would be voluntary and carry no enforcement authority, and the FDIC draft is explicit that banks still own all the risk and remain responsible for compliance, consumer protection, monitoring, and oversight regardless of whether a fintech holds a certification. One view holds this is a practical improvement especially for community banks that lack large compliance teams. A more skeptical view warns that voluntary standards that become effectively mandatory in practice function like regulation without going through notice and comment rulemaking. The episode also notes that loosely written standards could formalize de-risking in ways that are hard to reverse and could harm crypto companies, while transparent standards could make it harder for banks to debank them on reputational grounds alone. The actual content of the standards and who sets them will determine the outcome, and there is currently no public transparency about either.

A cloture vote on the CLARITY Act is scheduled for September 15th, the day after the Senate reconvenes on September 14th. Invoking cloture requires 60 votes and stops a filibuster but does not itself pass the bill. The Senate is out of session for nearly all of October and the first week of November, with midterms on November 3rd, leaving an extremely narrow legislative window. Jesse V has consistently placed the probability of crypto clarity legislation passing at 20% or lower and described success in this window as requiring a miracle. Three issues remain unresolved: an ethics provision legislators want inserted, law enforcement concerns about the Blockchain Regulatory Certainty Act protecting developers, and ongoing debate over how to treat yield. Even if the Senate passes its version, the Senate and House versions must still be reconciled before the bill becomes law. Competing priorities including wildfires and wars, combined with midterms that are not looking favorable for Republicans, are expected to further reduce crypto legislation as a priority.

The SEC has an open meeting scheduled for Friday to consider proposing new rules for a tailored offering regime for certain investment contracts involving crypto assets, with Reg Crypto expected to be released within roughly a week. Crypto clarity is described as the last institutional unlock for crypto, and the US is characterized as behind Japan, the UK, and other G20 countries that have already enacted appropriate crypto legislation.