protos.com
Su Zhu, the once-imprisoned co-founder of collapsed hedge fund Three Arrows Capital (3AC), took to X (formerly Twitter) to promote MAJIN, a supposedly expert trader with ‘surgical levels of analysis’ who, according to him, posted the world’s best commentary for traders during last weekend’s crypto market crash.
Earning hundreds of thousands of impressions, MAJIN is a curious recommendation for several reasons. Commenters under Zhu’s endorsement immediately called MAJIN a scammer and rug-puller among various expletives.
Elsewhere, critics claim that MAJIN has asked for money, reneged on promises, and failed to refund victims. In any case, Protos reached out to MAJIN for comment on his contentious background.
MAJIN, whose username ‘MajinSayan’ is a Dragon Ball Z reference, has spent most of the year posting about DeFi trades and traders. He claims to have been “kicking against nepotistic circles, insider schemes, actual fraud, and other anomalies.”
“Don’t leave that out of the article,” he underscored.
Aside from Zhu’s endorsement, the next most popular tweet about MAJIN is an allegation by widely respected forensic investigator ZachXBT that MAJIN helped raise over 160 ether for an abandoned NFT project, The Bazaar.
The Bazaar made MAJIN famous for all the wrong reasons. He spent a long time promoting the NFT collection which has been abandoned since 2022. Its website is offline entirely.
According to ZachXBT and many critics, MAJIN solicited hundreds of thousands of dollars for the project and then refused to gain a refund for any victims. In a comment to Protos, MAJIN obviously disagreed with this characterization.
MAJIN’s post-mortem on The Bazaar
“What happened with The Bazaar is separate from me getting into cycles of self-destruction. I was not in charge of the treasury, I apparently also legally have no link with the corporation that was set up, but no one did anything wrong,” MAJIN said.
“The two devs/co-founders just were delaying things to keep building the codebase. All logistics were put in place. Some equity deals and other offers of partnerships were rejected by the devs who did not want to sell themselves short.
“At some point, the 2021 top was in, our previous angels backed out, and there was no runway to launch. So we had to start pitching to every VC in the industry. I recall the entirety of LUNA meltdown busy pitching. In the end, some, that showed interest, still didn’t go through with it, either because logistics and scaling of real world is less secure than virtual projects, or because it was a dark bear market in 2022.
“In the end, nothing could be done to start the project which otherwise was fully ready and merely out of runway due to an unfortunate set of circumstances. There were even some that showed interest in buying the codebase, or sparking life into the frozen project. But like I said, since I have no legal link to the corporation, and I’m not in charge of any decision, I don’t have control over why and how that stuff did not happen.”
MAJIN explains cycles of self-destruction
Next, MAJIN responded to other criticisms.
“On the other point: Me taking on debts, and staying unstable, kept getting stuck in cycles of self-destruction. I will not be ashamed of hardships I have caused or experienced, and it disturbs me that it’s being used as a discrediting campaign today, instead of, let’s say, last year.
“Nor did I intentionally try to harm anyone, I haven’t intentionally tried to take advantage of anyone, I have explicitly rejected all extractive offers for promoting projects, and have been called retarded by everyone offering since that’s how normalized it is.
“So what are you publishing about? A guy whose real-world NFT project got let down by an industry focused on projects that secure value-extraction. A guy that let himself slip into darkness. A guy that finally escaped that abyss.
“Furthermore, I want to reiterate that there are worse things happening, on higher scales, which actually deserve our attention right now. So publishing an article about me in this case, helps no one.”
Protos asked one final question: Do you have any on-the-record response to claims that you’ve asked for loans or other temporary funds and failed to return that money to lenders or people who expected repayment?
MAJIN responded, “Don’t worry, everything will eventually be cleared.”