Co-founders of company best known for Bella Hadid NFTs begin $77 million court battle against each other

3-D artwork of a humanoid robot shaped like a woman, all white with a red circle on the chest, wearing a bomber jacket with "Japan" on the arm. The robot has Giga Hadid's face, which is wearing a futuristic visor and earphones. The background is the Japanese flag.A "Cy-B3lla" NFT (attribution)
Krzysztof Gagacki and Edmond Truong are co-founders of Rebase.gg, some sort of augmented reality app where people go hunting for NFTs. They're best known for helping to create a "Cy-B3lla" NFT collection with model Bella Hadid, which launched in mid-2022. Speaking about skepticism of celebrity NFT projects to Vogue in June 2022, Hadid said, "Where that skepticism comes from is the people who just want to have a money grab. To me, it’s so much bigger than that. I want it to be a collective. It’s not a one-stop shop—this is a real passion."

Although the project promised to provide ongoing access to Bella Hadid and various other perks, the project website has already dropped offline, the Twitter account hasn't posted since October 2022, and the Discord is a ghost town save for occasional questions about whether the project is dead. Hadid made $1.5 million for her involvement in the project.

Things at Rebase seem to have devolved, because now Gagacki has filed suit against Truong, alleging that he "has gone rogue". The suit alleges that Truong tried to oust Gagacki from the company, stole around $2 million from a shared wallet, and damaged Gagacki's reputation. In particular, Gagacki is concerned that Truong is attempting to launch the project on the Arbitrum network without Gagacki's involvement, and that tokens minted there "could reach many times over the Rebase app's last round valuation of $150,000,000" without being shared with Gagacki.

Altogether, Gagacki is claiming damages of no less than $77 million, representing the stolen funds, the value of the app, and the profits from the possible Arbitrum deal.