Who am I?
- Tim, software engineer and crypto enjoyer, a tech guy working at Karu.
How I met Sun
- A long time ago, Sun launched a token on Solana called Tuki. It reached several million before unfortunately failing to survive the AI agent hype (art coins weren’t performing at all anymore). The token lost momentum, and I saw Sun not take six-figure profits. That’s when I thought, finally, a builder/artist who doesn’t rug. At that time, he could have walked away with the money in one click, but he didn’t.
- To approach this artist, I did a small audit of his website for free and sent it to him on Telegram, thinking it was a good way to make a first contact. And yeah, it worked—I made an impression. A few weeks later, he told me about a project idea: KARU. Everything was already ready—the art, the story, etc. What he was missing was a dev to make his website and some tools (basically, all the things a non-tech person doesn’t know how to do—the dev’s job, really). There was even a dApp that never got released but was fully built.
- It was through his idea that I got into Hyperliquid, and when I saw the quality of his work, I had only one goal—to push the project as far as possible with a long-term vision.
- I am not the founder of Karu. This is Sun’s project. I’m just a dev who, when he saw the quality of the work, decided to put in more effort than what was asked of him. Seeing this, Sun started delegating tasks to me, which I gladly handled.
Why not a Multisig?
- No multisig for a simple reason: the project existed before I arrived. Sun was the founder and legitimate owner. I was like an "employee" to him. (Maybe a bit too invested)
The start of the hype
- I started working hard on partnerships with Sun, who was very invested in the project as well. I even called Hypio several times to discuss a collaboration, and I will always be grateful to them because they are part of the reason we got hyped.
- I won’t list every partner, but I deeply thank those who believed in Karu and gave our holders opportunities. I’m sorry if this event is bringing them FUD.
The day of the rug
- On February 27th, around 12 PM UTC, I started getting a flood of notifications on my phone while I wasn’t home. I realized the worst possible scenario had happened—Sun disappeared with the money.
- Complete shock. Even his rug wasn’t smart. We were going to win the auction. Everything was in place for our community to become one of the biggest on Hyperliquid.
- A few hours earlier, he asked me to push the token to reach the auction by fronting some of my own funds. I didn’t find that suspicious—it’s something many projects do when they’re close to the auction price.
- My name was quickly cleared, and I want to thank everyone who helped with that because I am also a victim of this rug. My thoughts go out to everyone who lost significant amounts. I’m truly sorry.
What’s next?
- I received tons of messages—from projects and community members—supporting me and giving me ideas to try and recover the token.
- At first, I thought about recovering ownership of the Hfun token by negotiating with Loracle. But with all this FUD, if any part of the project should continue, it would be the NFTs, since the token was mainly backed by the team.
- Regarding the NFTs, many people asked me to bridge them to HL or do a relaunch. Here’s what I think:
Why not relaunch?
- The reaction of the NFTs to the rug was brutal, and that’s normal. Many sold at a loss, others took profit.
- The community's idea of airdropping an HL version of the NFTs on HyperEVM could have been good. But there’s no fair scenario:
- If I take the snapshot before the dump, those who sold will have the money from their sale plus the new NFT on HL, while those who bought after the dump will have neither.
- If I take the snapshot after the dump, those who rightfully panicked will be heavily penalized.
- We were betrayed. We were robbed. After speaking with many active members of the ecosystem, I don’t see a clean way to move forward and I won't take the risk that some people lose twice.
CTO
- If any of you want to CTO the NFT collection, I wish you the best and will fully support you. But make sure to redeploy the project, because I don’t want Sun profiting from royalties.
Final thoughts
Sun paid me for my work. He was fairly honest with me throughout the project, which is why I’m in complete disbelief about what happened. I will probably never get an answer to why he did this.
- I held onto my NFTs (except two I sold before the dump), and I won’t sell them.
- I held onto my bag of tokens and won’t sell them either.
A message to Sun
Sun, know this—you had way more money to make by pushing the project if that’s all you cared about. You had something in your hands that could have become massive. You chose to be a dishonest person, for 30k.
- 30k is a lot of money, even if in crypto, we tend to lose touch with reality. But it’s not life-changing money.
- You ruined everything and took hundreds of people down with you.
- Karma will catch up to you.
Dear Karu and HL community
Thank you for everything. I won’t stop building. I love crypto. I love building.
As a software engineer, I will always be there to help projects that need technical expertise.
Being so deeply involved in the ecosystem has taught me a lot about this space. I’m building for the growth and development of the ecosystem, and I don’t want this to tarnish my work.
I think my next adventure will focus on utility.
Tim.