Alex Mashinsky, the former CEO of Celsius, has agreed to surrender all rights to assets tied to the collapsed crypto lender.

According to newly filed court documents, Mashinsky and entities associated with him, including AM Ventures Holdings Inc., Koala1 LLC, and Koala3 LLC, will be excluded from any future distributions under the Celsius bankruptcy plan.

The filing stated:

“All Claims asserted by, or scheduled by the Debtors on behalf of, (1) Mr. Mashinsky, (2) AMV, (3) Koala1, and (4) Koala3 are withdrawn, disallowed, and shall receive no distribution under the Plan.”

The document also stated that the funds freed from the forfeiture should be redistributed to affected customers and creditors.

This development marks another chapter in Celsius’s ongoing bankruptcy proceedings, which began in mid-2022 following the platform’s abrupt suspension of withdrawals.

So far, Celsius has returned roughly $2.53 billion to users. Approximately 70% of creditors have received some form of repayment, but the process has been lengthy and complex.

Celsius bankruptcy

Celsius halted user withdrawals in June 2022, locking up nearly $4.7 billion in customer funds, amid the market instability driven by LUNA’s collapse in the prior month.

The company was forced to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 2022, triggering investigations into its financial practices and the conduct of its leadership.

Mashinsky was arrested in 2023 over several fraud-related charges and later pleaded guilty as part of his legal proceedings. Prosecutors claimed that he misled investors about the company’s financial health while offloading personal holdings of Celsius’s native token. They added that his actions gave users false confidence even as the platform was nearing collapse.

Last month, Mashinsky was sentenced to 12 years in prison, avoiding the 20-year term prosecutors had pursued. His defense argued that a longer sentence would amount to life imprisonment for the 59-year-old.

His downfall joins a growing list of disgraced crypto leaders, including FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried and Terra’s Do Kwon, who were once industry icons whose collapses have reshaped public and regulatory perceptions of digital assets.

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Bancor launched a landmark patent lawsuit against Uniswap on May 20, accusing the dominant DEX of eight years of unauthorized use of its patented automated market maker (AMM) technology, threatening to upend DeFi’s open-source foundations and IP norms.

The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York by Bancor’s nonprofit Bprotocol Foundation and original developer LocalCoin, claims Uniswap’s protocol infringes on Bancor’s 2017 patents that transformed decentralized trading, demanding damages and challenging how DeFi innovation is protected and monetized.

Legal Tussle Over AMM Patent Infringement Challenges DeFi Ethos

Central to the dispute is Bancor’s claim that it invented and patented the constant product automated market maker (CPAMM) model that powers permissionless on-chain trades through smart contracts.

Bancor noted that it filed the original patent application for its invention on January 8, 2017, and released a white paper the following month.

The Bancor Protocol, launched in June 2017, was the first DEX powered by an AMM model. Bancor was granted two patents and launched the first CPAMM-based DEX that year.

Uniswap, which launched its v1 protocol in 2018, has since grown into the dominant DEX in crypto with over $40 billion in total value locked.

Bancor now alleges that Uniswap has been infringing on its patents from the beginning and has done so without licensing, authorization, or collaboration.

“For the last eight years, Uniswap has been using our patented technology in its projects without our permission. As a result, we have taken legal action to defend our technology for the good of the entire DeFi community,” Bancor’s project lead, Mark Richardson, stated.

The plaintiffs claim that Uniswap’s most recent protocol release, v4, continues the use of the infringing CPAMM model.

Bancor and LocalCoin are seeking damages and claim that allowing such unlicensed use threatens the incentive structure for innovation across the decentralized finance industry.

“If companies like Uniswap can act unchecked without consequence, we fear it will hinder innovation across the industry to the detriment of all DeFi players,” Richardson added.

The legal challenge brings new attention to intellectual property disputes in a sector that has historically thrived on open-source principles.

Uniswap, often seen as the largest decentralized exchange, has yet to respond publicly. If the case proceeds, it could force the DeFi industry to confront questions about the role of patents and ownership over foundational blockchain technologies.

Court Clears Bancor of U.S. Charges as Uniswap Skates Past SEC Probe

As Bancor steps into a historic intellectual property battle against Uniswap, both protocols are emerging from very different regulatory backdrops.

In September 2024, a Texas federal judge dismissed a securities class action lawsuit filed against Bancor’s operators, citing a lack of U.S. jurisdiction.

The plaintiffs had accused Bancor of misleading investors with its now-suspended impermanent loss protection program, claiming over $2.3 billion was drawn into the protocol under false promises.

But the court found Bancor’s ties to the U.S. too weak, pointing instead to Israel as a more appropriate venue for legal action. The ruling effectively shields Bancor from U.S. securities laws, at least for now.

Meanwhile, Uniswap Labs secured a major win of its own. In February 2025, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its investigation into the firm, nearly a year after issuing a Wells notice.

Bancor now has TVL at $58 million, 98% below its peak in May 2021, according to DeFiLlama.

However, Uniswap is now commanding 23% of daily DEX volume and celebrating a $3 trillion all-time milestone. The coming patent war is shaping up not just as a legal fight but as a defining moment for DeFi’s future.

The post Bancor Launches Historic Patent War Against Uniswap – Could This $40B DEX Battle Redefine DeFi IP Rights? appeared first on Cryptonews.

Everyone has rights. The right to privacy. The right to vote. The right to own a cat. When it comes to gaming, there are also rights in place that dictate the freedoms players have within the virtual worlds they roam for hours. These include the right to explore anywhere and, in some instances, the right to own the assets they create. But what exactly does ownership mean in the context of gaming, and why’s it such a big deal to a growing subset of players?

From Zero to Full Ownership

If you’d asked a video gamer in the late 90s if they’d like to own their in-game assets they’d have laughed at you. They already own the console and the cartridge: what else could they wish to own – the rights to print t-shirts displaying their high score? Back then, hardware was owned by the players but all game assets were owned by the publishers. The idea that original content created by players could form a multi-billion dollar economy would have seemed as far-fetched as the notion that the entire world would one day be on the internet.

Fast forward a quarter century and here we are: not just are we all online, but gaming is larger than Hollywood and, thanks to a 21st century invention called blockchain, it’s possible to own the assets that are created in-game. And not just to own them but to trade them, transfer them, and in some cases control the rights to their IP, allowing for the creation of cartoons, comics, and other content originally conceived deep within a video game world. It is, as the saying goes, quite a time to be alive.

Web3 Ownership in Action

To non-web3 gamers which, for the foreseeable future constitutes the majority of all players, the idea of wanting to own your character or armor might seem strange. Who cares whose ball it is so long as you can play? But the idea of “true” ownership, as popularized by the web3 model, is about much more than bragging rights or catering to the whims of “not your keys, not your characters” blockchain zealots. It’s ultimately about evolving the capabilities of what can be done with gaming, particularly when it comes to user-generated content.

Not so long ago, character customization options were limited, leaving little scope for creating anything unique or remotely valuable to other players. But as gaming has evolved, the parameters of what can be created within sprawling virtual worlds has expanded dramatically, creating a huge secondary market for items that can advance game progress, level up characters, equip them with powerful weapons, and add exclusive accessories. Web3 games developers have taken this seemingly marginal use case and created an entire industry around it. And a sizable tranche of gamers have bought into this model with aplomb, demonstrating that players rights is an idea whose time has come.

As web3 studio Mythical Games reasons, “Players who have the freedom to trade their game items as they wish are more engaged, have more fun, and value their assets more.” That, in essence, is the elevator pitch for granting players the right to own their content. Mythical is adamant that economies centered on digital ownership will grant players a greater stake in the games they love and create powerful second-order effects such as the ability to govern game development or even to develop spin-off content of their own.

Mythical Games, as with most other web3 studios, automatically tokenizes in-game items as NFTs, enabling seamless ownership and the ability to freely lend, sell, or transfer them to other players. Web3 gaming platform The Sandbox takes a similar approach, empowering users to create, own, and monetize their gaming experiences. Players can buy, develop, and monetize virtual real estate and use their NFTs across different experiences within The Sandbox ecosystem. Like Mythical Games, The Sandbox lets players experience genuine ownership, enabling them to reap the rewards for their creativity and time spent in-game.

The Case for Letting Players Own It All

The benefits to players of being able to own the weapons, skins, or virtual real estate they’ve spent hundreds of hours refining are evident. What’s less commonly examined is the benefits to developers of doing so. Introducing a decentralized, player-driven model allows developers to be far bolder and experimental than they could otherwise be were they operating a traditional video game.

From setting up a virtual casino on your patch of metaverse land to having your character fight an opponent in an entirely different game, there’s a lot that can be done once studios learn to let go and allow communities to steer the ship. This doesn’t mean relinquishing control altogether, incidentally: studios still retain the right to build whatever they like and to launch new content, sequels, prequels, and tie-ins. But through furnishing an army of players with the rights to own their content and tell the world about it, they gain an army of ambassadors who will onboard new players and drive greater revenue to studios.

Just as the success of NFT collections such as Bored Apes would have been impossible without owners supplying the energy, amplification, and trading volume, the same is proving true of web3 games. It’s not the only case for playing them – we haven’t even touched upon unique features such as token rewards or universal access or censorship-resistance – but it’s one of the most compelling.

As web3 technology matures and permeates everything, player ownership will become a standard feature in gaming. This inevitable embrace of blockchain will give players, developers, and creators something to gain, ushering in a more equitable and immersive gaming future with players’ rights at their core.