Tezos taps PwC as firm’s independent external auditor

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They already have an auditor, yet the actual promised product is nowhere to be found. Will they actually deliver anything now?

Throughout the past year, Tezos has been plagued with bad press. One lawsuit after another dragged the startup down despite being off to an exceptional start. In July last year, they broke records by raising $232 million through their ICO—the biggest to be raised from an ICO at the time.

Apart from the messy in fighting, its co-founder Arthur Breitman was handed a $20,000 fine by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) for failing to disclose his engagement with Tezos while working at Morgan Stanley, and has also been banned from from entering into any brokerage dealings for a period of two years. The start-up has collected quite a few lawsuits from investors and trouble with the SEC as well, with Bitcoin Suisse AG declaring it has nothing to do with the foundation and should not be included in lawsuits against it.

In an attempt to regain some footing and possibly some of the public trust it has lost, Tezos announced July 23 that they have secured a deal with one of the world’s “Big Four” auditors, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) which will “act as the external auditor for the Foundation’s finances and operations.”

“The Foundation is committed to operating with the highest degree of integrity in the service of our mission to support the Tezos protocol, ecosystem, and community. Engaging a top-tier independent external auditor ensures that the Tezos community and its observers can trust our operations and use of finances,” they wrote.

“We believe that accountability and trust will be central pillars of any successful entity operating in the blockchain space. We are excited to make progress towards this goal with PwC Switzerland acting as our independent external auditor.”

Accusations of Tezos being vapourware became rampant as the project failed to meet its launch date several times. To this day, all they said was that they have launched a “beta-net” which would be ready in around three weeks. But statements like this are already way too familiar, as it is the exact same tune they’ve been singing since last year, and a few times again this year.

For so long as no tangible output is available for anyone to test, their promise of a “better Bitcoin” remains empty. What they urgently need to show right now (a year ago, actually) is an actual working platform.