The dispute between Fetch.ai CEO Humayun Sheikh and the Ocean Protocol Foundation has turned into an open confrontation. Mutual accusations, legal threats, and Binance imposing deposit restrictions have come into play. At the center of the scandal are 286 million FET tokens worth about $84 million.
It all started with the initiative of the Artificial Superintelligence (ASI) Alliance — an association created in 2024. The alliance included three AI projects: Fetch.ai, Ocean Protocol and SingularityNET. Their tokens were planned to be merged under a single economic model.
However, on Wednesday Humayun Sheikh claimed that Ocean Protocol had issued and transferred millions of OCEAN tokens to third-party addresses even before the merger. According to him, these tokens were later exchanged for FET and partially sent to centralized exchanges and market-making structures — without any public notifications.
“If Ocean had done this as an independent project, it would have been called a rug pull,” Sheikh wrote on X.
He claims that in 2023 719 million OCEAN were issued, of which 661 million in July 2025 were exchanged for 286 million FET. Then, according to him, part of these tokens was moved or sold.
Binance restricts support for OCEAN tokens
Amid the escalating conflict, Binance announced the suspension of support for deposits in OCEAN tokens starting Monday, October 20.
The exchange clarified that users will still be able to top up their balance through other supported networks, but ERC-20 standard deposits made after October 20 “will not be credited and may result in loss of funds”.
Officially, Binance does not link this decision to the conflict between Fetch.ai and Ocean Protocol. Nevertheless, the fact of blocking ERC-20 transfers may indicate internal risk control measures or even an investigation — especially considering that the disputed tokens are on the Ethereum network.
According to Humayun Sheikh, Binance’s actions are a direct response to his public calls on X to investigate Ocean Protocol’s operations.
See also: Tether’s $300M deal with Celsius raises concerns over stablecoin obligations
Humayun Sheikh promised to fund class action lawsuits against Ocean Protocol in several jurisdictions at once. He also publicly called on Binance, GSR and ExaGroup to conduct their own investigations. In addition, Sheikh appealed to FET token holders to collect evidence. According to him, a separate channel for submitting claims against Ocean Protocol will be created soon.
The Ocean Foundation responded to the accusations on X, calling them “unfounded statements and harmful rumors”.
In an official comment, the team stated that their treasury remains in full order. They also reported that they proposed to lift the confidentiality from the findings of an independent arbitrator to clarify the situation — but, according to Ocean, Sheikh declined this initiative.
