Mysten Labs to Buy $96 Million In Shares and Token Warrants Back From FTX

Debtors of collapsed cryptocurrency exchange FTX filed a motion in bankruptcy court Thursday, seeking to sell a multimillion-dollar stake in the Web3 firm Mysten Labs back to the Delaware-based startup.

The Mysten Labs offer comprises $95 million in preferred stock and $1 million worth of SUI token warrants—a financial derivative that grants its holder the right to purchase tokens at a given price under certain conditions.

Mysten Labs is building a proof-of-stake blockchain called Sui and an open-source programming language called Move. Mysten Labs’ developer network for Sui is live, with a full launch slated for the second quarter of this year.

FTX began building up its stake in Mysten Labs last August, a few months before the swift implosion of Sam Bankman-Fried’s crypto empire. The sale of its assets related to Mysten Labs represents an effort to maximize relief for debtors by current CEO John Jay Ray III, who took over FTX when it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last November.

FTX’s venture arm had led Mysten Labs’ Series B funding round. Mysten Labs announced that it had raised $300 million at a valuation of $2 billion, tapping firms as backers such as Andreessen Horowitz, Binance Labs, Coinbase Ventures, Circle, Franklin Templeton, and Samsung Next.

The funding round in Mysten Labs helped the digital assets industry retain its status in Q3 2022 as a leading sector among emerging technologies for venture capital funding, according to Pitchbook. It was the largest deal to take place during the quarter, aside from a $350 million early-stage raise for Flow, a startup founded by Adam Neumann.

The offer to reclaim FTX’s stake was sent by Mysten Labs on March 16, according to the motion, which was found to be an “attractive offer which would allow the Debtors to recover a significant amount of the value that the Debtors invested” through FTX.

The offer set a late April expiration date. In separate correspondence, Mysten Labs conveyed to FTX its “desire to consummate a transaction expeditiously.”

Mysten Labs declined a request from Decrypt for further comment.

Selling the stake in Mysten Labs for $96 million represents a slight loss compared to the amount of money that FTX had invested. Between shares and token warrants, FTX spent $102 million, according to the motion.

Though FTX said it does not plan on conducting an auction for its stake in Mysten Labs and the associated token warrants, the company noted it “may solicit higher or better offers from any third parties” until a court order is made.