EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV
webAuthor
Zachary Robinson🔸
Credibility Rating
3/5
Good(3)Good quality. Reputable source with community review or editorial standards, but less rigorous than peer-reviewed venues.
Rating inherited from publication venue: EA Forum
Relevant to AI safety funding ecosystem governance; EV housed major EA orgs affected by FTX collapse, and this decentralization restructures institutional infrastructure that has supported AI safety work.
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436
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eaforum
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CommunityBuilding effective altruismFTX collapseOrganization updatesAnnouncements and updatesEffective Ventures
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Importance: 38/100blog postnews
Summary
Effective Ventures announced a $26.8 million settlement with the FTX bankruptcy estate (100% of funds received) and plans to decentralize the EA ecosystem by transitioning major projects like CEA, 80,000 Hours, and Giving What We Can into independent legal entities. An independent investigation by law firm Mintz found no evidence EV leadership was aware of SBF's criminal fraud.
Key Points
- •EV US and EV UK settled with FTX bankruptcy estate for $26.8M, equal to 100% of funds received from FTX in 2022.
- •Independent investigation by law firm Mintz found no evidence EV leadership knew of SBF's criminal fraud.
- •EV plans to decentralize EA ecosystem by spinning out CEA, 80,000 Hours, Giving What We Can as independent entities.
- •Structural governance improvements implemented post-FTX, including enhanced donor due diligence and legal staffing, to be open-sourced.
- •Settlement resolves EV's financial entanglement with FTX estate, allowing projects to fundraise without settlement liability concerns.
Cited by 1 page
| Page | Type | Quality |
|---|---|---|
| FTX Collapse: Lessons for EA Funding Resilience | Concept | 78.0 |
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# EV updates: FTX settlement and the future of EV
By Zachary Robinson🔸
Published: 2023-12-13
We’re announcing two updates today that we believe will strengthen the effective altruism ecosystem.
FTX updates
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First, we’re pleased to say that both Effective Ventures UK and Effective Ventures US have agreed to settlements with the FTX bankruptcy estate. As part of these settlements, EV US and EV UK (which I’ll collectively refer to as “EV”) have between them paid the estate $26,786,503, an amount equal to 100% of the funds the entities received from FTX and the FTX Foundation (which I’ll collectively refer to as “FTX”) in 2022. All of this money was either originally received from FTX or allocated to pay the settlement with the knowledge and support of their original donor. This means that EV’s projects can continue to fundraise with confidence that donations won’t be used to cover the cost of this settlement. We strongly condemn fraud and the actions underlying Sam Bankman-Fried’s conviction.
Also related to FTX, in September we completed an independent investigation about the relationship between FTX and EV. The investigation, commissioned from the law firm Mintz, included dozens of interviews as well as reviews of tens of thousands of messages and documents. Mintz found no evidence that anyone at EV (including employees, leaders of [EV-sponsored projects](https://ev.org/organisations/), and trustees) was aware of the criminal fraud of which Sam Bankman-Fried has now been convicted.
While we are not publishing any additional details regarding the investigation because doing so could reveal information from people who have not consented to their confidences being publicized and could waive important legal privileges that we do not intend to waive, we recognize that knowledge of criminal activity isn’t the only concern. I plan to share other non-privileged information on lessons learned in the aftermath of FTX and encourage others to share their reflections as well.
EV also started working on structural improvements shortly after FTX’s collapse and continued to do so alongside the investigation. Over the past year, we have implemented structural governance and oversight improvements, including restructuring the way the two EV charities work together, updating and improving key corporate policies and procedures at both charities, increasing the rigor of donor due diligence, and staffing up the in-house legal departments. Nevertheless, good governance and oversight is not a goal that can ever be definitively ‘completed’, and we’ll continue to iterate and improve. We plan to open source those improvements where feasible so the whole EA ecosystem can learn from EV’s challenges and benefit from the work we’ve done.
We’re pleased to have reached this point and to bring our financial interactions with the FTX bankruptcy to a close. We expect the settlements will permanently resolve matters between EV US + EV UK and the FTX estate, enab
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