Tezos, the startup which raised $232 million in a July initial coin offering, plunged on derivative exchanges after revealing a management spat and little progress in developing its product.

Derivatives on Tezos tokens fell as much as 31 percent, according to exchange HitBTC. On BitMEX, December futures on the tokens plunged 58 percent as traders unwound bets the project would be launched before the end of the year. The actual tokens have yet to be created.

Founders Arthur and Kathleen Breitman said in a blog post on Wednesday that recruitment had come to a standstill and little work has been done on their product: a better blockchain for digital currencies. They also criticized Johann Gevers, the head of a Swiss foundation which oversees their funds. Gevers didn’t respond to an emailed query.

Experts have warned for months about the risks and lack of transparency in ICOs, which have raked in $3 billion this year despite offering little protection or guarantees to investors. Whether Tezos recovers to deliver value to investors could go a long way to shaping how authorities regulate ICOs.

"People had no idea what was going on in Tezos,” said Arthur Hayes, a former market maker at Citigroup Inc. who now runs BitMEX, a bitcoin derivatives venue in Hong Kong. "There’s a lot of public information on what’s going on with a project, but most people are too lazy to do any real homework."

The ICO was run by the Tezos foundation, which is based in Zug, Switzerland and operates independently of the Breitman’s Dynamic Ledger Solutions Inc. DLS owns the intellectual property of Tezos, include source code for its ledger, logos and trademark applications.

“From the outset, we worked nonstop to make the transition as smooth as possible, making suggestions to the foundation to help them continue the work we had been doing,” the Breitmans said in the blog post. “However, getting anything done proved difficult.”

The token for ethereum, which is used as a platform to launch most ICOs, slipped about 2 percent following the news, according to data compiled by Coindesk. Other ICO tokens such a OmiseGo and Bancor also fell.