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{"actor":"system:backfill","investigation_id":"6243b575-8932-4306-95bf-3da978835170","kind":"publish","page_slug":"akash-network","published_at":"2026-11-06T00:29:51.621Z","sequence_num":1,"snapshot":{"content_type":"investigation","entity_name":"Akash Network","sections":[{"content":"In May 2024, security research firm ChainLight reported having found a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability in Akash Network that could have allowed an attacker to impersonate a deployment owner and execute commands on another user's cloud instances. According to ChainLight's writeup, the Akash team responded quickly to resolve the vulnerability and the firm was paid an AKT-denominated bug bounty; no instance of the flaw being exploited against users was reported. Separately, a lower-tier crypto news aggregator reported that around March 30, 2025, Akash Network experienced a surge of malicious transactions that caused severe network congestion and a temporary halt to new deployments, which the team said it resolved with subsequent fixes. This second report comes from a single low-credibility outlet and has not been independently corroborated by Akash's official channels in the sources reviewed, so it should be treated as low confidence.","heading":"Security Incidents","severity":"medium","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"ChainLight: Patch Thursday — Finding a Critical Vulnerability in Akash Network","type":"research","url":"https://medium.com/chainlight/patch-thursday-finding-a-critical-vulnerability-in-akash-network-d9c728c2606b"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Akash Network malicious transaction attack report","type":"news_article","url":"https://ourcryptotalk.com/news/akash-network-malicious-transaction-attack"}]},{"content":"Independent project assessments note that Overclock Labs, a US (Delaware) incorporated company co-founded by Greg Osuri, remains the dominant development entity behind the Akash protocol, which third-party analyses flag as a point of regulatory and centralization risk given Overclock's US domicile. The same assessments note that Overclock does not control a majority of Akash's roughly 100 validators, and point to at least one instance where the community rejected a governance proposal over concerns about lack of transparency, suggesting governance checks have some practical effect. These characterizations come from third-party crypto research/rating sources rather than court or regulatory records, and should be read as analytical commentary rather than established fact.","heading":"Centralization and Governance Concerns","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Akash Network project assessment (via search aggregation)","type":"research","url":"https://ownyourmind.pages.dev/projects/akash/"}]},{"content":"In June 2024, Akash Network founder Greg Osuri publicly alleged, in posts on social media, that he purchased access to four Nvidia A100 GPUs on rival DePIN compute platform io.net but received access to a single lower-powered RTX A4000 card instead, posting a video of the transaction. Io.net's CTO, Gaurav Sharma (referred to in coverage as Gaurav Tdhinait), responded publicly that the A4000 was a cluster management node rather than the billed compute resource, that an unhealthy node had caused the issue, and that io.net would not charge for the affected cluster; io.net also stated that six of seven clusters Osuri created had functioned successfully, and suggested the pattern of his rapid cluster creation and deletion was unusual. Osuri disputed this characterization, saying he had waited before deleting a cluster because io.net's interface failed to display GPU status correctly. This is a public dispute between two competing projects' representatives, reported mainly by crypto-news aggregators relaying both sides' social-media statements; no independent resolution or follow-up was found in available sources, and it reflects public statements rather than an adjudicated finding against either Osuri or Akash Network.","heading":"Public Dispute with io.net (June 2024)","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":3,"name":"Peer disdain, Akash founder questions io.net's DePIN controversy","type":"news_article","url":"https://chaincatcher.com/en/article/2128832"}]},{"content":"No SEC, CFTC, DOJ, or other regulatory enforcement actions, civil suits, or criminal charges against Akash Network, Overclock Labs, or Greg Osuri were identified in available sources as of this writing. Searches for \"Akash Network SEC,\" \"Akash Network lawsuit,\" and \"Akash Network fraud\" returned no matching enforcement actions; the only superficially similar hit was an unrelated New Zealand securities-fraud warning concerning a different company, \"AkashX,\" operated by a different individual, which has no connection to Akash Network and should not be conflated with it.","heading":"Regulatory and Legal Record","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":1,"name":"SEC Litigation Releases (search, no Akash Network match found)","type":"regulatory","url":"https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26063"}]},{"content":"Akash Network is a decentralized cloud compute marketplace built on the Cosmos SDK, where tenants post compute requests and independent providers bid to fulfil them, with pricing determined by reverse-auction style matching. The AKT token is used for payments, staking for network security, and governance voting, with a maximum supply reported at approximately 388.54 million tokens. Akash expanded into GPU compute for AI workloads starting around 2023–2024. The project traces its seed funding to a roughly $2 million round around March 2020, followed by a public token sale later that year raising a comparatively small amount (reported as roughly $800,000 at a reported price of about $0.767 per token); exact investor lists differ slightly between aggregator sources (e.g., Digital Asset Capital Management, Cypher Capital, Genblock Capital, Zokyo, D1 Ventures, and Goldfingr are variously cited), and these figures come from third-party crypto-data aggregators rather than Akash's own primary disclosures, so should be treated as approximate.","heading":"Background and Business Model","severity":"low","sources":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Akash Network token page","type":"official","url":"https://akash.network/token/"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Akash Network fundraising data (DropsTab)","type":"research","url":"https://dropstab.com/coins/akash-network/fundraising"}]}],"sources_used":[{"credibility":2,"name":"Akash Network token page","type":"official","url":"https://akash.network/token/"},{"credibility":2,"name":"ChainLight: Patch Thursday — Finding a Critical Vulnerability in Akash Network","type":"research","url":"https://medium.com/chainlight/patch-thursday-finding-a-critical-vulnerability-in-akash-network-d9c728c2606b"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Akash Network malicious transaction attack report","type":"news_article","url":"https://ourcryptotalk.com/news/akash-network-malicious-transaction-attack"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Peer disdain, Akash founder questions io.net's DePIN controversy","type":"news_article","url":"https://chaincatcher.com/en/article/2128832"},{"credibility":2,"name":"Akash Network project assessment","type":"research","url":"https://ownyourmind.pages.dev/projects/akash/"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Akash Network fundraising data (DropsTab)","type":"research","url":"https://dropstab.com/coins/akash-network/fundraising"},{"credibility":3,"name":"Akash Network ICO/tokenomics data (CryptoRank)","type":"research","url":"https://cryptorank.io/ico/akash-network"},{"credibility":1,"name":"SEC Litigation Releases","type":"regulatory","url":"https://www.sec.gov/enforcement-litigation/litigation-releases/lr-26063"}],"summary":"Akash Network is a blockchain-based decentralized cloud compute marketplace, launched in 2020, where tenants rent compute (including GPUs for AI workloads) from independent providers and pay in the native AKT token. Development is led primarily by Overclock Labs, a Delaware-incorporated company co-founded by Greg Osuri. No regulatory enforcement actions, fraud findings, or large-scale fund losses against Akash Network or Overclock Labs were found in available sources; the project's public record consists mainly of a responsibly-disclosed security vulnerability, a brief network congestion incident, and a public dispute between Osuri and a rival DePIN project.","timeline":[{"date":"2020-03","event":"Akash Network reportedly raised a seed round of approximately $2 million.","source":"CB Insights / aggregator fundraising data","source_url":"https://dropstab.com/coins/akash-network/fundraising"},{"date":"2020-10","event":"Akash Network's public token sale concluded, reportedly raising roughly $800,000 at a reported price of about $0.767 per AKT.","source":"Aggregator ICO/tokenomics data","source_url":"https://cryptorank.io/ico/akash-network"},{"date":"2024-05","event":"Security firm ChainLight reported discovering and disclosing a critical authentication-bypass vulnerability in Akash Network, paid a bug bounty in AKT.","source":"ChainLight Medium post","source_url":"https://medium.com/chainlight/patch-thursday-finding-a-critical-vulnerability-in-akash-network-d9c728c2606b"},{"date":"2024-06","event":"Akash founder Greg Osuri publicly alleged he received a lower-spec GPU than purchased on rival platform io.net, sparking a public dispute with io.net's CTO.","source":"ChainCatcher","source_url":"https://chaincatcher.com/en/article/2128832"},{"date":"2025-03","event":"A crypto news aggregator reported Akash Network experienced a malicious-transaction-driven congestion event that briefly halted new deployments.","source":"ourcryptotalk.com","source_url":"https://ourcryptotalk.com/news/akash-network-malicious-transaction-attack"}]},"v":1}