Corporate Raids 2.0: How Founders Can Spot—and Stop—the New Web3 Attack
In Brief
In Web3, a new form of attack is emerging — weaponized legal tactics like token freezes, used not to protect but to dismantle projects, making it critical for founders to prepare legal, structural, and mental defenses before a corporate raid hits.
Image credit: PLAY Network
The Web3 space is no stranger to attacks. Phishing scams, bridge exploits, governance manipulation — the threat surface is well known. Entire industries now exist to protect against them, from smart contract audits to hardware wallets and custody insurance.
But a quieter, more destructive form of attack is gaining ground. And it doesn’t look like an attack… until it’s too late.
This is Corporate Raids 2.0: a modern twist on the hostile tactics once used in Web2 boardrooms, now adapted for token economies. And at the center of this is a devastating weapon — the token freeze, and it may be the most effective kill-switch one can pull on a Web3 company.
What used to be backdoor power grabs (think pressuring executives, intimidating employees, hijacking shareholder votes, etc.) are now being retooled for Web3. Today’s bad actors don’t need to run a proxy fight. They just need a courtroom and an initially sympathetic judge. It’s why founders must now understand: the next “exploit” may be legal, not technical.
Legal Freeze, Total Collapse
Token freezes are being used not to protect investors, but to strategically dismantle projects. It is the atomic bomb of Web3, wiping out treasury access, destabilizing liquidity, halting partnerships, freezing payroll, and tanking community confidence — all in one motion.
Unlike a smart contract bug, the fallout isn’t technical. It’s structural, reputational, and in some cases, unrecoverable.
And worse: even when a freeze is discharged, recovery is painfully slow. The damage is already done — legal costs balloon, investor sentiment sours, roadmaps stall.
The case of PLAY Network, a Web3 gaming infrastructure startup, highlights this pattern with stark clarity. In 2024, a group of former consultants sought to freeze about half a billion $PLAY tokens through an emergency injunction. The freeze order paralyzed operations and delayed multiple game launches. Behind the scenes, the pressure intensified: demand letters were sent to employees, attempts were made to intimidate leadership, and the PLAY team was forced to fight not just in court, but for the trust of their partners and developer ecosystem.
After 6 months of litigation across multiple jurisdictions, the courts fully discharged the freeze, ruled the actions oppressive, and awarded indemnity costs. Yet the case left a wake of damage that continues today that even the courts acknowledged was designed to destroy. It’s a textbook example of how legal tools can be misused as a weapon — not to protect value, but to destroy it.
As the judge put it in the ruling, the freeze wasn’t just legally unsound. It was “meant to kill the golden goose.”
The Attack Pattern: What Founders Need to Know
This form of legal sabotage often begins quietly, with a consultant or advisor who believes they’re owed more than agreed — and starts demanding tokens; when a strategic investor wants acceleration, control, or returns that don’t match what the cap table actually entitles them to; and with a shareholder who files an ex parte injunction in court, claiming tokens might be “dissipated” or “misused”.
These are familiar tactics from Web2 — pressure campaigns dressed up as governance concern. But in Web3, they’re more dangerous. Token-based projects rely on momentum, ecosystem trust, and liquidity. A freeze shuts down the entire economic engine.
Once granted, even temporarily, these freezes are weaponized. Exchanges are alerted, employees threatened, and sometimes families harassed. The aim here is not resolution, but attrition.
This isn’t investor oversight. It’s legal extortion dressed up as fiduciary duty. And Web3 founders, especially those operating with early-stage governance setups, are vulnerable unless they prepare.
How Founders Can Pre-Arm
A token freeze is not just a legal matter. It’s an operational, financial, reputational, and psychological threat — one that can hit even the best-run teams. But like smart contract vulnerabilities, legal attack surfaces can be hardened.
Here’s what every founder can implement before a “corporate raid” ever hits:
Respond, Not React
In high-pressure situations, our instinct is to react immediately. But reactive is what bad actors count on: panic, rushed decisions, mistakes or missteps that can be used against you. Step back and get clarity. Call your lawyer, not Twitter. Protecting your project means thinking clearly and acting strategically. Use calm as your weapon.
Recognize Threats for What They Are
Legal-sounding threats are still threats. Telling a founder ‘Give us the tokens or we’ll destroy you’ is extortion, plain and simple. Founders must be prepared to recognize it as such. Document everything. Bring in legal counsel immediately. If someone follows through on their threats, that becomes evidence of criminal conduct. Their tactic is fear. Your counter is exposure.
Tighten Contracts and Other Legal Frameworks
Leverage smart contracts and decentralized legal agreements to clearly define roles, responsibilities, and protections. Any ambiguity is a potential entry point for bad actors. Invest in a strong legal team, and together routinely review all contracts to close loopholes and clarify terms – there’s no “context” to a contract, only what’s written.
Distribute Token and Control Authority
Centralized control makes your project an easy target. Design your tokenomics to ensure broad distribution among the community and retail investors. Allocate tokens through community mining, airdrops, or vesting schedules that favor decentralization and limit any one party’s leverage. Projects with 10%+ token-holders are practically inviting a hostile takeover.
Choose the Right Jurisdiction – Before You Need It
Founders often defer jurisdiction questions until a conflict arises. That’s too late. Incorporate in jurisdictions with strong blockchain/digital asset frameworks – like Gibraltar or Switzerland – can deter hostile claims and ensure clear procedures when disputes occur, adding a layer of legal resilience.
Lock Down Your IP and Infrastructure
Founders should treat deployment keys, admin access, and critical infrastructure as part of their core security posture. Multi-signature wallets as used by leading DeFi protocols like Uniswap, hardware modules, and access segmentation should be standard. Bad actors don’t just target the company – they may go after the tech stack itself.
Develop Contingency Plans Now
You don’t wait for a fire to figure out where the exits are. Founders should run a simulation of a legal attack: who leads the response, who handles exchanges and partners, how communications are issued, and how the team stays coordinated. These are standard playbooks for major projects that have quickly addressed security breaches or malicious attacks.
Monitor the Narrative, and Own It
A raid often begins online and not in court. DMs start circulating. Anonymous accounts hint at scandal. It’s meant to shake community trust before the facts are known – and force you into submission. You don’t need to over-defend, but you do need to respond. Trust me, this happened to us at PLAY. Stay vigilant; their tactics are relentless.
Your Mind Is Your First Line of Defense
In the fast-paced world of Web3, it’s easy to get caught up in the noise – feeling like the entire ecosystem is watching your every move or that your project’s legal battles are all-consuming. But often, most of this noise isn’t as loud as it seems. Only those directly involved truly know the struggles you’re facing. Attacks like this are engineered to wear you down. Disconnect when needed. Go outside. Talk to people who ground you. When your mind is clear, decisions are better, faster, and harder to manipulate.
Why This Matters — Especially for Female Founders
Cases like this also surface a deeper, uncomfortable reality. Some investors expect to control founders. And when those founders happen to be women, pushback often escalates.
One litigator described himself as a shotgun, paid to threaten a startup founder’s team and derail the roadmap.
This pattern isn’t unique, but it is familiar: founders, especially female founders, are often underestimated. The attacks are calculated to hit where it hits most. They target your livelihood, your stability, your reputation. They’ll suggest you won’t work again. They’ll try to shake your confidence before the real fight even begins. The assumption is you’ll back down quietly, that you won’t have the resources or resolve to push back – especially once things get public.
This is unacceptable. But the tactics will repeat, until the industry calls it what it is — a power grab disguised as a governance dispute.
What’s at stake isn’t just equity. It’s who gets to keep building, and who gets forced out. And it’s about ensuring that legal systems don’t become tools to silence, intimidate, or erase the very builders Web3 claims to empower.
Founders of all backgrounds deserve systems that protect them from bad actors who exploit legal loopholes. Because when those protections are weak, it’s not just founders who suffer. It’s innovation itself.
Closing Word
Token freezes are not safeguards. Today, they have become the new Web3 attack, engineered to disable entire projects in a single move. They are used by actors who know exactly how devastating they can be. And like any exploit, they flourish when the system fails to close the gap.
Every founder deserves to spend their time building — not spend a year or more fighting to reclaim what was rightfully theirs.
That begins with strong legal protections, a vigilant community, and strategic safeguards designed to prevent hostile takeovers before they happen.
Proactive systems matter. But so does mental stamina. Corporate raids 2.0 are engineered to wear you down — to make you feel alone, overwhelmed, and outmatched. Protecting your mental health is as critical as protecting your multisig. Take breaks. Build support. Stay grounded. A clear mind makes better decisions — and bad actors know it.
Preparation won’t eliminate bad actors. But it raises the cost of attack. And in Web3, that might be the best deterrent of all.
The goal isn’t just to survive the next freeze. It’s to make sure the next attacker thinks twice.
Disclaimer
In line with the Trust Project guidelines, please note that the information provided on this page is not intended to be and should not be interpreted as legal, tax, investment, financial, or any other form of advice. It is important to only invest what you can afford to lose and to seek independent financial advice if you have any doubts. For further information, we suggest referring to the terms and conditions as well as the help and support pages provided by the issuer or advertiser. MetaversePost is committed to accurate, unbiased reporting, but market conditions are subject to change without notice.
About The Author
Christina Macedo, the CEO and Founder of PLAY, has a strong background in tech leadership, law, and technology. Her professional expertise includes integrating blockchain into gaming to expand access to game development and enhance player engagement. Christina frequently writes about Web3 technologies, emphasizing their potential to shape the future of gaming. She is also actively involved in discussions about decentralizing gaming ecosystems and the global impact of Web3 on mobile gaming dynamics, sharing her insights through various speaking engagements at international conferences.
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Christina Macedo, the CEO and Founder of PLAY, has a strong background in tech leadership, law, and technology. Her professional expertise includes integrating blockchain into gaming to expand access to game development and enhance player engagement. Christina frequently writes about Web3 technologies, emphasizing their potential to shape the future of gaming. She is also actively involved in discussions about decentralizing gaming ecosystems and the global impact of Web3 on mobile gaming dynamics, sharing her insights through various speaking engagements at international conferences.
