Zora Overhauls Token Policies Following ZachXBT Exposé

Zora scrambles to rewrite its rulebook after blockchain sleuth ZachXBT calls out questionable token practices.

Policy Pivot

The platform slashes approval times and implements stricter listing requirements—no more rubber-stamping dubious projects. Developers now face enhanced due diligence checks before tokens hit the marketplace.

Community Backlash

Users flood social media demanding transparency, forcing Zora's hand. The overhaul cuts through typical corporate bureaucracy—responding to criticism in days rather than quarters.

Finance Reality Check

Another day, another crypto project learning that actual due diligence beats hoping nobody notices the cut corners. Sometimes the market self-regulates—through public shaming rather than SEC filings.

ZachXBT Exposes Controversial Talks with Sahil Arora

The new change came after crypto sleuth ZachXBT, shared some screenshots online that suggested that executives from Zora and Coinbase were in talks with Arora about possible collaboration, as confirmed by Protos.

Why did your team and Jesse from Coinbase engage at all with Sahil to begin with?

His list of celebrity coin rug pulls on solana is well documented on X by CT and on YT by Coffeezilla so a quick search would have revealed warnings. pic.twitter.com/9eXUfgfSP6

Arora is well known in the crypto space for orchestrating celebrity rug pulls, with names like Jason Derulo, Caitlyn Jenner, and Iggy Azalea attached to projects that quickly collapsed. 

He has claimed to have made thirty million dollars last year from such ventures and bragged that he was SAFE under Donald Trump’s lighter approach to crypto regulation.

Among the leaked exchanges were messages involving Jesse Pollak, the head of Coinbase’s Base App, who appeared to advise Arora to drop what he called the “bad guy positioning” and said he was looking forward to seeing Arora’s “positive impact.”

Zora Executives Promote Fake Tyson Fury Account

Other screenshots showed Zora co-founder Jacob Horne and head of partnerships Zak Krevitt in emails where Arora claimed he had onboarded heavyweight boxing champion Tyson Fury to the platform.

Horne later promoted what he thought was Fury’s account on the platform. He even shared a tokenized post that he said he had “just saw.” But the account turned out to be fake. After Zora deleted the page, users quickly complained that they could no longer trade the token connected to the fake account.

Pollak later tried to defend his contact with Arora. He said “I told [Arora] he had a bad rap, bad actors aren’t tolerated on base, and he’d need to demonstrate positive impact.” He added that he was willing to hear Arora out but insisted that “no live meeting ever happened” and that the two parties were not “working together.” 

His explanation drew mockery across X, with ZachXBT reposting the defense but swapping Arora’s name with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the Lazarus hacker group to show how silly it sounded.

overall, my bias is to be open minded when someone DMs me. Kim Jong Un reached out and said he was interested in onboarding people to zora. I told him he had a bad rap, bad actors aren’t tolerated on base, and he’d need to demonstrate positive impact. I was also willing to hear…

Zora raised fifty million dollars in 2022 through Coinbase Ventures. The platform is designed like a social media site where every post becomes a tradable coin. Coinbase leaders, including Pollak and CEO Brian Armstrong, have promoted Zora before, showing how closely it is tied to the exchange.

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