At first glance, ZKasino looked like any other crypto project. It had announced a $350 million valuation for its Series A round, backed by $26 million from investors including crypto exchange MEXC. Its smart contracts were audited by the well-known security firm Certik (after an initial pass by ChatGPT). The project's testnets were operational. 

And so by the time of the project's launch, over $33 million in ether was bridged by over 10,000 participants to ZKasino's network, hoping to score extra $ZKAS when the protocol launched. After all, the project promised that the ether could be returned at users' request. 

However, there were warning signs. A deluge in Dubai cancelling ZKasino's event was one thing, but accusations of mismanagement had been leveled against the team by …