Shalini Nagarajan

American supermarket chain Trader Joe&#8217;s is pursuing legal action in California to resolve a trademark dispute with a crypto platform that bears a strikingly similar name.



On Oct. 5, the chain filed a lawsuit against a crypto platform called &#8220;Trader Joe&#8221; and its co-founder Cheng Chieh Liu, alleging that they intentionally chose a name similar to the supermarket&#8217;s.



Lawyers for the chain stated that the decentralized exchange (DEX) created a narrative around a fictional &#8220;Trader Joe,&#8221; closely associating with the supermarket’s brand.



They further contested the crypto firm&#8217;s logo, which features an image of &#8220;Trader Joe&#8221; wearing a red cap, the primary color of the grocery’s chain brand.



Red is also the dominant color of the <a href="https://blockworks.co/tag/avax">Avalanche</a> layer-1 blockchain where the DEX was first launched.



As per the lawsuit, co-founder Liu is a Chinese citizen residing in Singapore who registered the disputed domain name, <a href="https://traderjoexyz.com/avalanche">traderjoexyz.com</a>.



In the lawsuit, Trader Joe&#8217;s contests the crypto company&#8217;s use of a name deemed &#8220;confusingly similar.&#8221;&nbsp;



This name was found on the platform’s primary website, an app accessible through the Apple App Store, as well as on platforms like X, YouTube, Reddit, Github, LinkedIn, Substack, CoinMarketCap, Telegram and Discord.



When confronted, the defendants attempted to conceal their origin story in an attempt to gain an upper hand in legal proceedings regarding the traderjoexyz.com domain, according to the lawsuit.&nbsp;



The plaintiff asserts that exposing the actual story would undermine the crypto firm’s case and any legitimate claim to the domain.



“Defendants neither sought nor received Trader Joe’s permission to name their platform after Trader Joe’s,” the lawsuit said, adding that they instead sent them cease-and-desist letters and received no response.



Trader Joe, launched in 2021 by an anonymous team, operates as a non-custodial exchange protocol on the Avalanche blockchain (initially a SushiSwap fork), <a href="https://tokenterminal.com/terminal/projects/trader-joe">according</a> to Token Terminal.



Liquidity providers deposit funds into Trader Joe and, in exchange, earn trading fees from traders, referred to as supply-side fees.



Trader Joe’s claimed that the crypto firm’s employees use aliases not only externally but also within the company.



The plaintiff additionally alleged that the crypto platform’s use of the &#8220;Trader Joe&#8221; branding is enabling them to derive commercial benefits from the well-known trademark and broader reputation of the grocery chain.



“Obscuring their identities both from outsiders and each other in day-to-day business dealings evidences an intent to avoid detection, subvert legal process, and operate free of legal consequence,” they said.



Blockworks reached out to members of Trader Joe XYZ’s development team, who declined to comment.



Trader Joe&#8217;s supermarket chain requested the court to issue an order compelling the crypto firm to cease using variations of its name in their business operations.&nbsp;



It also seeks ownership of the pertinent domain names and any additional damages to be determined through legal proceedings.



Updated October 10, 2023 at 9:30 am ET: Added response from Trader Joe XYZ.



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Trader Joe’s grocery chain sues DEX of the same name

Morgan Chittum

<div id="highlights-block_613114fc99d84" class="highlights">
 <ul>
 <li>Trader Joe, a DeFi protocol that uses Avalanche blockchain, secured $5 million in a private token sale</li>
 <li>Pollen raised $5 million in seed funding, backed by The Graph and AlphaBit</li>
 </ul>
 
</div>



More money came flooding into decentralized finance (DeFi) on Thursday with a combined $10 million raise from Trader Joe and Pollen.



Trader Joe, an Avalanche-based DeFi protocol, secured $5 million in a private token sale, according to a story in <a href="https://www.theblockcrypto.com/post/116439/avalanche-defi-protocol-trader-joe-funding-three-arrows-capital" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">The Block</a>. Funds are set to go toward staff expansion in the near future — currently the company has 15 employees which it hopes to expand to 20. 



<figure class="wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter"><div class="wp-block-embed__wrapper">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="550" data-dnt="true">Trader Joe started as a grassroots, fair-launched project with a vision to be at the frontiers of defi. And now, to have the industry&#39;s greatest investors willing to put their names behind us in our quest to realise this vision is so extremely humbling. <a href="https://t.co/kxCfSDO2df">https://t.co/kxCfSDO2df</a>&mdash; cryptofish🔺 (@cryptofishx) <a href="https://twitter.com/cryptofishx/status/1433402332801224709?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 2, 2021</a></blockquote><script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div></figure>



“Trader Joe started as a grassroots, fair-launched project with a vision to be at the frontiers of [DeFi] And now, to have the industry&#8217;s greatest investors willing to put their names behind us in our quest to realise this vision is so extremely humbling,” tweeted one anonymous co-founder who goes by “Cryptofish”.



Leading investors in the round include: GBV Capital, Mechanism Capital, Defiance Capital with participation from Three Arrows Capital, Not3Lau Capital, Coin98 Ventures, Avalanche Foundation, Delphi Digital, and others.



Another co-founder, who goes by &#8220;0xMurloc&#8221;, said they chose to be anonymous because it allows them to build fast. “Compared to typical tech startups, we don&#8217;t need to spend time incorporating LLCs,” they told the Block. However, the co-founders reveal their identities to investors when necessary.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Trader Joe currently offers a trading platform but 0xMurloc said that a lending platform will be launched in the near future. The platform’s token (JOE) is up 24.1%, trading at $1.64 as of press time, according to <a href="https://www.coingecko.com/en/coins/joe" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">CoinGecko.</a>



“Our vision is to build fast, stay agile and serve users at the frontiers of DeFi,” Trader Joe tweeted following the <a href="https://twitter.com/traderjoe_xyz/status/1433402064915341319?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">announcement.</a>



<h3 class="wp-block-heading">Pollen secures $5 million</h3>



Also today, <a href="https://pollen.id/#discord" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Pollen</a>, a decentralized asset management protocol, secured $5 million in seed funding, Blockworks exclusively learned Thursday.



The funding, which was backed by The Graph and AlphaBit, will contribute to their forthcoming launch which includes a DAO platform and two index tokens.&nbsp;&nbsp;



&#8220;I founded Pollen a year ago, because I saw a huge gap in the DeFi space. There were no functional, or truly decentralized indices,” Founder and CEO Phillip Verrien said in a note to Blockworks. “We came up with the idea to create a DAPP that draws from the collective intelligence of its strongest traders. Meaning—the more our users benefited the Index through the proposals they created, i.e., adding tokens that raised the index value, the more voting power they received — Creating a financial meritocracy where the best traders drive the index value upwards, and the community as a whole benefits.”



Pollen plans to go live on Ethereum and Polygon networks in the coming months. However, the decentralized autonomous organization wants to venture into other blockchains as well.



“Pollen is bringing much-needed innovation to an industry that has traditionally been the exclusive domain of large institutions and expanding the definition of what DeFi means along the way,” AlphaBit CEO Liam Robertson said.



This latest funding news follows Alpaca and Offchain Labs <a href="https://cms.blockworks.co/funding-news-offchain-labs-raises-120m-alpaca-secures-50m/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">securing</a> a combined $170 million in Series B funding on August 31, signaling a growing appetite in investor interest for digital asset-based startups.