Jump Trading’s crypto arm has filed a federal lawsuit against former software engineer and Firedancer co-lead Liam Heeger, alleging he breached a non-compete agreement and misused confidential information to build and fund a rival blockchain startup, Unto Labs. The complaint, lodged on Jan. 21 in a Chicago federal court, claims Heeger began planning and fundraising for a “directly competing” next‑generation Layer 1 blockchain while still employed at Jump, and then rapidly closed a seed round after resigning. According to the filing, Heeger resigned from Jump around Nov. 11, 2024, after serving as a core engineer on Firedancer, Jump’s high-performance independent validator client for the Solana ecosystem. Jump alleges that even before his departure, Heeger met venture capital firms at the Solana Breakpoint conference in Singapore to secretly raise capital for Unto Labs while publicly representing Jump and presenting Firedancer updates. Within roughly a month of leaving, Unto Labs reportedly secured about $3 million in funding at an implied $50 million valuation, which Jump says violates a two‑year non‑compete and leverages intellectual property and confidential know‑how Heeger developed at the firm. The lawsuit asserts that Heeger had extensive access to Jump’s unreleased codebases, blockchain designs, tools, and business strategies related to Firedancer and other crypto initiatives, and claims this information is being exploited to the detriment of Jump in a directly competing L1 venture. Jump is asking the court to enforce the non‑competition agreement for the contractual period, bar Heeger and collaborators from continuing work that allegedly violates those terms, and compel the return of any proprietary materials. A spokesperson for Unto Labs has said that Heeger and the company deny the allegations, framing the dispute at the intersection of aggressive non‑compete enforcement, IP ownership, and talent mobility in high‑end crypto infrastructure engineering.

AI-generated background, compiled from web sources — not editorial content.

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