Terraform Labs staff really wanted to work for Jane Street
Many people want to work at Jane Street. At blockchain infrastructure firm Terraform, the lab behind TerraUSD, multiple people were interested in joining the electronic trading giant. It seems that only one - Terraform intern Bryce Pratt - succeeded in doing so.
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A filing this week in the New York state courts accuses Jane Street of "exploit[ing]" crypto markets and "contribut[ing] to the collapse of Terraform's cryptocurrency ecosystem." Central to the filing is Bryce Pratt, who interned at Terraform before joining Jane Street in September 2021. Pratt allegedly leaked confidential information to Jane Street via the infamous "Bryce's Secret" group chat. The filing notes that at least two of his senior coworkers were interested in working at Jane Street with him.
One of them, Terraform's unnamed head of research was reportedly "actively seeking" to be hired by Jane Street and interviewed there in March 2022. Two months later, this researcher was also sending messages via Telegram to Pratt. In those messages, Pratt allegedly gave the research head a "glimpse into Jane Street." This information exchange was said to be a "two-way street."
The filing also alleges that Pratt had a "close friendship" with a second Terraform employee, and the pair "discussed the possibility of working together at Jane Street in the future." Pratt seems to have been popular during his brief period as a Terraform intern: even after leaving, the filing says he "maintained close relationships with many [Terraform] employees."
This might have been partly because Pratt was already working in Jane Street's promised land. Jane Street paid $1.4m per head in 2024. It's not clear exactly how much Terraform paid prior to its bankruptcy, but previous reports suggest it had a $6.8m pool of 'key employee retention plan awards' for senior staff. ~$4.5m went to Terraform's CEO, so it's possible the research head's package was less than even the average Jane Street employee.
It's not easy to get a job at Jane Street, which in the past has been known to conduct interviews involving ruthlessly competitive card games. Jane Street likes to hire at graduate level, which might explain why Pratt the intern got in and the head of research - who was a "friend and mentor" to him according to the filing, did not.
We asked Jane Street to comment on whether the Terraform research head ever interviewed or worked at the firm. A spokesperson for Jane Street said “this desperate suit is a transparent attempt to extract money when it is well-established that the losses suffered by Terra and Luna holders were the result of a multi-billion dollar fraud perpetrated by the management of Terraform Labs. We will defend ourselves vigorously against these baseless, opportunistic claims.” We have not spoken to Pratt.
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