Ethereum Foundation "Dissent" Controversy: Two Co-Authors of Joint Letter Fired, Lawsuit Reveals Internal Details

Author: Justin Leroux, CEO of GridPlus

Compiled by: Wu Shuo Blockchain

TL;DR

· A newly filed complaint sheds light on the circumstances behind the departure of multiple core contributors from the Ethereum Foundation this year. The author argues that Co-Managing Director Bastian Aue prioritized employee compliance with management over Ethereum and its values, demanding employees sign a pledge supporting The Mandate or face termination. Fifty-three members of the Protocol Group signed a joint letter opposing this approach, and two of the letter's organizers were subsequently fired.

· At the time, Co-Managing Director and Board Member Hsiao-Wei Wang had noted that employee concerns were crucial to the Foundation's future. Vitalik Buterin continues to support retaining the controversial seppuku clause and has defended the sudden implementation of the signing requirement and subsequent termination decisions.

· The author calls on the Board of Directors to acknowledge that the ultimatum and the April 6 terminations were mistaken, and urges the Foundation to remove the contentious clause so employees can openly express dissent. The article concludes by citing the standard Aue previously set for employees' departure, implying he should now leave the Foundation under the same criteria.

A lawsuit filed last week filled in critical details, explaining why the Ethereum Foundation saw a series of high-profile departures throughout this year. The Mandate, which pushed this conflict to a boiling point, itself outlines how the Foundation's leadership should have acted at the time and what steps need to be taken now.

Over the past few days, I have reread this complaint repeatedly and written this piece to share my findings. The complaint details how the Foundation undermined its own legitimacy through its own actions, negatively impacting the entire Ethereum ecosystem.

The Mandate

On March 13 this year, the Ethereum Foundation released a document titled The Mandate, describing it as serving three roles simultaneously: a charter, a declaration, and an internal guide for action. I have read numerous mission statements, and very few struck me as both genuine and practical, but most of this document is indeed well-written.

I have been investing over a decade into the Ethereum space, and the values listed in the document clearly articulate the principles I hold dear in dedicating myself to this field. At its core is CROPS: ensuring Ethereum remains censorship-resistant, open-source, privacy-preserving, and secure.

I am writing this because I have always believed that Ethereum and its decentralized technology stack are vital technologies for safeguarding personal freedom, capable of reaching their full potential only through careful stewardship. It is out of this conviction that my personal life and career have revolved around this ecosystem. This also makes drafting this article particularly difficult, as the evidence clearly shows that the Ethereum Foundation's leadership has failed in this responsibility.

By laying out these events, I hope to clarify exactly what happened, why it has caused severe harm to the entire Ethereum ecosystem, and how things should be corrected moving forward.

When The Mandate was published, cracks appeared within the Foundation, followed by the successive departures of several high-profile members, sparking much speculation. It was not until former Head of Protocol Support Kayleen Fulton (better known in the Ethereum ecosystem by her handle Nixo) filed a lawsuit in U.S. Federal Court in Colorado that more details came to light.

This complaint fills in key details that fueled much speculation earlier this year. It alleges that incoming Co-Managing Director Bastian Aue suppressed internal dissent, including from some board members, demanding absolute compliance from everyone, despite these actions directly contradicting the very Mandate he himself endorsed.

The Mandate states that the Foundation is “neither the parent, owner, nor ruler of Ethereum.” The document further pledges: “When we make mistakes, especially major ones, we will acknowledge them humbly and gracefully, and candidly and clearly explain why our perspective has changed.”

It also reads: “We hold ourselves to high standards and treat others with good faith. Resilient systems are built by those who can express dissent clearly without hurting others and maintain curiosity even under pressure.” The document also describes Ethereum as a technology that grants freedom, allowing people to escape “power relationships imposed without true consent, or power relationships where speaking up carries heavy costs.”

The defendants listed in the complaint include the Ethereum Foundation’s entities in Switzerland and Singapore, two umbrella employer services, Co-Managing Director Bastian Aue, and Vitalik Buterin. The complaint was submitted by the plaintiff and reflects their perspective and selection of facts. The Foundation has not yet filed a response.

Nevertheless, most of the content in the complaint is drawn directly from the Foundation’s own internal communication channels. I know several individuals who experienced this firsthand and have spoken with them. To my understanding, the complaint accurately describes what transpired.

Within days of its release, The Mandate faced its first test, and the test stemmed precisely from the practices it champions: maintaining curiosity under pressure, clearly expressing dissent, while treating others well. Those who raised objections most carefully and aligned best with the Mandate’s own standards were fired. As they left, the Foundation’s culture of openness and collaboration vanished alongside them.

The Seppuku Clause

As I mentioned at the beginning, I largely agree with the contents of The Mandate. So why did these people, originally collaborating for a shared goal they all valued, end up in conflict over this document?

Page 11 of The Mandate features an illustration embedding a section titled SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE. This license was sourced from the Milady NFT community, intended as a joke—a scene that can make bored ape-looking folks appear like Rhodes Scholars.

The only public source I could find is the wiki page for Remilia, the company behind Milady NFT. The page was created on February 5 this year, 20 days before the draft Mandate was sent to employees. In another context, this would barely cause awkwardness and remain inconsequential.

The license stipulates that any “author, maintainer, editor, or (re)distributor” who fails to fulfill any promise in the license, or modifies or deletes any part of it, must “die by sword.” The Foundation appended its own line below it: “If the Foundation fails to fulfill its solemn commitment to Ethereum, may the Foundation die by the sword.” Followed by a heart emoji.

Some defended it, claiming it was merely an untimely joke from leadership, the kind Michael Scott from The Office might crack. But a joke requires the audience to find it funny. Here, the audience was Foundation staff. On February 25, Board Member Aya Miyaguchi sent the draft to employees, inviting them to co-create and turn it into a document everyone could endorse.

Employees voiced their feedback in writing within the board’s own communication channels. Two days after the draft circulated, Trent Van Epps wrote that the license “must be removed.” By March 2, someone formally proposed deleting it, with 79 employees voting in favor. Someone asked management in writing whether signing the document meant they had to commit suicide.

Another employee noted that a colleague had taken their own life the previous year. On March 5, Vitalik Buterin informed staff that The Mandate was being revised, with “substantial changes coming, especially for the parts raising the most concern.” At the time, it seemed things would be handled appropriately.

On March 13, the board published The Mandate. Not a single word of the license was deleted. Instead, it was turned into a small image placed in the footer, using a Comic Sans-like font, slanted text with a glitch effect, flanked by cartoon cats. The term “seppuku” was removed from the machine-readable text, making it impossible to find via page search.

Subsequently, the Foundation recorded the entire document on the Ethereum blockchain.

This final detail has stayed with me, weighing on my thoughts. Regardless of your stance on the license, the board had the vote results, written objections, and a full week at their disposal, yet spent that week redesigning the layout of the clause. Buterin explained this choice on the day the document was published.

He argued that taking a “pleases nobody” approach, like Mozilla does, is perfectly valid in principle, but “we feel that pleases-nobody stance isn’t exactly the energy we need right now.” As the complaint notes: “An organization doesn’t spend a week redesigning a clause it deems inconsequential.”

Vitalik Buterin is principled and deeply thoughtful, so I struggle to comprehend how he could justify this sequence of events. Objections were posted in the board’s own channels, including mentions of a colleague’s suicide. Three days later, he pledged major changes. Yet the joke ultimately went out verbatim, merely restyled, and immutably recorded on-chain.

He is neither cold nor cruel, so I can only speculate that when he said “the fact that this aesthetic is intentionally divisive is part of its purpose,” it was either a momentary lapse in judgment or an acceptance of advice that contradicted his own values.

The Ultimatum

On March 18, Fulton spoke under her real name in the all-hands channel. She said, “More than the seppuku reference or the Milady connection, what bothers me is that nearly unanimous feedback was blatantly ignored and then dismissed with little fanfare.” She added, “There is virtually no trust between the board and other members of the organization.”

Co-Managing Director and Board Member Hsiao-Wei Wang publicly replied that Fulton’s concerns were “crucial to the future of the Ethereum Foundation.” Another Co-Managing Director, Bastian Aue, responded to Fulton on Friday morning, March 20: “The phase for raising doubts about The Mandate has passed. Now it is time to act.”

Two hours later, the ultimatum dropped. All employees had to submit a form by Monday’s end. The form offered two options. The first read: “I personally pledge to follow the direction established by The Mandate, assist in translating it into well-reasoned strategies within my areas of responsibility, and fully dedicate myself to the critical tasks required to implement the document. This pledge takes effect today and lasts until my final day working at the Ethereum Foundation.”

The second option read: “I am unable to make the above pledge and request additional months of compensation to leave the Ethereum Foundation as soon as possible.” Anyone who disagreed with the document was told to “make the only decent choice and leave the Ethereum Foundation.” The form also stated: “Failure to submit the form will be considered a decision to resign.”

Someone asked why the default option was termination of employment. Aue wrote: “Defaulting to resignation is necessary to ensure everyone remaining makes an active pledge.” Someone else asked who agreed to add a suicide vow. Aue replied: “If you’re asking who agreed to put it in, I did.”

An engineer asked if signing the form meant they had to commit suicide. They were told the vow was “part of The Mandate’s illustration and, like other elements within it, a cultural reference. We deliberately included it, but never intended for it to be taken literally.” Later that day, the form was edited to explicitly state the pledge has “nothing to do with actual seppuku.”

He clearly failed to grasp the absurdity: an organization altered a loyalty oath form, specifically clarifying that signatories don’t actually have to kill themselves, while simultaneously insisting everyone must sign to keep their jobs.

The next morning, Buterin wrote that the suddenness was deliberate: “Type of decisive shift is exactly the sort that shouldn’t be designed by committee, so we took a non-democratic approach this time to announce it.” The deadline was later extended by two days, but the signing requirement remained in effect.

The Joint Letter

At this moment, those truly building Ethereum did exactly what The Mandate advocated. From March 24 to 25, researchers and coordinators from the Protocol Group drafted a collective response. These are the individuals who normally drive the upgrade process for the Ethereum protocol itself.

Tim Beiko, Coordinator of the Protocol Group and Fulton’s direct supervisor, proactively moved management out of the channel used to draft the joint letter to allow employees to speak freely. He also reminded everyone: “For many people, leaving is not a viable option due to economic reasons, benefits, and various other factors.”

On March 25, Fulton sent and publicly distributed this letter under her own name, addressed to both Co-Managing Directors, the Board, and all staff. She coordinated the drafting alongside Van Epps. The letter stated:

We agree with the general direction of The Mandate, but under these conditions, we cannot sincerely make the pledge. We intend to continue contributing to Ethereum according to the values of CROPS and autonomy. We will continue fulfilling our respective duties and will not resign. Many of us signed the pledge out of pressure, fearing the loss of our jobs and livelihoods.

We believe they filled out this form under duress, rendering their choices meaningless.

Every Ethereum Foundation employee I know who signed this pledge told me they strongly opposed the practice but wanted to keep their jobs. They were told they had a choice, presented with a pen or abandoning a cause they had dedicated themselves to wholeheartedly. One person who spoke with me at the time said their morale and that of the entire team were “low,” and trust in the Foundation’s leadership completely collapsed as a result.

For these individuals, Ethereum was far more than a job; it was a cause with deep personal meaning. Yet their feedback was shelved, and the decision landed in the hands of a leader who had just told them that the time for raising questions was over.

The joint letter initially garnered 49 signatures and eventually reached 53, roughly half of the Protocol Group. It acknowledged The Mandate’s direction, refused to pledge under coercion, and made clear that signatories would continue working. The entire letter contained zero threats. It practically embodied the Manifesto’s words: “express dissent clearly without hurting others” and “maintain curiosity even under pressure.”

One signatory wrote at the time that when employees felt stripped of autonomy and voice, the letter “gave us back a bit of agency.”

Two days later, the ultimatum expired. On March 27, Aue announced he would “view the signatures from the Protocol Group’s joint letter as expression of dissatisfaction with the process and the form, while also acknowledging the individual commitments each signatory made to The Mandate.” He added: “If I could do it over, I definitely would have handled many things differently.”

He also stated he “takes this personal responsibility very seriously to ensure nothing like this ever happens again at the Ethereum Foundation.” Initially, all 53 signatories kept their jobs, and the joint letter appeared to work.

20 Minutes Is Enough to Change Everything

On Monday morning, April 6 at 8:10 AM, Aue issued a lengthy statement to all staff explaining how the Foundation makes decisions. The statement claimed employees could raise concerns “for consideration by decision-makers, not as an attempt to apply pressure.” “The tone of delivery matters greatly, especially in public settings. If you notice yourself getting heated, you’ve likely shifted from giving feedback to applying pressure.”

If well-reasoned feedback fails to bring change and “shakes your confidence in the Ethereum Foundation,” then “looking for ways to contribute to Ethereum outside the Foundation may be better for you, the Foundation, and Ethereum.”

At 8:30 AM, Aue fired one of the joint letter’s organizers, Trent Van Epps, during a video call, providing no reason. At 9:00 AM, he fired Fulton. Seven months prior, Beiko had evaluated Fulton’s performance as “well above expectations” and granted her a 21.9% salary increase.

During the call, Aue told Fulton that the termination was his unilateral decision. Her “past work performance was strong,” “widely supported by colleagues,” and she showed “no shortcomings” in fulfilling her responsibilities. He refused to explain the grounds for firing, offering only to continue paying her salary for a year on the condition she work elsewhere.

Thirteen days earlier, Fulton had already written to Aue, Hsiao-Wei Wang, Aya Miyaguchi, and HR Operations to inform them of her cancer diagnosis, her start of treatment, and her request to maintain her current employment. None of them replied.

That afternoon, Fulton received a severance agreement requiring her to waive all legal claims and containing a Singapore arbitration clause. She had only three days to sign, facing immediate termination with “no severance or other benefits” if she missed the deadline. Her health insurance would expire by the end of the month. Of the 53 joint letter signatories, the two fired were precisely the organizers.

Within a week, two of the Protocol Group’s three coordinators were announced as departing, including Beiko, while the third began an extended leave. Hsiao-Wei Wang, who had previously called employee dissent “crucial to the future of the Ethereum Foundation,” started leave on the day the two were fired and resigned in June. The wave of departures continued through September.

By then, the Protocol Support team had been dismantled, and most of the joint letter’s signatories had either resigned or been fired.

Regardless of how Aue views the wording of The Mandate, he effectively demanded employee compliance while placing the Foundation’s publicly stated principles on pause.

When Principles Become Mere Decoration

Back then, as an outside observer, I viewed this as a baffling act of self-sabotage by the Foundation. Many respected long-term contributors were forced out, some fired, others pushed to the point of having nowhere left to go. Suddenly, batch after batch of the very people who worked alongside me over the past decade—the most invested in this ecosystem—departed, leaving the outside world with zero explanations. Occasionally, NDAs were hinted at as the reason. I couldn’t wrap my head around it at the time.

The records laid out in the complaint fill in these missing links meticulously, quoting leadership themselves.

About three and a half weeks after the two terminations, Buterin explained both firings to Fulton in a recorded conversation. He admitted they should have given employees weeks to decide but instead gave them three days. Fulton asked him how he would view an organization that immediately fires someone for organizing a joint letter just after they disclose a cancer diagnosis. Buterin did not challenge the premise of her question.

He said the crux of the issue was “what kind of behavior you want to encourage inside the Ethereum Foundation,” because “if causing enough noise gets you what you want, everyone will learn that the way to force the Foundation to change is to make a huge fuss internally and externally.”

The Mandate writes that Ethereum exists to free people from “power relationships imposed without true consent, or power relationships where speaking up carries heavy costs.” And the rationale Buterin provided for the firings perfectly embodies that exact dynamic. The very same document also states the Foundation acts “without whim or coercion.”

Reading The Mandate side-by-side with the complaint, the irony hits you instantly.

Who Bears Real Responsibility?

I deeply respect Vitalik Buterin. He is thorough, analytical, and kind. But from the very beginning, his ability to evaluate ideas has always outweighed his ability to evaluate people.

In my view, he trusted the wrong person at the wrong time. Unlike researchers, core developers, or even Hsiao-Wei Wang—who served as both a board member and Co-Managing Director—Aue’s words carried more weight with him. Wang had already explicitly pointed out that this pointless conflict endangered the entire Foundation’s future.

Buterin was complicit in this process. He defended keeping the license, justified its aesthetic style when Wang raised objections, and asserted that rolling out the signing requirement suddenly was intentional. In retrospect, when explaining the termination decisions, he focused entirely on what behavior the Ethereum Foundation should encourage.

Others will undoubtedly draw their own conclusions after reading the complaint. Regardless, what the Foundation did speaks for itself. Seventy-nine employees asked to delete a sentence. Roughly half of the Protocol Group refused to pledge under coercion and articulated their stance politely. The board rejected the first request, accepted the latter group’s stance from the joint letter, and then fired the two who drafted it.

Whether stemming from one individual’s temperament or a collective belief, these actions were taken by the institution itself. It operates under the banner of Ethereum, backed by Vitalik.

How to Correct Course

I write this because the Foundation once told us what it would do if it erred on major issues. The path forward lies in this quote from The Mandate: “When we make mistakes, especially major ones, we will acknowledge them humbly and gracefully, and candidly and clearly explain why our perspective has changed and what our current perspective is.”

If the Ethereum Foundation hopes to rebuild credibility in front of those actually building this protocol every day, it must follow The Mandate’s principles, take responsibility for its mistakes, and take tangible action.

The first step is for the board to issue a statement directly acknowledging three things: issuing the ultimatum was wrong, viewing respectful collective dissent as a threat was wrong, and the April 6 terminations of two employees were wrong. Aue himself already acknowledged parts of this as early as March 27.

Next, the Foundation must change its internal culture that suppresses open discussion and diverse viewpoints. The Foundation bears the responsibility of stewarding Ethereum and maintaining its own credibility. It fired a cancer patient without providing a reason. Whatever the cost to properly address this matter, the Foundation’s credibility is worth far more.

Remove that license from The Mandate and grant the employees and community the respect they deserved from day one. That version is permanently on-chain, but a new version can also be recorded to show the world that the Foundation’s leadership values principles over blind obedience from protocol builders.

Those who signed the joint letter genuinely align with Ethereum’s values and are willing to stand up to defend them. The Foundation once employed people who dared to politely say “no” to authority while still excelling at their jobs. Today, many of them have departed, representing a loss for the Foundation. Those remaining are watching what happens next, as is everyone building on Ethereum.

The board owes the remaining employees the pledge once made in The Mandate. It should “acknowledge its mistakes humbly and gracefully, and provide candid and clear explanations,” admit that the ultimatum and April 6 terminations were wrong, and accept the consequences. Only then can the Foundation become a place where people can “clearly express dissent without hurting others” while keeping their jobs.

Aue agreed to retain a vow in the officially published The Mandate: “If the Foundation fails to fulfill its solemn commitment to Ethereum, may the Foundation die by the sword.” He had previously told Foundation staff that anyone unable to live up to The Mandate should “make the only decent choice and leave the Ethereum Foundation.” Under the standard he set for others, it is now his turn to make that decent choice.