Ethereum Foundation sued for firing employee who opposed ‘suicide pledge’

A lawsuit filed by former Ethereum Foundation (EF) Protocol Support lead Kayleen Fulton against Stiftung Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, and others alleges she was fired after disclosing a cancer diagnosis and organizing opposition to a “suicide pledge.”

In February of this year, the foundation distributed a draft of its new mandate to employees.

The document featured a so-called “Source Seppuku License” that included a promise that “the author, maintainer, editor or (re)distributor… shall uphold the following… to take his or her own life with a sword upon failure to uphold any of the pledges in this license, or upon modification or removal of any part of this license.”

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Fulton claims that 79 employees voted to remove that section, with one employee citing “a colleague lost to suicide the year before.”

Buterin allegedly promised “significant changes.”

However, the version published on the EF website maintained the Source Seppuku License.

Screenshot from Etherscan showing relevant portion of the mandate.

Furthermore, the foundation chose to record it permanently on the Ethereum blockchain, with the suicide pledge intact.

The complaint also alleges that EF Co-Executive Director Bastian Aue insisted that every employee must commit to the mandate or the foundation would assume they had resigned.

Fulton and one of her colleagues, Trent Van Epps, then sent the board of the EF a letter signed by 53 members of the “Protocol cluster” which “declined to affirm [the Mandate] under coercion” but stated that they didn’t resign.

Screenshot of Mandate Commitment from the lawsuit.

Subsequently, Fulton’s employment was terminated.

Buterin and Fulton apparently had a conversation after her termination during which he stated that the question he was struggling with was “what kind of dynamics you want to reward inside of the EF.”

He was also apparently concerned that “if you reward making a stink with outcomes, then everyone will know that essentially making that kind of a show both internally and externally is the way to cause outcomes inside of the EF.”

Protos emailed the EF for comment on this lawsuit, but it did not immediately respond.

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