A former Ethereum Foundation staffer who says she was dismissed two weeks after disclosing an ovarian cancer diagnosis has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the nonprofit and several affiliated entities of disability discrimination and retaliation, setting up a legal fight over a controversial pledge embedded in the organization's sweeping vision document.
Kayleen Fulton, who ran the foundation's Protocol Support team and coordinated the All Core Developers calls, lodged the complaint last Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado, according to Gizmodo. The filing names Stiftung Ethereum, the group's Swiss legal entity; Singapore-based affiliate Ethereum Asia Pacific Limited; employer-of-record firms Lightsource HR Global and Vensure Employer Services; co-executive director Bastian Aue; and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
The suit brings claims under the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, along with related Colorado causes of action. It centers on the Ethereum Foundation Mandate, a 38-page statement of purpose the board released on March 13 and required every employee to personally affirm.
Page 11 of the document carries what is labeled the "Source Seppuku License," which asks anyone who works on the software to keep its source code and related documents freely and publicly available. The text goes further, obliging the signer 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." The passage remains on ethereum.org and was inscribed on the Ethereum blockchain, the complaint notes.
According to the filing, 79 employees voted to strip the clause after a draft circulated in February. One staffer asked in writing whether signing meant he had to commit suicide, and another referenced a colleague lost to suicide the previous year, per the complaint. Buterin allegedly promised "significant changes" to the draft, but the final version kept the pledge, relocating it into an illustrated image featuring cartoon cats and a winking anime figure.
On March 20, Aue told staff to commit to the Mandate by the following Monday or be treated as having resigned, the complaint says. Asked about the sword clause, he wrote that it was "part of the artwork of the mandate. A cultural reference like other elements in there. Chosen deliberately, but not meant to be taken literally," and added, "If you are asking more broadly who agreed with including it, I did." Managers later amended the commitment form to state the affirmation had "nothing to do with literal seppuku."
Fulton was diagnosed with ovarian cancer on March 19, the day before the ultimatum, according to the complaint. She emailed Aue, two board members and People Operations on March 24 to disclose the diagnosis and ask that her employment status not be changed. The next day, she and colleague Trent Van Epps sent the board a letter signed by 53 members of the Protocol cluster that endorsed the Mandate's general direction while stating the signatories "cannot in good faith affirm under these conditions" and "do not resign." Aue later treated the letter as a commitment and said all 53 could keep their jobs, the complaint states.
On April 6, Aue fired Van Epps and Fulton roughly half an hour apart, according to the filing. On the termination call, he allegedly told Fulton her "track record is good," that she had "broad support among colleagues" and that she had "not been found lacking in any of [her] responsibilities," while declining to give a reason for the dismissal. The complaint also describes a partially recorded May 1 conversation with Buterin in which, when asked about her termination, he allegedly warned that rewarding employees for "making a stink" could encourage others to organize similar pressure campaigns.
Lawyers for Ethereum Asia Pacific denied allegations of unlawful conduct, retaliation and wrongful termination in correspondence with Fulton's attorneys in May, the complaint acknowledges. The foundation, Aue and Buterin had not issued a public statement on the suit as of Monday afternoon.
The case lands after a turbulent stretch for the organization. Earlier this year the Mandate's anime-inflected aesthetics, tied to the Milady Maker NFT project, coincided with a wave of senior departures, including protocol leads and researchers, though departing staff did not always cite the document as their reason for leaving. A separate public dispute over the dismissal of Geth lead developer Péter Szilágyi also drew attention. The Mandate's CROPS framework, shorthand for censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security, was intended to recommit Ethereum to self-sovereign financial infrastructure, even as some builders drifted toward more centralized, stablecoin-focused platforms.
Key figures in the dispute:
Note: Details drawn from the complaint as described in reporting on the filing.
Reaction has split along interpretive lines. Gabriel Shapiro, co-founder and chief executive of crypto legal outfit MetaLeX, wrote on X that the Mandate was "one of Ethereum's most important and culturally relevant moments" and that "no reasonable person could believe it is asking people to literally agree to commit suicide." He also criticized the alleged recording of Buterin without consent as "one of the dirtiest things you can do regardless of whether legal or not," described a reported $195,000 full-year salary severance offer as "very generous," and cautioned that juries can behave unpredictably when presented with "superficially sensational facts like a seppuku license."
Bankless co-founder David Hoffman framed the tension in a single line after Shapiro pushed back on literal readings: "It does not seriously ask employees to kill themselves," he wrote. "But it does literally ask employees to kill themselves." Christine D. Kim, founder of the crypto protocol-research outlet Protocol Watch and Fulton's co-host on the Ready for Merge podcast, argued the document "caused a lot of division and heartache within the EF" and that a statement asking employees to kill themselves "isn't appropriate to include in your organization's mission statement," even as a joke.
The litigation puts a spotlight on how the foundation governs itself and on the latitude it gives senior leadership over hiring and firing decisions. For an organization that markets Ethereum as credibly neutral infrastructure, a courtroom examination of internal employment practices carries reputational weight with developers and institutional partners alike. The complaint's allegations of retaliation against organized staff dissent, if substantiated, could also invite scrutiny from employment regulators in the jurisdictions where the foundation and its affiliates operate.
For now, the dispute turns on dueling readings of a document that was meant to define the foundation's direction for generations. The court will weigh whether a clause its defenders call artwork functioned as a condition of employment, and whether the timing of Fulton's dismissal supports her claims of discrimination and reprisal.
