Ethereum Foundation under scrutiny as Geth dev speaks out on firing

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has once again found itself facing backlash, with criticism this time coming from one of its own.

Péter Szilágyi, one of the lead developers of the Go-ethereum (Geth) client, has lashed out at former colleague Tomasz K. Stańczak over alleged plans to push the development of Geth out of the organization.

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The post came in response to Stańczak’s assurance that “there is no plan to remove Geth,” sparked by Szilágyi’s earlier claim that the foundation had “fired four dev teams a week ago” and that its aim is to concentrate on “research/education only” within a few years.

In today’s outburst, Szilágyi also revealed that the indefinite “sabbatical” that he announced in November was actually a euphemism for being fired after finding out about a “secret second Geth team” within Nethermind, another Ethereum execution client founded by Stańczak.

Geth and Nethermind are the two principal Ethereum execution clients, which are run by 41% and 31% of nodes, respectively, according to the organization’s Client Diversity dashboard.

Ideally, no one client should have a share of over 33%, and dominance of more than 66% is considered the “danger” zone for the network.

Szilágyi claims he was offered $5 million to take on the development of Geth as an external spin-off project, but since then has been approached multiple times with offers to return.

Fellow developer, Yearn’s pseudonymous bunny-avatared “banteg,” replied to Szilágyi’s thread, questioning why he didn’t take the offer to go it alone.

Szilágyi reasons that, as developers, “we would be shit at trying to manage a company, we don’t have the supporting inftra[sic]/people and the whole thing would fail.”

The Ethereum Foundation is no stranger to criticism

Last year, worries over conflicts of interest arose when two key Foundation researchers disclosed advisory roles at EigenLayer, an (at the time) much-hyped “restaking” protocol, though only after being called out.

The Foundation also came under fire at the beginning of this year, when the wider Ethereum community voiced its disappointment with the EF’s lack of direction and the perceived underperformance of ether (ETH) as an asset.

Read more: Ethereum Foundation’s response to community backlash — dump more ETH

In the wake of the criticism, the foundation opted to put its money to work, sinking 45,000 ETH (worth $125 million today) into some of the decentralized finance sector’s top protocols.

The trend looks set to continue, according to last week’s Treasury Policy announcement, which set out a framework of “Defipunk” for future on-chain deployments of funds.