Ex-Ethereum Developer Reveals Controversial Firing Linked to $5M Foundation Split Proposal

Former lead developer of the Geth client, Peter Silaidhi, has accused the Ethereum Foundation (EF) of attempting to allocate $5 million to encourage the project’s team to separate from the foundation.

Silaidhi made this claim in a series of posts on X, revealing that his decision to take a «creative leave» in November was actually tied to a meeting with foundation representative Josh Stark. During their conversation, the developer sought clarification regarding the existence of a «secret second Geth team,» which he had learned about shortly before.

*“Within 24 hours, I was dismissed from the foundation,”* he stated.

According to Silaidhi, the EF threatened to cut funding for Geth. Instead, developers, including himself, were presented with an offer of $5 million to spin off the client into a private entity. Silaidhi claims he rejected this and similar proposals multiple times.

His posts were a response to comments made by Tomas Stanchak, the new co-director of EF and developer of the second most popular client, Nethermind. Stanchak asserted that there are «no plans to remove Geth.»

This was in reaction to Silaidhi’s earlier statement that the foundation intends to phase out Geth over the coming years in order to focus solely on research and education.

Geth (Go Ethereum) is the most widely used execution client for Ethereum. According to Ethernodes, it powers nearly 63% of active nodes in the network. The development of Geth was originally overseen by the Ethereum Foundation.

It’s worth noting that in March, the Ethereum Foundation made significant changes to its leadership.

Following the management reshuffle, the organization shifted its focus toward enhancing user experience and addressing Layer 1 scalability challenges.

In June, the Ethereum Foundation reduced its research and development team, concentrating on key challenges and essential protocol issues.