Ex-employee sues Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik Buterin over firing
Kayleen Fulton alleges she was fired less than two weeks after disclosing a cancer diagnosis and helping organize a staff letter challenging a requirement to endorse the foundation’s new mandate.
A former Ethereum Foundation employee has sued the organization, along with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and four others.
Kayleen Fulton alleges she was fired after disclosing a cancer diagnosis and organizing a staff letter challenging a directive tied to the foundation’s new mandate.
Fulton, who led the foundation’s protocol support team and is known in the Ethereum community as “Nixo,” filed the complaint on Nov. 4 in the United States District Court for the District of Colorado. She alleges that Bastian Aue, a co-executive director at the time, fired her on April 6, 13 days after she disclosed her diagnosis. The complaint also alleges Buterin helped adopt and enforce the directive as a board member.
Fulton said she and colleague Trent Van Epps organized a letter in response to the mandate with 53 signers. It backed the mandate’s goals while objecting to a requirement that employees affirm it to keep their jobs. The complaint alleges that days later, on April 6, Aue fired Fulton and Van Epps 30 minutes apart. Fulton alleges disability discrimination, retaliation and interference with her medical leave rights and is seeking lost pay and damages.
The complaint also says some employees objected to a reference to ritual suicide in the mandate and quotes Aue as telling staff that the language was figurative.
In a May 14 letter quoted in the complaint, a lawyer for the foundation’s Singapore affiliate, Ethereum Asia Pacific Limited, denied that Fulton had been subjected to unlawful conduct or retaliation and said her separation agreement was binding. Cointelegraph reached out to the foundation, Fulton and Van Epps for comment, but had not received a response by publication.
The foundation published its mandate in March, charting out its role in Ethereum’s ongoing and future development. It highlighted censorship resistance, open-source code, privacy and security, and said it would focus on protocol upgrades, research and developer tools.