Ethereum
Ethereum L2 Eclipse Sees Leadership Change Following CEO Sexual Misconduct Allegations
Layer 2 Ethereum project Eclipse is experiencing a change in leadership after its former CEO faced allegations of sexual misconduct.
Neel Somani, founder of the project and now former CEO, has resigned from his position. May 16 announcement of Eclipse Labs, Somani will be replaced by Vijay Chetty, “effective immediately.”
Eclipse’s announcement did not mention the reason for Somani’s departure.
Chetty, who currently runs Eclipse, was the project’s growth manager until now. His past experiences include management roles at dYdX Trading, Ripple Labs, and Uniswap Labs. He also worked with investment manager BlackRock.
Meanwhile, Somani continued to deny all these allegations. On May 9, he announced that he was “temporarily reducing” his “public face” following the allegations against him.
He said he had not “sexually assaulted or harassed” anyone.
The same day, Eclipse announced that it took the allegations against Somani “seriously” and “believed in the importance of the truth.”
The former faced immediate backlash from the cryptocurrency community, with some suggesting that the fact that he resigned proved that he was guilty.
Some Eclipse backers and investors have also expressed dissatisfaction over this. Haseeb Qureshi, Managing Partner of Dragonfly Capital revealed that his venture capital firm passed up an opportunity to invest in Eclipse while running background checks on the company.
Dragonfly was reportedly informed of Somani’s history of sexual harassment complaints.
“If we heard this by doing only a modicum of due diligence, there is no way that actual investors would not have also heard the same thing,” Qureshi wrote in an X article.
Meanwhile, Hack VC, an investor in Eclipse, posted on X that he was “deeply troubled” by the allegations against the former Eclipse founder. The company revealed that it had urged Somani to resign and was happy with Somani’s decision.
“To be perfectly clear: the alleged behavior in question is unacceptable, period. “” the company wrote.