Kayleen Fulton, a former Ethereum Foundation employee, has sued the Switzerland-registered nonprofit in federal court in Colorado. She alleges disability discrimination, retaliation, interference with her rights under the Family and Medical Leave Act and related claims after her employment ended. The complaint connects her termination to her cancer diagnosis and her role in organizing opposition to language in the foundation’s 2026 mandate that called on software contributors to take their own lives by sword if they failed to uphold its pledges.
Colorado disability-accommodation guidance
The Colorado Civil Rights Division says employers have a duty to provide reasonable accommodations that may be necessary because of an employee’s disability. That general guidance does not determine the allegations in Fulton’s federal case.
The dispute involves a 38-page document called the Ethereum Foundation Mandate, which the board circulated to staff in draft form in late February 2026. The document set out leadership’s vision for the foundation’s role over what it described as the next 1,000 years. The Ethereum Foundation supports Ethereum, which the suit describes as the world’s second-largest blockchain network, valued at roughly $300 billion. The lawsuit’s account of the dispute has been reported by Protos and The Denver Post.
The pledge, the mandate and the foundation’s explanation
According to the complaint, staff challenged a draft passage labeled the Source Seppuku License, including questioning whether it required employees to die by suicide or was intended to test their loyalty to Ethereum’s principles. Fulton says 79 of the foundation’s roughly 250 employees voted to remove the passage entirely, according to Protos’s account of the filing.
The suit alleges that the language remained in the final mandate, moved from the main text into an illustration. In a March 13, 2026 blog post announcing the document, the Ethereum Foundation described the mandate as a constitution, manifesto and guide written primarily for the foundation, and said its canonical version imposed no obligation on anyone else. Protos reported that an illustrated line on page 11 read, “May the Foundation fall on its own sword if it fails to uphold its solemn promise to Ethereum.”
The employee commitment dispute
The complaint alleges that the foundation set a Monday deadline for employees to commit to the mandate or leave, and that Co-Executive Director Bastian Aue told staff those who did not commit would be presumed to have resigned. The form offered two options, according to the suit: affirm the mandate or request extra months of compensation and leave. It also alleges that Aue characterized the suicide pledge as part of the mandate’s artwork and that managers later clarified on the form that it had nothing to do with literal seppuku.
Fulton and a colleague identified in other reporting as Trent Van Epps sent the foundation’s board a letter declining to sign the form while stating they were not resigning. Protos reported that 53 members of what the complaint calls the Protocol cluster signed the letter, saying they declined to affirm the mandate under coercion but had not quit. The suit also alleges that 53 employees endorsed the mandate’s general direction while declining to return the form, and that Aue let the letter’s signers keep their jobs, with one exception.
What Fulton alleges about her firing
Protos reported that Fulton and the colleague who helped organize the letter were terminated after it was sent. Fulton’s annual salary was $195,000, according to the complaint. The suit says she had recently disclosed a cancer diagnosis when Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin discussed her firing with her; Buterin allegedly said the decision was about company dynamics, not the diagnosis itself. The complaint also cites a recorded conversation in which Buterin reportedly said that rewarding people for making a stink would teach employees to use internal and external displays to cause outcomes. Separately, Buterin has described the foundation’s focus as activities critical to Ethereum’s success as a censorship-resistant, open, private and secure system that would not happen otherwise, according to AMBCrypto; that post was not directly about Fulton’s case.
The complaint further alleges that the foundation uses employer-of-record service companies to handle its U.S. staff rather than hiring or paying them directly, and that a foundation board member began a sabbatical on the day Fulton was fired. It also says the mandate’s illustrations used imagery associated with an online figure accused of promoting white nationalist ideology and pro-anorexia content, and that Buterin said the controversy generated by the aesthetic was part of the point.
Departures and what reporting can establish
The complaint alleges that a board member resigned in June 2026 and that eight senior employees had left the foundation by September. It also says most of the 53 letter signers had resigned or been terminated by then.
Other reporting has documented departures but cautioned against attributing them to the mandate. Protos reported that all three protocol leads left within a few months and that more than half a dozen contributors announced resignations after publication of the mandate, while noting that none publicly named the document as the reason. Tomasz Stańczak had resigned as co-executive director in February 2026, before the mandate was published in March, and other contributors stepped back in the weeks that followed. DeFiPrime’s May 2026 account likewise said no departing contributor had publicly cited the mandate as a reason for leaving. It also noted that press reports, rather than an Ethereum Foundation blog post, described a formal sign-or-leave requirement, and that one outlet’s claim of immediate firings for noncompliance had not been confirmed in the foundation’s own communications. DeFiPrime described the Source Seppuku License as a pre-existing satirical license from internet subculture that the foundation appeared to adopt and quote, rather than author.
Protos said the Ethereum Foundation did not immediately respond to its request for comment on the lawsuit.
Anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide can reach the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by dialing 988, text the Crisis Text Line by texting 741741 from anywhere in the United States, or contact the Colorado Crisis Line by phone at 1-844-493-8255, through online chat, or by texting TALK to 38255.
