دعوى فصل تعسفي ضد مؤسسة إيثيريوم على خلفية فصل موظفة في 6 أبريل

Crypto News and Tradfi News - COINOTAG · 2026-11-10T05:41:24.000Z

• رفعت كايلين فولتون دعوى على مؤسسة إيثيريوم وباستيان أوه وفيتاليك بوتيرين أمام محكمة اتحادية في كولورادو في 4 نوفمبر • تستشهد الشكوى بتصريحات مسجلة لفيتاليك بوتيرين خلال مكالمة في 1 مايو، بعد الفصل • وقّع 53 موظفًا رسالة تعارض الموافقة القسرية على تفويض مؤسسة إيثيريوم في أواخر مارس شكوى في كولورادو تسمّي ستة مدعى عليهم قدّمت كايلين فولتون، التي قادت فريق دعم البروتوكول في مؤسسة إيثيريوم، شكوى في 4 نوفمبر أمام المحكمة الجزئية الأمريكية لمقاطعة كولورادو ضد الكيان السويسري للمؤسسة، وفرعها في سنغافورة، والمدير التنفيذي المشارك باستيان أوه، والشريك المؤسس لإيثيريوم فيتاليك بوتيرين، ومتعاقدَين اثنين في مجال الموارد البشرية، ليبلغ عدد المدعى عليهم ستة. وتزعم الشكوى الفصل التعسفي والتمييز بسبب الإعاقة ضد المؤسسة غير الربحية التي تنسق تطوير بروتوكول إثبات الحصة في إيثيريوم. وبالنسبة إلى مشروع تتناول عناوينه اليومية عادةً سعر إيثيريوم (ETH)، فإن المعركة القضائية خبر رئيسي غير مألوف، وقد جاءت بعد أن هبطت العملة مؤخرًا دون مستوى الدعم عند 2.17 ألف دولار، مواصلةً اتجاهها الهبوطي. ووفقًا للشكوى، أبلغت فولتون الإدارة في 24 مارس بتشخيص إصابتها بسرطان المبيض، وقدّمت تفاصيل خطة علاجها كتابةً. وبعد ثلاثة عشر يومًا، في 6 أبريل، فُصلت من عملها. وبحسب الشكوى، لم يتضمن إخطار الفصل أي تفسير متعلق بالأداء الوظيفي. كما فُصل ترينت فان إبس، الذي شاركها في تأليف رسالة احتجاج للموظفين، في اليوم نفسه، بفارق نحو 30 دقيقة، وفقًا للإيداع القضائي. وتعتبر الشكوى أن كلا الفصلين ينتهك قانون الأمريكيين ذوي الإعاقة وقانون الإجازة العائلية والطبية، وتطالب بأجور ومزايا غير مدفوعة، وتعويضات مستقبلية وعقابية، وإقرار ببطلان اتفاقية إنهاء الخدمة الخاصة بفولتون. وتشير الشكوى أيضًا إلى مكالمة مسجلة في 1 مايو بين فولتون وبوتيرين، بعد ثلاثة أسابيع ونصف من فصلها، يُنقل فيها عن بوتيرين تحذيره من أن السماح للموظفين بانتزاع تنازلات عبر إثارة ضجة سيعلّم الجميع أن إحداث ضجيج هو السبيل لتحقيق النتائج داخل المؤسسة. ويعرض فريق فولتون التسجيل بوصفه دليلًا ظرفيًا يدعم وجود دافع انتقامي. لكن الإيداع القضائي لا يثبت أن بوتيرين وجّه بإنهاء التوظيف. وسبق للكيان السنغافوري التابع للمؤسسة أن نفى، عبر مستشاره القانوني، وقوع أي انتقام أو فصل غير قانوني. ولم تُختبر أي من الادعاءات أمام المحكمة.

• Kayleen Fulton sued the Ethereum Foundation, Bastian Aue and Vitalik Buterin in Colorado federal court on November 4
• The complaint cites recorded remarks by Vitalik Buterin from a May 1 call after the dismissal
• 53 employees signed a letter opposing forced consent to the EF Mandate in late March
Colorado Complaint Names Six Defendants
Kayleen Fulton, who led the Ethereum Foundation's protocol support team, filed a complaint on November 4 in the US District Court for the District of Colorado against the Foundation's Swiss entity, its Singapore affiliate, co-executive director Bastian Aue, Ethereum co-creator Vitalik Buterin and two human-resources contractors, six defendants in all. The filing alleges wrongful termination and disability discrimination against the nonprofit that coordinates development of Ethereum's proof-of-stake protocol. For a project whose daily headlines usually track Ethereum (ETH) price, a courtroom fight is an unusual lead story, and it lands after the coin recently broke below $2.17K support, extending a downtrend. According to the complaint, Fulton told management on March 24 that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and disclosed her treatment plan in writing. Thirteen days later, on April 6, she was dismissed. Per the complaint, the notification gave no performance-related explanation. Trent Van Epps, her co-author on a staff protest letter, was terminated the same day, roughly 30 minutes apart, per the filing. The complaint frames both terminations as violations of the Americans with Disabilities Act and the Family and Medical Leave Act, and seeks unpaid wages and benefits, future damages, punitive damages and a declaration that Fulton's severance agreement is void. It also cites a recorded May 1 call between Fulton and Buterin, three and a half weeks after the dismissal, in which Buterin is quoted warning that letting employees win concessions by causing a stir would teach everyone that making noise is how results get achieved inside the Foundation. Fulton's side presents the recording as circumstantial support for a retaliatory motive. The filing does not establish that Buterin directed the terminations. The Foundation's Singapore entity has previously denied, through legal counsel, that any retaliation or unlawful dismissal took place. None of the allegations has been tested in court.
Update (10 Nov 05:29 UTC): The filing also sketches a Foundation thinning out around the dispute.
The Source Seppuku License Fight
The dispute traces back to the EF Mandate, an operational charter the Foundation's board circulated to all staff in February 2026. The document codified four core values, censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security, under the shorthand CROPS. Page 11 carried the clause that ignited the conflict: text styled as an open-source license pledge, the “Source Seppuku License,” in which the signatory vows to end their own life with a blade if Ethereum's open-source commitments are broken. The complaint states that 79 employees demanded the passage be deleted, and management answered that the language was symbolic; Aue told staff the reference was “part of the artwork” of the charter, not something to be taken literally. Consent was then handled as mandatory. Aue ordered every employee to return a signed agreement form by a deadline, warning that non-submission would be read as a statement of intent to resign, according to the filing. In late March, Fulton and Van Epps, who had led the deletion campaign, circulated a joint letter signed by 53 employees, about half of the protocol division, rejecting the forced consent and stating they would not resign. Management treated the signatures as an expression of grievance, and every signatory kept their position, the complaint says. On April 6, only the letter's two authors were dismissed. In the termination meeting, Aue acknowledged that Fulton's performance was strong and that colleagues supported her, then declined to give a clear reason for the dismissal, the filing alleges. The final version of the Mandate, published in March, kept the seppuku passage intact, and the text was recorded unchanged on the blockchain. The organization had also just completed a broader restructuring begun in 2025: announced as finished in June, with 54 employees, about 20 percent of staff, departing and operations consolidated into five divisions.
New details from the filing clarify the scope of the claims and the timeline. Buterin, sued individually as a Stiftung Ethereum board member, is named in five of the complaint's 11 claims, which also include a Colorado aiding-and-abetting count against him and Bastian Aue, and medical-leave interference and retaliation counts under federal and Colorado law. The complaint dates Fulton's diagnosis to March 19, one day after Aue ordered staff to commit to the Mandate by form, and quotes Aue telling her in the April 6 video call that he had lost confidence in her. It also records that Buterin told staff on March 5 the Mandate was being reworked in the areas of greatest concern, while the final text published March 13 kept the pledge as an image. As of Nov. 9, the docket showed no filings beyond the complaint itself.
The filing also sketches a Foundation thinning out around the dispute. According to the complaint, at least eight senior employees had left by September, and co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang took leave on April 6, the same day as the two dismissals, before resigning in June. A July board update listed four directors, including Buterin. The document adds a funding concern raised by Van Epps, who estimates core-development teams need roughly $30 million annually as Foundation spending declines. The suit lands amid softer institutional demand: U.S. The complaint itself notes that Fulton's May 1 recorded call with Buterin took place in Norway. Most of those flows preceded or coincided with the filing date, and the complaint does not assert a link between them.
Jurisdiction Comes Before the Merits
The case's first test is procedural. The ADA and the FMLA are US employment statutes, while the operating defendants are incorporated in Switzerland and Singapore, so an early motion to dismiss is the likeliest next entry on the docket. The organizational stakes sit with the team itself. Protocol support is the coordination layer between Foundation researchers and the staking and validator operators, along with Layer 2 teams, who implement upgrades, and the fight lands while those researchers carry an anti-quantum migration deadline of December 2028 and work through 8 invariants that break under Glamsterdam. Whether the Foundation's five-division structure absorbs that disruption is now a question for the court calendar as much as for the protocol roadmap.