Written by: Xiaobing

On November 4, 2026, a civil lawsuit filed in the Colorado federal court put the Ethereum Foundation in a position it least wanted to face – the defendant's seat.

The plaintiff, Kayleen Fulton, was the head of the EF protocol support team.

Her allegations are extremely sharp: she was fired after being diagnosed with ovarian cancer, and the real reason was her leadership in opposing the "EF Mandate" document that caused a massive stir in the crypto community, along with the notorious "Source Seppuku License" included in the document.

The lawsuit lists Vitalik Buterin as one of the defendants, citing his original words from a recording.

This dark chapter of the Ethereum Foundation's drastic transformation in 2026 has thus been brought to the public's attention.

From "Greatly Exceeding Expectations" to Being Kicked Out

The court documents outline an uncomfortable timeline.

In September 2025, Fulton received the highest performance rating during her time at EF, "greatly exceeding expectations," and was granted a 21.9% raise.

The protocol support team she led was the hub of the Ethereum core development process: organizing core developer meetings, tracking network upgrade progress, and operating the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship training program.

Then, on March 13, 2026, everything changed.

EF released a 38-page "Mandate" document.

If you thought this was a normal organizational mission statement, you guessed wrong.

It is filled with Milady NFT-style visual elements, including illustrations of archers in lingerie, and embeds a passage from the Remilia wiki's "Source Seppuku License" on page 11.

This text requires signatories to promise that, if they violate the principles set in the document, they will "voluntarily exit," directly referencing the concept of "seppuku" in Japanese. Just a year earlier, a colleague in the organization had committed suicide, and this wording triggered panic.

The lawsuit claims that 79 employees voted to remove this clause. Vitalik Buterin allegedly promised to make "significant modifications" at that time.

But the changes never came. Instead, the Mandate, which included the "suicide oath," was permanently recorded on the Ethereum blockchain.

The Last Ten Days of March

On March 19, Fulton was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

On March 20, EF co-executive director Bastian Aue issued an ultimatum: all employees must sign a loyalty oath to the Mandate, otherwise they will be considered to have voluntarily resigned.

On March 24, Fulton disclosed her cancer diagnosis to EF.

On March 25, Fulton and her colleague Trent Van Epps jointly drafted a letter signed by 53 members of the "protocol cluster," submitted to the EF board.

The letter stated that they "refuse to sign" the Mandate under coercion but also declared that they had not resigned.

53 signatures meant that the vast majority of the protocol team stood against the management.

On April 6, Fulton was fired. On the same day, within 30 minutes, another initiator of the joint letter, Trent Van Epps, was also fired. EF did not provide any reason for the dismissals.

Vitalik's Recording

The most damaging segment in the entire lawsuit comes from Vitalik Buterin himself.

According to Fulton, on May 1, 2026, she had a phone call with Vitalik. This call was recorded. Buterin stated during the call that the question he had been thinking about was, "What kind of behavioral patterns do you want to reward within EF."

The implication was clear: those who "stir things up" in front of the management should not receive positive outcomes. If protesters were treated well, it would encourage more people to imitate.

If this recording is accepted in court, it will directly demonstrate a causal relationship between Fulton's firing and her organizing of protests, constituting retaliatory dismissal.

Vitalik is named as an individual defendant, with the lawsuit accusing him of "aiding and abetting" discriminatory and retaliatory behavior. For someone who repeatedly emphasizes decentralization in public and claims that their power "will continue to diminish," this defendant status is filled with irony.

The lawsuit presents 11 legal claims, covering ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) discrimination and retaliation, FMLA (Family and Medical Leave Act) interference and retaliation, multiple allegations under Colorado's anti-discrimination laws, as well as illegal confidentiality terms, wrongful termination, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The aspect of the severance agreement is also thought-provoking.

The lawsuit states that Fulton signed a severance agreement on April 9, but at that time she was under extreme psychological pressure from her cancer diagnosis and facing an immediate threat of losing her health insurance. She revoked the agreement on April 17.

Fulton is requesting a jury trial and seeking damages including back wages, expected earnings, punitive damages, statutory fines of $5,000 for each violation, and attorney's fees.

Personnel Losses During the Voyage of the "Small Ship"

Fulton's experience is not an isolated case; the Ethereum Foundation in 2026 is undergoing the most severe personnel upheaval since its establishment.

After the Mandate was released, EF conducted large-scale layoffs and reorganizations, cutting about 20% of its staff, totaling approximately 54 people.

All three heads of the protocol cluster left: Tim Beiko and Barnabé Monnot resigned successively, and Alex Stokes went on long-term leave.

Co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak has also departed.

In July 2026, the protocol support team that Fulton once led was completely disbanded, ending five years of work in organizing core developer meetings, coordinating network upgrades, and supporting EIPs.

In a public statement in May, Vitalik framed all of this as a proactive choice: EF is becoming a "smaller ship," focused on resistance review, open source, privacy, and security (CROPS framework). He emphasized that EF is just "one node" in the Ethereum ecosystem, not the center.

From the outside, this appears to be an organization undergoing painful but necessary slimming down. However, from the perspective presented in the lawsuit, at least one core employee who had just been diagnosed with cancer was treated as a "troublemaker" during the execution of this "slimming down."

The legal destiny of this lawsuit remains to be determined by the Colorado federal court, but the issues it raises have transcended the court itself.

The Ethereum Foundation has long enjoyed a certain special status: it is neither a company nor a DAO, but a Swiss foundation employing staff globally through Employer of Record (EOR) while claiming to be heading towards "extinction."

This ambiguous organizational form allows it to reap the benefits of the decentralized narrative while making it difficult for employees to find clear avenues for grievance when faced with unfairness.

Fulton's lawsuit is testing the legal boundaries of this gray area.

An organization that claims "not to be an employer" requires employees to sign loyalty oaths; refusing to sign counts as voluntary resignation, and a cancer patient was kicked out within 30 days of disclosing their condition and organizing a protest.

The question that the Colorado federal court needs to answer is: do the protective mechanisms of traditional labor law still hold up in the face of this organizational form?

Regardless of how the court ultimately rules, this case serves as a wake-up call for the organizational governance of the crypto industry. The ideal of decentralization should not be used as a shield to evade basic labor protections. An organization that permanently records a "suicide oath" on the blockchain has questions to answer beyond just the legal level.