Péter Szilágyi, previously a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation and the foremost developer of Geth, has reportedly turned down a lucrative $5 million offer to privatize the core Ethereum client. This information surfaced through a chain of posts on X earlier this week. Additionally, Szilágyi accused the foundation of clandestinely supporting a competing Geth development team.
“Recall my sabbatical? That was actually a private discussion I had with @0xstark regarding the ‘hidden secondary Geth team’ that I discovered,” Szilágyi, who goes by the online pseudonym Karalabe, shared on X on Wednesday. He was referring to a conversation with Ethereum’s communicator, Josh Stark. “Within a day, I was dismissed from the foundation.”
Geth, abbreviated from Go Ethereum, is the most widely utilized Ethereum execution client, supporting approximately 63% of all active nodes, as per Ethernodes. It was initially developed by the Ethereum Foundation.
Szilágyi alleged that the Ethereum Foundation proposed to defund Geth and suggested that developers, Szilágyi included, accept a $5 million incentive to form a private company. Szilágyi was responding to Tomasz K. Stańczak, recently appointed as co-director of the EF and developer of Nethermind, the second-largest Ethereum client. Szilágyi mentioned that he was approached on numerous occasions with similar propositions. He declared his leave from the foundation in November.
Szilágyi’s disclosure was prompted by Stańczak’s statement that “there is no plan to remove Geth.” This was in response to Szilágyi’s assertion that the EF’s objective “is to also eliminate Geth in a few years to allow the EF to focus solely on research/education.”
The Ethereum Foundation has seen substantial changes recently. Just last week, it announced staff reductions and published a blog post detailing a new strategic approach for deploying its remaining ETH assets.
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