Titled “The Ethereum Foundation Mandate,” the document featured ethereal illustrated scenes of glowing lights and anime-style characters voyaging through dark forests. The pages featured white text against a navy blue background and were adorned with cartoon flowers, rainbows and diamonds.
And on page 11 — nestled between a winking anime woman and three yellow cats — was a suicide pledge.
Authors, maintainers, editors and distributors of “this software” would pledge to ensure the software remained free and publicly accessible, and would also vow to “take his or her own life with a sword upon failure to uphold any of the pledges in this license,” the illustration read. It was labeled “Source Seppuku License,” an apparent reference to a traditional Japanese ritual suicide.
To work in crypto you have to have a fairly high baseline separation from reality but this is impressive.
Ya all take this way too seriously. That seppuku license (definitely not enforceable in court btw) has probably been written after snorting a thick line of coke. These are crypto bros after all.
“If you reward making a stink with outcomes, then everyone will know that essentially making that kind of show both internally and externally is the way to cause outcomes inside of the EF,” he said, according to the lawsuit, which cited a recorded conversation between the pair.
So he doubled down instead of removing a suicide pledge? Legitimately insane. Now he’s getting sued because of it. But from his point of view it was more about asserting who was in charge. He’s insane.
The mandate’s visual aesthetic — the anime and other illustrations — reflected imagery from a controversial online figure who was known to promote “white nationalist ideology and disturbing pro-anorexia content,” according to the lawsuit.
When an Ethereum Foundation board member objected to the aesthetic, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin responded that “the controversialness (sic) of those aesthetics is itself part of the point,” according to the lawsuit.
After demanding that employees agree to the mandate, Bastian Aue, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, defended the suicide pledge to employees as “part of the artwork of the mandate.”
It was, he said, “a cultural reference like other elements in there. Chosen deliberately, but not meant to be taken literally.”
“We deliberately referenced white nationalism when getting you to promise suicide if you don’t do as we say, but we didn’t mean it”
Jesus Fucking Christ.
The decomposing corpse of the blockchain cult is getting even weirder than it was at the peak of the mania.
Can’t wait for Line Goes Up 2
He was always weird though.
What a pathetic way to lose ~50 employees/volunteers
holy shit
I wish people could just be grown-ups.
What the fuck? Lmao, cringe anime seppuku pledge?
Crypto bros are so pathetic.
I thought it was a joke at first but no, some absolute weirdo put it in there.
Pretty worthless with the paywall
