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Ethereum layer-2 project Eclipse is seeing a change in leadership after its former CEO faced allegations of sexual misconduct.
Neel Somani, the project’s founder and now former CEO, has stepped down from his role. Per a May 16 announcement from Eclipse Labs, Somani will be succeeded by Vijay Chetty, “efficitive immediately.”
Eclipse’s announcement doesn’t mention the reason behind Somani’s departure.
Chetty, currently leading Eclipse, has been the project’s growth officer until now. His past experiences include leadership roles at dYdX Trading, Ripple Labs, and Uniswap Labs. He has also worked with investment manager BlackRock.
Meanwhile, Somani has continued to deny all of the claims. On May 9, he announced that he was “temporarily reducing” his “public face” following the allegations made against him.
He asserted that he has not “sexually assaulted or harassed” anyone.
On the same day, Eclipse announced that it takes the allegations against Somani “seriously” and “believes in the importance of truth.”
The former faced immediate backlash from the cryptocurrency community, with some suggesting that the fact that he was stepping down proved that he was guilty.
Some of Eclipse’s backers and investors have also expressed their discontent on the matter. Dragonfly Capital managing partner Haseeb Qureshi revealed that his VC firm passed on an opportunity to invest in Ecliplse while conducting some background checks on the firm.
Reportedly, Dragonfly was made aware of Somani’s history of sexual harassment claims.
“If we heard this doing only minimal diligence, there’s no way the actual investors didn’t also hear the same,” Qureshi wrote in an X post.
Meanwhile, Hack VC, an investor in Eclipse, posted on X that it was “deeply troubled” about the allegations made against the former Eclipse founder. The firm revealed that it urged Somani to resign and was happy with Somani’s decision.
“To be perfectly clear: the alleged behavior in question is unacceptable, full stop.” the firm wrote.
