Crypto foundation demanded employees endorse suicide pledge

(denverpost.com)

49 points | by ceejayoz 53 minutes ago

16 comments

  • qoez 9 minutes ago
    I feel like it has to be a joke, but I wonder if such a clear "joke" would make other things in the contract possible to be invalidated in court given that if one assumes that part is a joke how can one tell what other parts are also supposed to be or not to be a farce in the contract.
  • comrade1234 15 minutes ago
    You can't sign away your rights like that in a contract. The contract is invalid.
  • Heliodex 32 minutes ago
    • RobGR 8 minutes ago
      It also links to this pdf version, which has the pictures https://ethereum.foundation/ef-mandate.pdf
      • andai 0 minutes ago
        Wow, this is actually amazing. A lot of art in here.
      • pavel_lishin 0 minutes ago
        It looks like a pretty decent layout for an RPG manual, but not for a serious document I'd expect to see at work.
    • andai 4 minutes ago
      Interesting, it's still there (end of Section III), though sadly without the winking anime girl and yellow cats.
    • 123ka 12 minutes ago
      "We cannot force hard forks or protocol changes. We are opinionated only so as to advocate and propose what’s best for the mission."

      Lol, did the perpetrators commit seppuku after the illegitimate DAO fork?

    • fhdkweig 26 minutes ago
      Wow, it's weird to think that people can be so proud of their terrible ideas. To go so far as to post it on their own website. Project 2025 was published this same way.

      I thought the "seppuku" line was hyperbole, but there it is in black and white. You can jump directly to it with a Ctrl+F.

      • ETH_start 2 minutes ago
        Everyone thinks their ideas are brilliant and that the ideas that run contrary to theirs are terrible. Your comment is tantamount to saying "I disagree with these ideas".
  • avaer 11 minutes ago
    If you go deep into the crypto world you'll find that this messaging resonates well with "degens" (as they sometimes call themselves).

    They love this stuff, it signals how "pilled" you are. It may or may not have to do with a large proportion of them being high on drugs (weed, psychedelics, cocaine), in addition to obviously being terminally online and bubbled. They are also extremely anti-authority, because a lot of what they do breaks the law in bigger and lesser ways, especially tax/financial law.

    And they often will drive millions and millions of dollars of crypto toward these ventures, often anonymously.

    You have to read these kinds of things in the context of the target audience, which is very real.

    Source: I made it out.

  • Zigurd 24 minutes ago
    Weirdness used to be a charming aspect of the tech industry. Now it's death cults, fascism, accelerationism, "monarchists," "effective altruism" and whatever other brand of curdled dark perversion haunts Silicon Valley.
    • fullshark 20 minutes ago
      All a flavor of lust for power and influence from very bitter, angry, and jealous people.
  • Arodex 17 minutes ago
    I can't express something better than this observation I read the other day:

    >again, something of a banal observation, but i think contributing to the general feeling of powerlessness and rage in america today is the extent to which our elites engage in such flagrant, grotesque, even performative contempt for the rest of america

    >i don't exactly think andrew carnegie loved the little guy exactly--he was, at best, the good cop to frick's bad cop--but he at least put on the appearance of charity, decorum, civic-mindedness

    >meanwhile today's elites mostly seem interested in apocalypse bunkers and sex cults and getting real jacked on testosterone and ranting about the woke mind virus

    >regarding the rest of us as, at best, hogs bound for the slaughter, and not even particularly hiding it

    https://bsky.app/profile/sjshancoxli.liberalcurrents.com/pos...

  • TheCleric 5 minutes ago
    This really changes the meaning of the catchphrase "HODL"
  • sandworm101 1 minute ago
    Where is the endorsement? I see a corporate mandate, not an employment contract.

    Corporations put out all sorts of fluff. If employees took it seriously then everyone working at facebook should have a VR helmet on their head 24/7.

  • pjc50 28 minutes ago
    > "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.

    When the document went out on that Friday in March, employees were told to commit to the principles in the mandate by Monday or quit their jobs, according to the lawsuit brought by Kayleen Fulton, a Boulder woman who was fired from the Ethereum Foundation after she led employee resistance to the suicide pledge."

    .. wow. When your employer starts posting like Yukio Mishima of course you sue them. I have a new entry in "most unprofessional thing I've ever seen". And no, using the "should not be taken seriously" defense is also hugely unprofessional.

    • foobarian 15 minutes ago
      Tbh the seppuku thing is the one thing I wouldn't pay attention to among all the other red flags, because of how obviously impractical it is.
    • dostick 19 minutes ago
      It's got to be figurative speech, right? Added for dramatic effect knowing that upholding the license may not always be verifiable or enforceable.
      • jurgenburgen 0 minutes ago
        Seppuku is a two person job. Does accepting the contract mean you volunteer to be the second (the person finishing the job by decapitation) for someone else’s ritual suicide?
      • Arodex 14 minutes ago
        Was the firing figurative, too?
  • VulgarExigency 30 minutes ago
    I wish I had been surprised by what I read in this article.
  • zzzeek 5 minutes ago
    > An email to the foundation seeking comment on this story was not immediately returned Thursday, but a foundation leader at the time told employees the suicide pledge was not meant to be taken literally, according to the lawsuit. After employee pushback, managers updated the commitment form to clarify that the form had “nothing to do with literal seppuku,” according to the lawsuit.

    Oh see it was just a joke - a joke, get it? ha ha, see by watching how many employees were complaining, we retracted it - just a "joke", right? after we put it out there saying nothing whatsoever and demanding a yes/no loyalty pledge.

    it was boundary testing. this company should go out of business.

  • javier123454321 6 minutes ago
    My falling out of love with crypto was due to the realization that these 'foundations' were effectively governing bodies participating in the minimum level of decentralized theater to grant them plausible deniability in a court of law. Bitcoin is still extremely interesting, as it has no such body, only a bunch of anarchy minded anti-social but very smart group of volunteers fighting each other. At least they practice their anarcho libertarian experiment in the mailing list, to its huge detriment.
  • Finnucane 28 minutes ago
    "a 38-page document outlining leadership’s vision for the foundation for the next 1,000 years."

    This would by itself be enough to start packing all your office things into a cardboard box.

    • SV_BubbleTime 25 minutes ago
      OK, but 900 years from now you’re gonna wish you had stayed at the ground floor.
  • imguienjoyer 23 minutes ago
    this is cringe, but less cringe than having to wear the nooglers hat
  • BadBadJellyBean 28 minutes ago
    > “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.

    Well she was too effective at organizing a resistance. Can't have that.