Ethereum L2 Eclipse sees change in leadership following CEO’s sexual misconduct claims

Ethereum layer-2 project Eclipse is seeing a change in leadership after its former CEO faced sexual harassment allegations.

The founder and former CEO of the project, Neel Somani, left his post. According to Eclipse Labs’ May 16 announcement, Somani will be replaced by Vijay Chetty “effective immediately.”

Eclipse’s announcement does not mention the reason behind Somani’s departure.

Chetty, who currently runs Eclipse, has been the project’s growth officer until now. His past experience includes leadership roles at dYdX Trading, Ripple Labs, and Uniswap Labs. He also worked with investment manager BlackRock.

Meanwhile, Somani continued to deny all the allegations. On May 9, he announced that he had “temporarily reduced” his “public face” following the allegations against him.

He maintained that he “did not sexually assault or harass” anyone.

On the same day, Eclipse announced that it “takes the allegations against Somani seriously” and “believes in the importance of the truth.”

The first met with immediate backlash from the cryptocurrency community; Some suggested that his resignation proved his guilt.

Some backers and investors of Eclipse have also expressed their displeasure over the issue. Dragonfly Capital managing partner Haseeb Kureshi explained that the VC firm missed the opportunity to invest in Ecliplse while doing some background checks on the firm.

Dragonfly was reportedly made aware of Somani’s past sexual harassment allegations.

“If we’ve only heard this with minimal rigor, there’s no way real investors haven’t heard the same thing,” Kureshi wrote in an X post.

Meanwhile, Eclipse investor Hack VC shared on X that he was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations against the former Eclipse founder. The company announced that it called on Somani to resign and that it was satisfied with Somani’s decision.

“To be clear, the alleged behavior in question is unacceptable, full stop.” the company wrote.