Former Ethereum Developer Reveals Details of His Dismissal

Former lead developer of the Geth client, Péter Szilágyi, has accused the Ethereum Foundation (EF) of attempting to allocate $5 million to separate the project team from the foundation.

Remember my sabbatical? Yeah, that was me having a one-to-one meeting with @0xstark about that “secret second Geth team” I found out about. Within 24 hours I was fired from the foundation 🙂

“Threatening to quit is unacceptable and destroys team morale.”

— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) June 11, 2025

Szilágyi disclosed this in a series of posts on X. He stated that his “creative sabbatical” in November was actually linked to a meeting with foundation representative Josh Stark. During the conversation, the developer demanded explanations regarding the “secret second Geth team,” which he had discovered shortly before.

“Within 24 hours I was fired from the foundation,” he wrote.

According to Szilágyi, EF threatened to cease funding Geth. Instead, developers, including himself, were offered $5 million to spin off the client into a private company. Szilágyi claims he refused this and similar offers several times.

The developer’s posts were a response to a statement by Tomasz Stańczak, the new co-director of EF and developer of the second most popular client, Nethermind. Stańczak asserted that “there are no plans to remove Geth.”

There is no plan to remove Geth. It is a great client software and a talented team contributing to protocol security. We will maintain / support Geth and continue making it even better and faster.

— Tomasz K. Stańczak (@tkstanczak) June 10, 2025

This was in response to an earlier statement by Szilágyi that the foundation intended to phase out Geth over several years to focus solely on research and education.

EF fired 4 dev teams a week ago and last I talked to @hwwonx , she said that the goal is to also remove Geth in a couple years to allow EF to be research/education only.

Though they did try to do that at least 3 times while I was there, so that’s not news.

— Péter Szilágyi (@peter_szilagyi) June 9, 2025

Geth (Go Ethereum) is the most popular execution layer client for Ethereum. According to Ethernodes, it powers nearly 63% of the network’s active nodes. Initially, its development was handled by the Ethereum Foundation.

Back in March, Ethereum Foundation made significant leadership changes. 

Following the management reshuffle, the organization shifted its focus to user experience and L1 scaling issues.

In June, Ethereum Foundation reduced part of its research and development team, concentrating on key challenges and core protocol issues.