Eclipse crypto CEO to ‘reduce public role’ after sexual harassment allegations
- Neel Somani denied sexual harassment allegations levelled towards him
- Eclipse has additionally vowed to share background info on all senior leaders
Eclipse founder and CEO Neel Somani will briefly restrict his public-facing function on the Ethereum [ETH] scaling answer after sexual harassment allegations. Responding to the sexual misconduct allegations, Somani commented,
“So, I’ll be briefly lowering my function as a public face for Eclipse. The senior leaders at Eclipse are properly geared up to tackle these tasks, and this can permit these conversations to unfold and the reality to emerge about these allegations.”
In a latest interview with The Block, Somani additionally clarified that he hasn’t stepped down as CEO. As an alternative, he’ll solely restrict publicity to podcasts and panels.
Eclipse reacts to clear FUD
Eclipse is a customizable roll-up that leverages the Solana [SOL] Digital Machine to drive scaling and improvement on high of Ethereum. Nevertheless, Eclipse gives builders the choice to decide on the L1 blockchain they need to use as safety.
The agency raised over $65 million in Collection A funding from notable enterprise capitalists (VCs), together with Fenbushi Capital and Delphi Digital. So, the allegations towards its CEO may pressure VC relations and Eclipse generally.
In actual fact, an govt at crypto-fund Dragon Capital mentioned that it didn’t spend money on Eclipse after studying of Somani’s historical past of sexual harassment. The manager claimed that he discouraged some VCs from being a part of Eclipse after its due diligence.
“Once we had been initially diligencing Eclipse, we heard rumors that @neelsalami, had a historical past of sexual harassment. We handed fairly shortly on the funding.”
To avoid wasting Eclipse from VC backlash and fend off additional damning accusations, the agency put out an announcement on the best way ahead. A part of the assertion read,
“We look ahead to sharing extra background and particulars in regards to the senior leaders at Eclipse within the coming days and are assured that we now have a first-class crew in place to succeed in new heights as a protocol.”
Though this was a commendable but powerful name for the agency, it stays to be seen how Eclipse will navigate public scrutiny and VC companions going ahead.
Moreover, it’s not clear whether or not its deliberate L2 mainnet launch scheduled for Q2 2024 can be affected by the event.
