Bizarre Ethereum Foundation anime letter blamed for mass resignations

Shortly before a wave of resignations by senior contributors, the Ethereum Foundation published a bizarre governance document.

Obviously influenced by Vitalik Buterin’s beloved $NFT collection Milady, whose floor price has declined 90% from its December 2024 peak, the illustrated “Mandate” PDF features lingerie-clad archers, a cartoon pledge carrying a penalty of death by suicide, and a headline on its front page, “HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL IN THE HUMAN BREAST.”

The Ethereum Foundation Mandate document arrived on March 13, 2026. Its board signed it, crediting two artists for their artistic rendering of the text.

On the cover, an anime girl asks, “Ever dream this girl?” Random text bubbles assert, “My heart glitches for you” and “divinely guided and protected.”

A Milady e-girl on page 34 declares, “I can’t believe we all won forever.”

No departing contributor actually named the document as the reason for their exit, but the timing spoke loudly enough to draw widespread blame on social media.

All three Ethereum Foundation protocol leads have left within the past few months, and over half a dozen contributors announced resignations after Ethereum’s Mandate document.

EthereumDaily, with over 100,000 followers on X, blamed the 38-page Mandate for “intentionally shrinking” the workforce. “Forgot about the ‘sign or leave’ the new EF mandate. Seems to be the real reason behind departures?” wrote DefiIgnas.

Another fund manager blamed resignations on the document.

‘May the foundation fall on its own sword’

Page 11 features an illustration of the infamous seppuku (also known as hara-kiri) suicide pledge. Its version reads, “May the Foundation fall on its own sword if it fails to uphold its solemn promise to Ethereum.”

The license shown inside that illustration is the Source Seppuku License, a satirical software license hosted on the Remilia wiki.

Remilia is the collective that created the Milady Maker $NFT collection. Buterin uses a Milady $NFT for his profile photo on X.

The second clause of this “license” requires the actor to take his or her own life with a sword upon failure to uphold any of the pledges in the license, or upon modification or removal of any part of the license.

According to Cryptopolitan and reblogged elsewhere, Ethereum Foundation staff were asked to sign off on the Mandate document or face termination. Protos was unable to verify whether the foundation publicly commented on that allegation.

Milady, controversial to say the least

The Mandate’s visual vocabulary openly borrows from Milady, whose NFTs once traded above 7.3 ether ($ETH) in December 2024 yet now trade below 1.2 $ETH, an 84% decline in $ETH or 91% decline in USD.

Unfortunately, value destruction for holders hasn’t been Milady’s only failure.

Milady’s founder Charlotte Fang (real name Krishna Okhandiar) resigned as Milady Maker CEO in May 2022 after investigators exposed him as the operator of a 4chan-connected suicide cult account, Miya.

Archived essays attributed to the Miya account used antisemitic and anti-black racism.

Okhandiar, posting as Fang, later admitted to being Miya. Floor prices of Milady NFTs halved during his resignation.

Eight days before the Mandate dropped, someone asked Vitalik on X, “why milady? (linked to kaliacc, miya, suicide cult, seppuku license, online abuse).”

“Kaliacc” references Kali Yuga Accelerationism, the white-supremacist accelerationist movement that Fang’s Miya account propagated.

Mass resignations from Ethereum Foundation

Tomasz Stańczak resigned as co-executive director in February 2026. He was less than a year into the role. The new mandate document followed in March.

Within weeks, more contributors stepped back from Ethereum Foundation roles: Josh Stark, Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, and Trent van Epps, who departed to the Ethereum Protocol Guild.

Ethereum Foundation researchers Carl Beekhuizen and Julian Ma also resigned in mid-May. Alex Stokes started an open-ended “sabbatical.”