Péter Szilágyi, who led the development of Ethereum client Geth, has claimed in a series of X posts that he turned down a $5 million offer to quit the Ethereum Foundation. 

The offer allegedly involved him and his team leaving the foundation and turning Geth into a private company.

“Did you all know [the Ethereum Foundation] started (and funded) a second Geth team *inside* Nethermind? One ‘100% independent fork from us, with no intended collaboration’ according to @0xstark,” Szilágyi said, referring to foundation Co-Chair Josh Stark.

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Geth, short for Go Ethereum, is the most widely used software client for running an Ethereum node. Nethermind is another Ethereum client, but it is written in C#.

Although Szilágyi said he had been fired from the foundation within 24 hours of his discovery of the “secret second Geth team” — while he was on sabbatical — 0xjmederos, another former core developer at Nethermind, said: “The ‘Geth team inside Nethermind’ was *publicly* announced on rollcall [sic] as soon as it was created in October 2024.”