The Ethereum Foundation published a 38-page illustrated governance document on March 13, 2026. It features anime girls, lingerie-clad archers, and a cartoon pledge with a death-by-suicide penalty. All three of the Foundation’s protocol leads have since left. Over half a dozen other senior contributors have resigned too. Token Metrics flagged this story in its Daily Pulse main items coverage, and smart money is currently net selling ETH.<\/p>\n
The Ethereum Foundation is the nonprofit that funds core Ethereum research and development. It doesn’t run the network directly, but it employs many of the researchers and developers who shape Ethereum’s technical direction. When senior people leave, it matters.<\/p>\n
The Foundation has faced governance questions before. It has repeatedly declined to disclose how much voting power Vitalik Buterin holds over the organization. That opacity has frustrated some community members for years. The Mandate document, published in March, added a new layer of controversy on top of existing tension.<\/p>\n
The document’s visual style borrows heavily from Milady Maker, a controversial NFT collection that Buterin publicly supports. He uses a Milady NFT as his profile photo on X. Milady’s floor price once traded above 7.3 ETH in December 2024. It now trades below 1.2 ETH, an 84% drop in ETH terms and about 91% in dollar terms. according to reporting on the resignations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Milady’s history is darker than a price chart. Its founder, Charlotte Fang (real name Krishna Okhandiar), resigned as Milady Maker CEO in May 2022. Investigators had exposed him as the operator of a 4chan-connected account called Miya. Which spread antisemitic and anti-Black content and promoted what critics describe as a suicide cult. Okhandiar later admitted to running the account. Milady floor prices halved during his resignation. Eight days before the Ethereum Foundation Mandate dropped, someone asked Buterin on X directly. “why milady?” The question referenced the Miya account, the seppuku license. The broader Kali Yuga Accelerationism movement that the Miya account had promoted.<\/p>\n The Foundation’s board signed the Mandate and credited two artists for its visual design. No one at the Foundation has publicly explained the document’s aesthetic choices in detail.<\/p>\n\t\t