Recently a group of Ethereum community leaders expressed condemn in a letter about the toxic behavior that led to the resignation of Afri Schoedon. The letter quoted that Afri Schoedon and his family even received threats in response to his mild trolling. All these repeated incidents forced him to quit Ethereum, the second largest cryptoplatform.
The letter also mentioned about how the Bitcoin engineer Jameson Lopp got swatted by angry cryptofans in 2017. According to them, Lopp’s case is an “awful example of the intimidation that can be wrought in the midst of very heated debates.” The letter also quoted about other incidents such as the alleged support of Taylor Monahan (MyEtherWallet’s founder) for VeChain
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Here is an excerpt from the letter:
“Unfortunately, time and time again we have witnessed ecosystem members engage in toxic behavior that discourages open discussion such as doxxing, violent threats, or brigading against people they disagree with. In an instance just last week, one of our longest standing contributors, and the catalyzer of the Görli Testnet, Afri, received a wave of verbal violence from some Redditors, forced into the center of a storm on r/ethtrader which, triggered by a couple of tweets issued by him, turned menacing, dark, and deeply toxic. Under stress from this backlash and to protect himself and his family from threats coming from unknown internet users, he made the decision to leave his position as a core Ethereum developer.”
“It should also be said that the Ethereum network is built, maintained and scaled by humans. Though we are a global community, no single individual can be expected to be on call 24/7. […] We must preserve the mental and emotional health of those humans—especially as they labor through their nights, weekends, often without pay, in order to manifest the mission and vision of Ethereum.”
Prominent personalities including Ethereum Foundation’s Hudson Jameson and Chris Hutchinson of Status signed the letter. According to the group, human capital is the backbone of Blockchain, and there is an emerging trend of cyberbullying in cryptocurrency, which needs to be irradiated. The letter will hopefully stimulate a movement for protecting the rights of Ethereum developers who work hard day and night. For some kind of people, the “why can’t we be friends” tone of the article can bring the opposite effect. We can also expect to see a minority of people stepping up their game.
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Several Twitter followers also expressed their concern in their tweets mentioning it as a sad day for the Ethereum community as they lost one of their most dedicated members for a silly reason.
