The Ethereum Foundation was approached by "authorities" with checks
A certain "government agency" is conducting an investigation into the Ethereum Foundation, a Swiss non-profit organization that occupies a central place in the Ethereum ecosystem.
This became known from an entry in the GitHub repository dated February 26, 2024, which was noticed by CoinDesk.
It reports that the foundation has received a confidential request from a government agency. The reasons and scope of the investigation have not been disclosed.
The potential timing investigation coincided with important technical changes in the Ethereum ecosystem. In early March, a major technical update called Dencun took place on the network, designed to reduce the cost of transactions for users of second-level blockchains (L2) deployed on the basis of Ethereum.
In addition, several large investment companies have applied to launch spot ETFs on ether. However, the regulator postponed making a decision on them until at least May 2024.
Historically, the Ethereum Foundation has maintained transparency regarding government requests, as evidenced by the disclaimer now removed from the site. It contained a promise to disclose information about any non-standard government contacts, but judging by the code changes reflected on GitHub, this text was deleted in February.
In addition, the so—called canary testimony was removed from the foundation's website - a way to convey information to users through denial or silence. In other words, if the company does not explicitly confirm the absence of requests from government agencies, then there are such requests.
In 2019, the foundation mistakenly deleted this "canary certificate", but then quickly returned it to its place.
According to one version, Swiss regulators, possibly in cooperation with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), sent the Ethereum Foundation a request for documents.
Commenting on the situation, one of the lawyers familiar with the circumstances of the case told Coindesk that this request is part of a broader audit that other international organizations have also come under.
"I think the Ethereum Foundation is not the only organization they are requesting information from," he noted.
Source: https://ru.beincrypto.com/ethereum-foundation-proverki/
