IOTA Co-Founder David Sønstebø Clarifies the Reason for His Exit

The past few weeks have been good for the IOTA ecosystem in terms of development. Within these weeks, the Chrysalis Phase 2 testnet was launched. Alpha version of Stronghold, an open-source software library for IOTA Seeds was also released to the public.

The IOTA ecosystem also experienced other things in December 2020 aside from the above-mentioned developments. The controversial departure of the co-founder of IOTA, David Sønstebø, was also in the news in December.

Read Also: IOTA Foundation Announces the Launch of Chrysalis Phase 1 on Mainnet with Over 1000 TPS

However, with the look of things, the trending scenario of his exit is not over yet. Sønstebø has finally come out to clarify the major reason for his exit.

It had earlier been officially communicated that “David’s interests and the interests of the IOTA Foundation have diverged significantly.”

Contradicting the official reason for his exit published by IOTA Foundation, David Sønstebø said, “The official reasoning for my departure was communicated on the basis that there was some kind of contradiction between my interests and that of the organization. I categorically reject this blatantly false, dubiously motivated, and defamatory depiction of my person.”

“Regrettably and inexplicably, the Board repeatedly resisted this, despite me even naming a promising prospect from within IF. Unfortunately, this meant that the maturation of the Board was hampered.”

In the blog post, the former IOTA Foundation Executive also criticized the emerging role of the foundation in the community:

“The IOTA Foundation is equivalent to the Coordinator in many aspects; it was conceived to support IOTA’s success in the early days, but not evolve into a centralized authority of IOTA in perpetuity. The IOTA Foundation is meant to become one of many influential entities in the ecosystem of IOTA.”

Read Also: IOTA Co-Founder: There Will Be So Much Progress over the Coming Weeks and Months

He pointed out that the points mentioned above are the diverged interests emphasized by the Foundation in the announcement of his exit.

Howbeit, Sønstebø noted that IOTA Foundation still has his full conviction. He concluded by assuring the IOTA community members that the Foundation is not going bankruptcy anytime soon.

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