Eclipse Labs founder and CEO Neel Somani has announced he will be “temporarily reducing” his role as the public face for the firm following serious allegations of sexual misconduct.

Somani took to the social media platform X, formerly Twitter, to address the allegations stating he is innocent and prepared to defend his reputation.

“Serious allegations have been made against me on Twitter in the last week. These allegations are false, but serious allegations about sexual misconduct warrant a serious and thoughtful response,” said Somani using the social platform X.

Eclipse Labs took to social media to address the allegations stating it is committed to maintaining professional standards and gender equality.

Eclipse remains committed to maintaining the highest personal and professional standards, including gender equality and fair treatment. The team takes allegations against our CEO, Neel Somani, seriously and believes in the importance of truth.

— Eclipse 🌑 (@EclipseFND) May 9, 2024

Eclipse Labs is a layer-2 blockchain scaling project built on Ethereum with headquarters in San-Francisco. 

“The senior leaders at Eclipse are well equipped to take on these responsibilities and this will allow these conversations to unfold and the truth to emerge about these allegations,” said Somani using the social media platform X. 

So I'll be temporarily reducing my role as a public face for Eclipse. The senior leaders at Eclipse are well equipped to take on these responsibilities and this will allow these conversations to unfold and the truth to emerge about these allegations.

— neelsalami.eth 🌑 (@neelsalami) May 9, 2024

In March, Eclipse Labs announced it had raised $50 million in funding round to fuel the launch of its solution for scaling the Ethereum network.

The funding round was co-led by Placeholder and Hack VC, bringing the total capital raised to $65 million. Other notable participants in the round included Polychain Capital, Delphi Digital, Maven 11, DBA, Apollo-managed funds, and Fenbushi Capital.

Eclipse Labs announced it is hiring for several roles, including a Growth Engineer, Marketing Lead, and People Operations Manager, with a preference for candidates based in the Bay Area.

In December 2023, Eclipse launched a testnet with the intention of prioritizing developers. Opening the mainnet to developers and giving them a platform to build applications that benefit from the project’s architecture.

Eclipse Testnet is live.

This marks a significant step towards bringing the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) to Ethereum L2. pic.twitter.com/4VAZh2W5A0

— Eclipse 🌑 (@EclipseFND) December 13, 2023

Eclipse Labs is attempting to foster collaboration and interoperability between the Ethereum and Solana ecosystems. This approach allows applications built for Solana to run on Eclipse with minimal modifications. SOL tokens remain the primary currency within the Eclipse ecosystem, further bridging the gap between the two major blockchain players.