Neel Somani has stepped down as executive chairman of Ethereum layer two protocol Eclipse effective October 2025.
The decision was confirmed in a joint statement issued by Eclipse Labs and Somani.
Somani said the move reflects his intention to focus full time on machine learning research and intellectual work.
His departure follows a period of leadership transitions and strategic changes within Eclipse.
Eclipse was founded in 2022 after the collapse of the Terra blockchain ecosystem.
The company initially raised fifteen million dollars in seed funding to explore scaling solutions.
Eclipse originally focused on rollup as a service products using the Solana Virtual Machine.
In 2023, the firm pivoted toward building a high performance Ethereum layer two network.
Eclipse gained significant attention across the crypto sector following that strategic shift.
Somani had planned in advance to reduce operational involvement following a Series A raise.
The company closed a fifty million dollar Series A funding round in early 2024.