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.
Somani transitioned from chief executive officer to executive chairman at that time.
Vijay Chetty was appointed chief executive officer as part of the leadership change.
The transition was founder led and planned before the Series A round.
Somani retained his ownership stake and board authority after stepping back.
Eclipse and Somani declined public comment on internal governance decisions at the time.
Such leadership transitions are increasingly common among maturing crypto infrastructure firms.
Eclipse successfully launched its mainnet during 2025.
Later that year the board initiated a strategic pivot toward application development.
Sydney Huang was appointed chief executive officer following the pivot.
Somani worked with the board to support the transition in leadership direction.
Eclipse announced plans to narrow its focus to a single flagship application.
Over the past months, we’ve explored opportunities for application development on the network.
The company said.
Going forward, we’ll prioritise building a breakout application on top of Eclipse’s L2 infrastructure,
The company added.
The flagship application has not yet been publicly announced.
Huang outlined her strategy in a recent essay on Eclipse’s future direction.
Eclipse’s main focus needs to be on one app, not a few apps or many apps.
Sydney Huang said.
That application will be announced in the coming month.
Sydney Huang said.
Somani is now concentrating on research involving large language models and formal verification.
His exit formally concludes his leadership tenure at Eclipse as the company enters a new phase.
At the time of reporting, Ethereum price was $2,937.35.