# Ethereum Foundation Under Investigation by 'State Authority'

Source: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/03/20/ethereum-foundation-under-investigation-by-state-authority
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Ethereum-Foundation-Under-Investigation-by-State-Authority?index=0x65fb02f1c77ad450f1fd90c0dab9d4dd4cfaa1bc9bc11a9a70c57d558f38614e304ff4dc
Submitted by tim on 2024-03-20 UTC, 7 upvotes, 4 comments

## Summary

The Ethereum Foundation, the Swiss non-profit at the center of the Ethereum ecosystem, is facing questions from an unnamed "state authority," according to a February 26, 2024 GitHub commit to its website repository. That commit said the foundation had received a voluntary enquiry that included a confidentiality requirement, and it removed a footer stating the foundation had never been contacted by any agency in a way requiring nondisclosure, along with the site's warrant canary. An attorney familiar with the situation said a Swiss regulator may have served a document request and may be working with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The article also reports, citing Fortune, that the SEC is seeking to classify ETH as a security.

## Comments

**tim**: Actually, the news here is that the Canary has been removed from the Ethereum Foundation's website:

https://github.com/ethereum/ethereum-foundation-website/commit/769b30603504b4b5e8f601f8014691a8d1821390#diff-c096857ee8ce97499b45a56c3d9bc8d9cc0e0a9c25ce378eb10a235a7dddf900L136-L156

**macbudkowski.eth**: Wow, nice catch. I think it's safe to assume that the SEC contacted EF regarding the Ethereum ETF; why wouldn't they? What's weird is that the EF hasn't disclosed it. Maybe it's somehow related to the procedures, or they just don't want to talk about it to not influence the markets.

**tim**: Well, the noteworthy thing is that this commit is 3 weeks old already so only god knows why it‘s the news today.

There‘s a chance the commit was only uploaded today, OK, but my psycho analysis would be that people are feeling the pain from decreasing prices and so this headline hit better today than 3 weeks ago.

**macbudkowski.eth**: The "Ethereum is not a security" debate continues:
https://x.com/BrianQuintenz/status/1770541103667929161?s=20