Sergey Ivancheglo, known in the IOTA community as Come-from-Beyond, submitted his resignation from the IOTA Foundation's board of directors on June 26, 2019. Co-founder David Sønstebø made the resignation public on July 26, 2019, in a post on the foundation's own Medium account. “As planned Sergey submitted his resignation letter on the 26th of June and stepped down from the Board of Directors,” Sønstebø wrote1. Sønstebø said the timing had moved up. “This blog post was planned to be released in a couple of weeks, but due to unforeseen events today we chose to make this public today,” he wrote.
Two leadership moves at the IOTA Foundation on the record since 2019
Every move CryptoLately has verified there, by the day it became public
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Date | Event |
|---|---|
| July 26, 2019 | Ivancheglo left the board. Sergey Ivancheglo left the board of the IOTA Foundation |
| Dec. 10, 2020 | Sønstebø left the board. David Sønstebø left the board of the IOTA Foundation |
One board exit on the record in 2019
Board exits CryptoLately has verified, by year
- 2019: 1
- 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025
Moves: The Moves Ledger, CryptoLately's record of verified leadership moves, Oct. 3, 2016 to Oct. 2, 2026.
Read the chart as a table
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2019 | 1 |
| 2020 | 2 |
| 2021 | 4 |
| 2022 | 0 |
| 2023 | 2 |
| 2024 | 4 |
| 2025 | 7 |
The move
Ivancheglo gave his own reason in a statement the foundation published alongside Sønstebø's post. “I no longer believe that the IOTA Foundation is the best setting for me to realize what we set out to create back in 2014 and 2015. I have always done my best work in a less rigid environment,” he said1. He named a second grievance tied to how his public statements had been used. “My use of free speech has repeatedly been leveraged in unfair attacks against the IOTA Foundation, something I am very tired of. I represent myself and only me when I express myself via personal mediums such as Twitter,” Ivancheglo said.
Sønstebø framed the resignation as planned rather than sudden, tied to a merger of the project's two engineering teams at the end of June. “Sergey Ivancheglo, better known as Come-from-Beyond/CFB had planned his resignation from the IOTA Foundation when the Alpha and Omega engineering teams were to be merged at the end of June,” he wrote1. The IOTA Foundation said it had known since March 2019. “We fully supported his decision to depart when he revealed his plans to resume working independently to us back in March,” Sønstebø wrote, adding that the foundation looked “forward to a fruitful collaboration with him in his role as an independent developer”.
The foundation before and after
Before June 26, 2019, Ivancheglo held a board seat at the foundation he had co-founded, a role that followed his October 2015 Bitcointalk post introducing IOTA to the world, according to FullyCrypto2. After his resignation, he moved into what the foundation called an unofficial advisor position, handing over backlogged work rather than holding a formal title1. Sønstebø said the partnership itself held. “Although I don't always agree or approve of CFB's unorthodox actions as it pertains to communication, I fully trust him as my co-founder and nothing has changed in terms of the development of the big picture,” he wrote.
What came next
By November 7, 2019, Ivancheglo told the project's Discord community that his separation from IOTA had widened into a full exit from crypto, FullyCrypto reported2. “Today is my last day of working on cryptocurrencies. I don't own personal cryptocoins anymore. My projects use IOTA which is the best distributed registry technology to date,” he posted, a message FullyCrypto quoted from his account. FullyCrypto reported he had sold his entire MIOTA holding and planned to keep working on Qubic, a computational protocol built on IOTA, and Aigarth, an AI project layered on top of it. The outlet noted the contrast with Litecoin founder Charlie Lee, who sold his coins near a market peak in 2017, and said Ivancheglo's sale came instead after a monthslong rift with the rest of the project's leadership.
Sources
- David Sønstebø, "Sergey Ivancheglo departs from the IOTA Foundation," IOTA Foundation (Medium), July 26, 2019, https://medium.com/@DavidSonstebo/sergey-ivancheglo-departs-from-the-iota-foundation-d2d9c1c61db6
- Mark Hunter, "IOTA Co-founder Quits Project and Crypto," FullyCrypto, November 11, 2019, https://fullycrypto.com/iota-co-founder-quits-project-and-crypto