The U-turn comes after one of the project's co-founders claimed Mozilla should be ashamed of partnering with "planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters."
Mozilla has announced that it will no longer accept cryptocurrency donations — temporarily, at least — as it reviews the industry's environmental impact.
The nonprofit organization, which is behind the Firefox web browser, inadvertently caused a storm on Twitter by innocuously reminding followers that they accept contributions through BitPay.
But this led to a stern rebuke from one of Mozilla's own co-founders, Jamie Zawinski, who tweeted:
"Hi, I'm sure that whoever runs this account has no idea who I am, but I founded @mozilla and I'm here to say f*** you and f*** this. Everyone involved in the project should be witheringly ashamed of this decision to partner with planet-incinerating Ponzi grifters."
Mozilla has since said that it is "listening and taking action" — unveiling a review into whether crypto donations align with the project's goals on climate change.
The organization's embrace of crypto donations actually extends back to 2014 — and it's unclear why Zawinski has picked this exact moment to voice his objections.
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'Mozilla Blinked'
Reacting to Mozilla's announcement in a blog post, Zawinski argued that "the only way to get a corporation to behave ethically is to create a PR disaster for their comms team." He added:
"Cryptocurrencies are not only an apocalyptic ecological disaster, and a greater-fool pyramid scheme, but are also incredibly toxic to the open web, another ideal that Mozilla used to support."
Zawinski went on to express hope that the conclusion Mozilla reaches in this review is this: "Bury it in the desert. Wear clothes."
