After going through a few logs, it looks like the crux of the matter is that things went bad when the previous head Chrystel left.
Andrew Lee argues she was effectively pushed out by a gang of other ops, and he’s “taking it back” to “take it forward” with something that smells like cryptopayments or something.
The admins say Lee, when Freenode Limited was created for admin purposes, originally swore precisely not to do what he’s now doing, and that he got lawyers involved to implement a hostile takeover.
Just sad to see this happening, it looks like there is no possibility for mediation anymore. The result will likely be fragmentation, which probably weakens everyone, but in a way it’s all “very FOSS”, we’re just seeing a project fork.