Ethereum Foundation has officially laid off 54 employees, about 20% of the entire team. The decision took effect on June 22, 2026.
The foundation stated that this is the final stage of the restructuring that began back in June 2025. At that time, Ethereum Foundation approved new goals and tightened its treasury management policy.
The main goal of these changes is to make the foundation more financially disciplined and direct resources to where they are most needed for the development of Ethereum.
Ethereum Foundation Restructures Operations Around Five Areas
In a new blog post, the Ethereum Foundation presented an updated operational plan. Now, the foundation’s work will be organized around five areas: protocol, access, users, community, and the institutional sector.
Management and day-to-day operational tasks will be delegated to separate teams.
Each area will have its own zone of responsibility. The protocol team will focus on protecting Ethereum from censorship and external control, safely launching network upgrades, and conducting long-term research. Topics include post-quantum security and privacy at the first layer.
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The access area aims to make interacting with the blockchain simpler and more independent. Users should be able to read network data and send transactions without unnecessary intermediaries.
The institutional area is being created for businesses, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. Its goal is to simplify the use of Ethereum cryptographic tools outside the traditional crypto industry.
Wave of Departures Before the Layoffs
The restructuring began shortly after eight prominent team members left the Ethereum Foundation.
The most recent to announce her departure was co-executive director Xiao-Wei Wang. On June 22, she left the foundation after eight years in the research team. Back in February, her colleague, the second co-executive director Tomasz Stanczak, also left the organization.
After that, the only leader responsible for the foundation’s daily operations was board member Bastian Aue.
Since the beginning of the year, researchers and engineers Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, Carl Beek and Julian Ma have also left the Ethereum Foundation.
Former foundation researcher Dankrad Feist believes the issue was not strategic disagreements but management problems. Coinbase engineering lead Yuga Kohler described the situation even more harshly, calling it dysfunction.
Financial Problems Were One of the Reasons for the Layoffs
The layoffs come amid growing concerns about funding for Ethereum development. Trent Van Epps, who coordinated Ethereum development from 2021 to April 2026, recently warned that developer funding could reach a critical point within the next three to nine months.
He estimates that supporting more than ten Ethereum client teams requires about $30 million per year.
The pressure increased after the end of the Client Incentives Program. This program funded teams developing and maintaining key Ethereum software for four years. It ended in April 2026.
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The foundation itself also plans to cut expenses. Currently, annual spending is about 15% of treasury reserves, but by 2030, the Ethereum Foundation wants to reduce this to a baseline 5%. Internally, this strategy is called Subtraction.
Part of the burden is taken on by the Protocol Guild. This is an independent association that distributes donations among Ethereum ecosystem participants. Since 2022, it has directed about $38 million to developers. But this model has a weakness: money comes only from voluntary contributions, so there is no stability.
A day before the layoff announcement, former Ethereum Foundation employees launched Ethlabs. This is an independent nonprofit research organization. It was founded by Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Kaspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolph and Julian Ma.
The project was supported by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink, Anchorage and more than 50 partners from the Ethereum community.
What Is Next for Ethereum Foundation?
The foundation promised that next month it will provide more details about what each of the new areas will be doing.
Vitalik Buterin also outlined a new direction. He presented the concept of CROPS, which is built around five principles: censorship resistance, capture resistance, openness, privacy, and security.
In a recent post on X, Buterin wrote that the Ethereum Foundation needs to focus more on key tasks. At the same time, he considers the emergence of independent organizations like Ethlabs a normal development for the ecosystem. In his opinion, such teams, funded by the community, will help keep Ethereum development strong and decentralized, even if the foundation itself spends less.
But there is still plenty of uncertainty around Ethereum . This is also reflected in the price of ETH. According to CoinMarketCap, the coin is currently trading around $1,662, although in August 2025 it nearly reached $4,950.
Now the main question is whether independent organizations and the community itself can cover the costs of key Ethereum development. This is about $30 million per year. In the second half of the year, this could become one of the main topics for the entire ecosystem.
