The Ethereum Foundation cut 54 staff — roughly 20% of its 270-person workforce — on June 23, 2026, closed its zero-knowledge research lab, and slashed its annual operating budget by 40%. Co-executive directors Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang both departed within four months of each other. At l...
"Privacy is no longer an afterthought; it is a first-class goal." — Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum Co-Founder
The Ethereum Foundation cut 54 staff — roughly 20% of its 270-person workforce — on June 23, 2026, closed its zero-knowledge research lab, and slashed its annual operating budget by 40%. Co-executive directors Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang both departed within four months of each other. At least nine senior researchers and leaders have left the Foundation in 2026, the highest rate of attrition in the organization's history.
The restructuring is not occurring in isolation. Vitalik Buterin published a seven-fork "Lean Ethereum" protocol roadmap on July 4 targeting quantum resistance, STARK-based verification, and native privacy over a three-to-four-year horizon. The Glamsterdam hard fork — carrying 10 EIPs including enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation and parallel transaction execution — has slipped from its original June target to Q3, with mainnet tentatively scheduled for mid-September. Meanwhile, five former Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, a competing nonprofit research lab backed by Consensys founder Joe Lubin, and a separate Ethereum Institutional nonprofit opened on July 1 to court banks. The Foundation that once operated as Ethereum's centralized steward is deliberately fragmenting into what Lubin calls a "multi-node" governance model — while ETH trades at $1,885, down approximately 44% year-to-date.
The Ethereum Foundation eliminated 54 positions on June 23, 2026, reducing headcount from approximately 270 to 216. The same announcement disclosed a 40% cut to the 2026 operating budget — the steepest reduction in the organization's history.
According to the Foundation's June 2025 treasury policy, annual spending had been running at roughly 15% of total assets. The new target: reduce that rate linearly to 5% by 2030, aligning with standard endowment-model spending. Data from Arkham Intelligence shows the Foundation holds approximately 102,400 ETH ($210.9 million at current prices) across 14 tracked addresses, with total portfolio value near $270.9 million.
To generate yield on its holdings, the Foundation staked 70,000 ETH in two tranches — the first in February 2026 and the final batch in April, reaching its target by April 3. At current staking APYs of 2.7% to 3.8%, the position generates an estimated $3.9 million to $5.4 million annually. That covers a fraction of the Foundation's operational costs.
The zero-knowledge research lab was shuttered entirely. According to TechTimes, the closure was part of the broader cost rationalization and cluster-based reorganization.
The 2026 departures are not routine turnover. The Foundation lost both co-executive directors, multiple protocol researchers, and its P2P networking lead. A timeline according to CoinDesk and Unchained:
According to Phemex, five of the departures occurred in May alone. The total count reached at least nine senior exits by mid-year, with roughly 19 staff departures overall in 2026 when including non-senior positions. Multiple departing researchers cited frustration with the Foundation's pace of execution and internal governance, according to CoinDesk reporting from May 18.
The Foundation published its new organizational blueprint on June 23 via its official blog. The single-hierarchy model has been replaced by five domain-focused clusters plus operations and management functions:
The Foundation's 2026 Mandate, published alongside the restructuring, repositioned the organization from Ethereum's "primary guardian" to "one of many guardians." This language is deliberate. It sets the legal and organizational framework for independent entities — Ethlabs, Ethereum Institutional, and potentially others — to absorb functions the Foundation previously monopolized.
On July 4, 2026, Buterin published the "Lean Ethereum" roadmap, describing it as the protocol's third major iteration — comparable in scope to the 2022 Merge. The plan spans seven forks across three to four years and targets nearly every protocol layer.
Key engineering priorities according to CoinDesk and CryptoBriefing:
According to CoinDesk reporting, Ethereum developers largely embraced the long-term vision but urged faster execution. The tension between ambition and delivery speed has become a recurring theme in Ethereum governance discussions throughout 2026.
Glamsterdam is the immediate technical delivery vehicle. Originally targeted for June 2026, it has slipped to Q3, with Sepolia testnet activation tentatively set for August 3 and mainnet deployment around September 16, according to CoinMarketCap and The Defiant.
The fork ships 10 Ethereum Improvement Proposals tracked under Meta EIP-7773. The two structural changes, according to ThirdWeb and Bitfinex:
EIP-7732 — Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS): Moves block construction responsibilities from validators to specialized builders at the protocol level. Currently, this separation exists through external software (MEV-Boost); Glamsterdam bakes it into Ethereum's consensus rules.
EIP-7928 — Block-Level Access Lists (BALs): Enables parallel transaction execution by making each transaction's storage-slot dependencies explicit at the block level. Ethereum currently processes transactions sequentially because it cannot predict which storage slots each will touch. BALs eliminate that constraint.
The remaining eight EIPs cover gas accounting changes (EIP-7778), a SLOTNUM opcode (EIP-7843), increased maximum contract size (EIP-7954), ETH transfer/burn logging (EIP-7708), and networking improvements.
The gas limit target post-Glamsterdam: 200 million, up from the current 60 million. The Foundation described reaching this target as phased — 100 million initially, 200 million once ePBS is fully operational. According to estimates cited by multiple sources, this could reduce L1 gas costs by up to 78% and push throughput toward 10,000 transactions per second.
Two new entities launched in June and July 2026, each absorbing functions the Foundation is shedding:
Ethlabs (launched June 22): Founded by five former Foundation researchers — Ansgar Dietrichs (Executive Director), Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Josh Rudolf, and Caspar Schwarz-Schilling. Backed by Bitmine Immersion Technologies (holding approximately 5.7 million ETH), SharpLink (roughly 876,000 ETH), and Joe Lubin's Consensys. Initial focus: 15-minute finality problem and institutional-grade settlement. According to The Defiant, Ethlabs' own funders acknowledge it will "overlap with the Ethereum Foundation and draw its densest talent."
Ethereum Institutional (launched July 1): Founded by three former Foundation enterprise team members — David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson. Also backed by Bitmine, SharpLink, and Lubin. Operates across eight global offices (New York, London, Hong Kong, Singapore, Zurich, Frankfurt, Tokyo, Abu Dhabi). Focus: education, standards, and engagement for banks, asset managers, and custodians evaluating Ethereum for tokenization and stablecoins.
The overlap in backers is notable. Bitmine, SharpLink, and Lubin fund both Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional. This creates a parallel power structure with shared financial interests operating alongside — and in acknowledged competition with — the Foundation.
ETH opened 2026 above $3,300 and peaked near $3,400 in mid-January, according to crypto.news. As of July 24, ETH trades at approximately $1,885 — down roughly 44% year-to-date.
For comparison, according to Investing.com: Bitcoin is down approximately 11% year-to-date as of mid-year, while ETH has fallen 32% or more. Spot Bitcoin ETFs hold approximately $128 billion in AUM with $53 billion in cumulative net inflows since January 2024. Spot Ethereum ETFs hold roughly $13 billion — a 10-to-1 gap.
ETH's 0.78 correlation to the Nasdaq 100, versus Bitcoin's 0.55, means Ethereum absorbs more institutional de-risking during equity selloffs. The structural underperformance has persisted through multiple quarters.
The CryptoSlate headline from June captured the paradox: "Ethereum Foundation cuts 20% of staff as ETH sinks 44% YTD despite record usage." Network utilization metrics — active addresses, transaction counts, DeFi TVL — remain near or at historic highs. Price does not reflect usage.
The Ethereum Foundation is executing a deliberate dismantling of its own centrality. The budget cuts, staff reductions, and mandate rewrite are not crisis responses — they are structural choices to shift from a single-steward model to a distributed governance architecture. Whether this constitutes healthy decentralization or institutional fragmentation depends on whether the splinter organizations can maintain protocol coherence without a central coordinator.
The technical roadmap is ambitious. Seven forks, quantum-resistant cryptography, STARK verification, post-EVM architecture — each is a multi-year engineering effort. Glamsterdam alone carries 10 EIPs and has already slipped one quarter. The gap between the roadmap's scope and the Foundation's reduced capacity is the central risk.
ETH's price decline amplifies the challenge. The Foundation's treasury is denominated primarily in ETH. A 44% YTD drawdown mechanically reduces its operational runway, making the shift to a 5% endowment-spending model more urgent. The market is not pricing Ethereum's usage metrics; it is pricing its institutional uncertainty.