EF Leadership Turmoil Again: Who Can Steer the Confused Ethereum?

Original author: bootly, BitpushNews

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) once again finds itself at a crossroads of personnel turbulence.

Tomasz Stańczak, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, has announced he will step down at the end of this month. This comes just 11 months after he and Hsiao-Wei Wang jointly succeeded the long-time leader Aya Miyaguchi in March last year, forming a new leadership core.

He will be succeeded by Bastian Aue. There is very little public information about this individual; his X account was registered only eight months ago with almost no posting history. He will continue to co-lead this organization, which controls the core resources and direction of the Ethereum ecosystem, alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.

This seemingly sudden personnel change is, in fact, an inevitable result of the intertwining of internal conflicts, external pressures, and strategic transformation within the Ethereum Foundation.

Stepping Up in a Crisis: A Turbulent Year

To understand Stańczak's departure, we must first return to the context of his appointment.

In early 2025, the Ethereum community was in a period of anxiety. At that time, the overall cryptocurrency market was rising after the US election, with Bitcoin repeatedly hitting new highs, and competing chains like Solana gaining strong momentum. In contrast, Ethereum's price performance was relatively weak, and the Ethereum Foundation itself became a target of criticism.

The criticism was directed squarely at then-Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi. The developer community complained that the Foundation was severely disconnected from frontline builders, had conflicts of interest in its strategic direction, and lacked sufficient promotion for Ethereum. Some questioned whether the Foundation was too "passive," and in its gentle stance of positioning itself as a "coordinator" rather than a "leader," was letting Ethereum lose its first-mover advantage.

As Ethereum's "central bank," the Foundation was being asked not for laissez-faire governance, but for assertive action.

Amid this storm of public opinion, Miyaguchi stepped back into a board role. Stańczak and Wang were thrust into the spotlight, tasked with leading in a time of crisis.

Stańczak was not an outsider parachuted in. He is the founder of Nethermind, a company that is one of the core execution clients in the Ethereum ecosystem, playing a key role in infrastructure development. He understands technology, has entrepreneurial experience, and has a firsthand understanding of community pain points.

In his own words, the directive he received upon taking office was clear: "The community was saying—you're too chaotic, you need to be a bit more centralized, move a bit faster, to handle this critical period."

What was done in this year?

The Stańczak-Wang duo did bring visible changes.

First, organizational efficiency. The Foundation laid off 19 employees, streamlined its structure, and attempted to shed its bureaucratic label. The strategic focus shifted back from Layer 2 to Layer 1 itself, with a clear statement of prioritizing the scaling of the Ethereum mainnet over letting L2s operate independently. The upgrade pace noticeably accelerated, with EIPs being pushed forward more decisively than before.

Second, a shift in posture. The Foundation began publishing series of videos on social media, proactively explaining Ethereum's technical roadmap and development direction to the public. This "outreach" communication style contrasted with its previously more closed-off, mysterious image.

In terms of strategic layout, Stańczak promoted exploration into several new directions: privacy protection, quantum computing threat response, and the integration of artificial intelligence with Ethereum. Particularly regarding AI, he explicitly stated he saw the trend of "agentic systems" and "AI-assisted discovery" reshaping the world.

Financially, the Foundation began discussing more transparent budget management and fund allocation strategies, attempting to address external skepticism about the efficiency of treasury usage.

Vitalik Buterin's assessment of Stańczak was: "He helped significantly improve the efficiency of multiple departments within the Foundation, making the organization more agile in responding to the external world."

The Subtext of the Resignation Statement

Why leave after less than a year?

Stańczak's resignation statement was quite candid and somewhat thought-provoking. He provided several key points:

First, he believes the Ethereum Foundation and the entire ecosystem are "in a healthy state." It's time to pass the baton.

Second, he wants to return to being a "hands-on product builder," focusing on the intersection of AI and Ethereum. He said his current mindset is similar to when he founded Nethermind in 2017.

Third, and perhaps the most intriguing line: "The Foundation's leadership is increasingly confident in making their own decisions and taking charge of more matters. Over time, my ability to execute independently within the Foundation has diminished. If I stayed on, in 2026 I would mostly just be 'waiting to hand over the baton.'"

This statement reveals two layers of meaning: one, the new leadership team has developed its own drive and no longer needs his constant involvement; two, his actual sphere of influence may have been shrinking. For someone accustomed to hands-on work with a strong entrepreneurial spirit, this feeling clearly didn't suit him well.

He also mentioned, "I know many current ideas about agentic AI may be immature, even useless, but it's precisely this game-like experimentation that defined the innovative spirit of early Ethereum."

This statement carries a hint of implicit criticism of the status quo: as an organization becomes more "mature" and decisions become more "stable," does that wild, experimental spirit get lost?

Stańczak's departure, on the surface a personal choice, reflects the long-standing dilemma faced by the Ethereum Foundation.

Since its inception, this organization has occupied an awkward position. Theoretically, Ethereum is decentralized, and the Foundation should not be a command-and-control power center. But in reality, it controls substantial funds, core developer resources, and holds significant sway in ecosystem coordination, objectively playing the dual roles of "central bank" and "development planning commission."

This identity paradox has long placed the Foundation in a dilemma: doing too much invites accusations of centralization; doing too little draws criticism for inaction. The Miyaguchi era leaned towards a "coordinator"定位, resulting in criticism of weakness; Stańczak attempted to shift towards an "executor" role, which indeed improved efficiency, but naturally led to more concentrated power distribution within the organization.

Stańczak's resignation statement precisely exposes this tension: as the organization became more efficient and decisive, the personal maneuvering room for founding team members was compressed instead. For an ecosystem that needs to balance "decentralized ethos" and "market competition efficiency," this internal friction is almost unavoidable.

What kind of person is Bastian Aue, who is succeeding Stańczak?

Public information is extremely scarce. His own description on X is that he previously worked at the Foundation on "hard-to-quantify but crucial work": assisting management decisions, communicating with team leads, budget considerations, strategic梳理, priority setting. This low-key style contrasts with Stańczak's distinct entrepreneurial气质.

In his acceptance statement, Aue said: "My basis for making decisions is a principled commitment to certain properties of what we are building. The Foundation's mission is to ensure that truly permissionless infrastructure—with cypherpunk spirit at its core—can be built."

This language sounds more reminiscent of the Miyaguchi era: emphasizing principles, emphasizing spirit, emphasizing coordination over leadership.

Does this mean the Foundation will rebalance its direction, pulling back from "aggressive execution" to "principled coordination"? That remains to be seen.

Ethereum's Uncertainty

Stańczak's departure coincides with a juncture where Ethereum is discussing a series of major proposals. According to him, the Foundation is about to release several key documents, including specific plans for "Lean Ethereum," future development roadmaps, and DeFi coordination mechanisms.

Among them, the "Lean Ethereum" proposal has been jokingly called "Ethereum's weight-loss era" by some community members—aiming to simplify the protocol, reduce burdens, and make the mainnet run more efficiently.

These directional documents will profoundly influence Ethereum's evolution path in the coming years. Changing the core executive leader at this moment undoubtedly adds uncertainty to the implementation of these proposals.

The broader context is that Ethereum faces challenges on multiple fronts: competition from high-performance chains like Solana, the fragmentation issue of Layer 2, the new narrative window of AI-blockchain integration, and the impact of overall crypto market sentiment volatility on ecosystem funding and attention.

On the same day Stańczak announced his departure, ETH briefly fell into the $1,800 range. If it continues to break below this level, an awkward fact will emerge: the comprehensive return on holding ETH could fall below the interest rate on US dollar cash.

Here's a more painful换算: In January 2018, ETH first reached $1,400. That $1,400, adjusted for US CPI inflation with compound interest, would be equivalent to approximately $1,806 by February 2026.

In other words, if an investor bought ETH in 2018 and held it without participating in staking, after eight years, they not only made no profit but even underperformed US dollars sitting in a bank earning interest.

For the "Ethereum faithful" who have believed all along, the real拷问 might not be "who won the路线之争," but rather: how much longer can this hold?

The only certainty is: this core organization controlling one of the most important ecosystems in the crypto world is still searching for its定位 in a rapidly changing industry, and this path is注定 not to be平静.

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