Veterans Depart, Upgrades Delayed: Ethereum Foundation’s Restructuring Faces a Critical Test

Original author: Nancy, PANews

Within just a few months, several core members have successively left the Ethereum Foundation (EF), further dampening the already low morale of the Ethereum community, especially given the relatively weak performance of ETH prices recently.

During EF's Critical Transformation Period, Senior Veterans Depart En Masse

In mid-2025, facing issues of slow execution efficiency, insufficient ecosystem support, and long-standing questions about governance transparency, the Ethereum Foundation initiated an internal restructuring, reorganizing its research and development teams and conducting its first public layoffs. This move was seen externally as a long-overdue self-correction.

In March 2026, the EF released a 38-page mission statement. While reaffirming Ethereum's core vision, the Foundation explicitly stated that its role has shifted from the "first guardian" to "one of many guardians." To demonstrate its determination, the EF even created a meme titled "SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE," implying that if it fails to fulfill its commitment to Ethereum, it would "face the consequences and self-destruct."

However, amidst the ongoing organizational restructuring of the EF, core members continue to leave. Since February this year, seven core members or senior contributors have departed.

In February, Tomasz Stańczak announced his resignation as Co-Executive Director of the EF, less than a year after taking the role. During his tenure, he promoted areas like privacy protection, post-quantum security, and decentralized AI. He stated that the Ethereum ecosystem is now in a relatively healthy phase, so he wishes to return to building front-line products, focusing on exploring the integration of AI with Ethereum. He also noted that his independent scope for execution within the EF was gradually shrinking, making his continued tenure feel more like a transitional handover. His successor is Bastian Aue, who joined the EF in 2019. Comparatively, there is less public information available about Aue, who was previously responsible for key support functions like organizational coordination and operational optimization.

About two months later, in mid-April 2026, core figure Josh Stark announced his departure after seven years at the EF. He was deeply involved in several key Ethereum upgrades, including The Merge, Dencun, Fusaka, and Pectra, and served as Co-Chair of the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative. He cited his reason for leaving as "planning to rest and spend time with family."

On the same day, Trent Van Epps also announced his departure from the EF. He was long responsible for the organizational coordination of the Protocol Guild, driving the development of funding mechanisms for Ethereum core developers, and participating in network upgrades and funding-related matters. After leaving, he will focus on the Protocol Guild and research into Ethereum's political economy. He had previously publicly stated that the EF leadership's association with the Milady NFT collection was "perplexing."

In May, Alex Stokes, Co-Lead of Protocol Research, announced a sabbatical. Subsequently, Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, who previously served as Co-Leads of the Protocol Guild, along with senior researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma, also left, none of whom disclosed their reasons publicly.

Although the majority of departing members didn't publicly specify their reasons for leaving, there are reports that the EF, based on its emphasized "censorship resistance" principle, required internal members to sign a document called the "Mandate," or face immediate dismissal. This principle emphasizes that no entity should interfere with legitimate use or affect system operation by maintaining lasting and exclusive control over key mechanisms. However, this claim has not yet been officially confirmed by the EF.

Nevertheless, the loss of EF talent has also raised external concerns about the overall health of the Ethereum ecosystem. Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla warned that the health of L1 core development is the foundation of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. However, core developer salaries are 50% to 60% lower than comparable market positions, while high-performance new chains like Monad and leading L2 projects are poaching talent with salaries over 10 times higher. He warned that if senior researchers familiar with the underlying protocol logic leave, Ethereum's key roadmap could face a substantial risk of stalling.

Protocol Team Leadership Change, Upgrade Delay Fears Intensify

Within just four months, the successive departures of senior veterans from both the execution and research layers have further escalated the uncertainty surrounding the EF's reforms, particularly regarding the restructuring of the Protocol team.

The Protocol team is the core team responsible for the design, research, development, and coordination of Ethereum's base layer, covering areas like security, cryptography, zkEVM, and peer-to-peer networking. As one of the EF's core strengths, it significantly influences the long-term evolution, security, and scalability of the Ethereum protocol.

Facing these personnel changes, the EF also completed a restructuring of the Protocol team this month, appointing three new Co-Leads: Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik Svantes, each of whom has been with the EF for approximately 2 to 7 years.

Among them, Will Corcoran is a Protocol Research Coordinator, focusing on frontier research like zkVM proving systems, post-quantum consensus, and Fast Confirmation Rules. He has cross-team coordination experience and is familiar with the overall architecture.

Kev Wedderburn is the Lead of the zkEVM team, with deep expertise in zero-knowledge proofs, zkEVM implementation, and the intersection of research and engineering. He will continue to lead zkEVM-related work, driving the deep integration of the execution layer with zero-knowledge technology.

Fredrik Svantes is the Lead of Protocol Security Research. He has long led core Ethereum security efforts, including the Trillion Dollar Security Initiative, the Ethereum Bug Bounty program, and the organization of audit competitions. He will be deeply involved in cross-team collaboration.

Under the leadership of the new team, the Protocol's short-term priorities include driving the Glamsterdam upgrade to launch, preparing for the subsequent Hegotá upgrade, and continuing to advance the Strawmap roadmap.

Glamsterdam is Ethereum's next major network upgrade. Its core direction is to enhance Ethereum mainnet throughput by raising the gas limit from the current ~60 million to 200 million, and adjusting transaction processing mechanisms and state database management methods.

However, the Glamsterdam upgrade, originally planned for June 2026, has already seen some delays. Based on the latest testnet progress and feedback from the Interop conference, the actual mainnet deployment is more likely to be pushed back to the third quarter of 2026. Consequently, some community members and developers worry that the recent turnover of core personnel could further impact the upgrade's pace and execution efficiency.

Conversely, some argue that this personnel flow is a normal part of the EF restructuring process. Some members left after completing their interim missions, others adapted to strategic directional shifts, and the new leadership has gradually taken over, with the core roadmap remaining unchanged. More importantly, as the Ethereum ecosystem matures, the EF itself intends to weaken its central role. This helps reduce the risk of single points of control, alleviate external skepticism about the Foundation's influence, and further strengthen Ethereum's positioning as a neutral infrastructure.

This also aligns with the "Walkaway Test" concept advocated by Vitalik, where the protocol can still operate securely, predictably, and stably in the long term, even if core developers completely withdraw and cease maintenance.