以太坊基金会は消え去り、次なるエターナル分散型組織の時代へ

Wenser

Odaily资深作者

@wenser2010

2026-07-10 08:29

この記事は約3253文字で、全文を読むには約5分かかります

古き時代の船では新大陸に辿り着けない――それとも、波状的な衝撃を乗り越えた先にこそ活路があるのか？

AI要約

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核心的な見解：イーサリアム財団（EF）は内部の組織的分裂と人材流出の危機に直面している。54人の人員削減に続き、プロトコルサポートチームが解散し、少なくとも8名の上級職員が退職した。同時に、EthlabsやEthereum Institutionalといった独立した非営利団体が台頭し、EFの機能の一部を担っている。将来、EFは「エコシステムのマスコット」的な存在に後退する可能性がある。
重要な要素：
1. EFは6月23日に新たな組織体制を発表し、54人（メンバーの20%）を削減。プロトコルサポート部門は正式に解散し、「EF設立以来最大の人員削減」とみなされている。
2. 5名の元EF研究者が非営利の研究開発ラボ「Ethlabs」を設立。Joe Lubin氏やConsensysなどの支援を受け、イーサリアムを世界経済の決済レイヤーにすることを目指している。
3. 元EFメンバーによって設立されたEthereum Institutionalが7月1日に始動。イーサリアムの機関向けアプリケーションの推進に特化し、Ethlabsなどと連携して銀行のニーズに応える。
4. 元EF共同執行ディレクターの王肖薇氏が辞任。年内に少なくとも8名の上級職員が退職し、人材流出が組織の混乱を加速させている。
5. EFのセキュリティチームがAIエージェントを展開し、イーサリアムのレッドチームテストを実施。脆弱性（CVE-2026-34219など）を発見。AIはセキュリティ研究の方法を変えつつあるが、現時点では人員を完全に代替するには至っていない。
6. Ethlabsのメンバーは、ETHが5年間で5000ドルを突破できなかった後も、明確な価値の物語を欠いており、エコシステムの発展は困難に直面していると指摘している。

Original｜Odaily Planet Daily（@OdailyChina）

Author｜Wenser（@wenser 2010 ）

Last evening, the Ethereum Foundation Protocol Support Team officially announced that the team has been formally dissolved. Earlier, Wang Xiaowei, the former co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation who was seen as "one of the key figures representing EF's organizational reform," had also officially resigned. To date, at least 8 senior personnel have left the Ethereum Foundation this year.

On the other side of these organizational and personnel changes lies the competition for and functional replacement of the Ethereum Foundation's roles by non-profit independent organizations like ETHLabs and Ethereum Institutional. It also coincides with recent technological progress, such as the Ethereum Foundation's security team using AI agents for red-teaming the ETH network and discovering real-world vulnerabilities.

As ETH's price faces wave after wave of industry scrutiny, the Ethereum Foundation is confronted with increasingly complex and diverse contradictions and challenges following internal reforms. Relatedly, the leadership structure of Ethereum is facing a splintering transformation.

The Ethereum Foundation Enters an Era of Decline: Competitors Rise, Talent Drains, and the AI Shift

The Ethereum Foundation (hereafter referred to as EF) has long been criticized for its rigid structure, decision-making by a few, its organizational value, and sell-offs that impact market sentiment. Criticism from within the Ethereum community has been particularly fierce. Not long ago, Bankless co-founder David Hoffman even went so far as to "sell his last ETH position" to express dissatisfaction with the EF, calling on the Ethereum community to build the ecosystem in their own way.

Now, the official dissolution of the EF Protocol Support Team serves as a thunderbolt, fully exposing the internal contradictions and crisis of fragmentation within the EF organization. Notably, this round of organizational changes is significantly different from the restructuring initiated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin last year — this is a thorough purge of personnel, seen as "the largest round of layoffs since EF's inception," not just previous changes in upper management.

When the Leader of the Ethereum Ecosystem Chooses to Cut Its Losses: The Inside Story of EF's Mass Layoffs

It all starts with the official announcement of "The New EF Structure" released by the EF on June 23.

In this lengthy article of several thousand words, the EF divided its new organizational structure into the Protocol Layer, Access Layer, User Layer, Community Layer, and Institutional Layer, subsequently stating that "this organizational restructuring will result in 54 layoffs, representing 20% of EF's members." Adding a chilling note, the announcement began by mentioning: "Through this process, we have gained the structure, activities, and personnel needed to execute the critical tasks ahead." In other words, the laid-off personnel and departments are considered obsolete, unnecessary, and lacking value.

It must be said that the EF, historically presenting itself as a research organization and ecological leader with an academic temperament, has for the first time revealed a cold side in its organizational management.

EF New Architecture Diagram

Dissolution of EF Protocol Support Department is a Key Marker of EF Organizational Fragmentation

It's worth noting that the EF Protocol Support Department's work was oriented towards infrastructure building, primarily responsible for coordinating the Ethereum protocol development process, including organizing and coordinating core developer meetings, tracking Ethereum network upgrades, supporting EIP advancement, and running the Ethereum protocol. Now, its main functions have been allocated to the EF's Protocol Layer section.

On the same day the EF announced its new structure, Ethlabs, a non-profit research and development lab co-founded by 5 former EF researchers, was officially launched. This organization aims to make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy and has received support from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin (Chairman of Sharplink, Founder of Consensys), the ETH treasury company BitMine (Tom Lee's Ethereum treasury company), Sharplink, crypto investment firm SNZ, and a range of other investment institutions, Ethereum ecosystem projects, independent individuals, and EF foundation members.

ETHLabs Community Participant List (Source: Official Account)

On July 1, Ethereum Institutional, co-founded by former EF members David Walsh, Marius Smith, and Matthew Dawson, officially launched.

This organization's core concept is the "Ethereum Institutional Application Initiative," dedicated to driving the institutionalization and institutional-grade application of Ethereum, its Layer 2 nodes, applications, and the entire ecosystem. It emphasizes collaboration with Ethlabs, Etherealize, and the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, handling institutional demand connection and explaining Ethereum's value proposition to banks; Ethlabs focuses on translating those demands into technological products. As non-profit independent entities, Ethereum Institutional will provide free consultations on Ethereum applications for banks and asset management companies.

A week later, Ethereum Institutional announced the launch of its core team recruitment, focusing in the coming weeks on hiring for roles such as Institutional GTM, Marketing and Community Operations, Solution Architecture, and Technical Project Lead.

Thus, the EF layoff saga has formally concluded with the emergence of two non-profit independent organizations and the dissolution of the Protocol Support Department, marking an imperfect end to the "internal organizational reform" spearheaded by Vitalik last year. Besides organizational fragmentation and the loss of high-level talent like co-executive director Wang Xiaowei, the EF also faces the impact of AI technology.

The Era of AI Offense-Defense Begins: EF Security Team Testing Upgrades

Yesterday, researchers from the EF Protocol Security Team stated in a blog post that they have deployed a series of AI agents to test software relied upon by the Ethereum ecosystem, searching for vulnerabilities in cryptosystems, protocol code, and smart contracts.

The vulnerabilities discovered by the AI agents include a remotely triggerable panic issue in the libp2p gossipsub peer-to-peer layer used by Ethereum consensus clients, which has been fixed and disclosed on Github as CVE-2026-34219.

Researchers stated that the AI agents were organized into specialized roles like reconnaissance, search, patching, and verification to find potential attack paths, reproduce failures, and verify their applicability to production code. The EF stated that AI has not replaced security researchers but has changed the way they work, allowing the team to cover far more ground than manual review alone, although it requires researchers to exercise greater caution in judging numerous seemingly credible conclusions.

Combined with today's news of the official launch of the GPT-5.6 model, it appears that the future maintenance of Ethereum protocol security might be jointly handled by AI models and EF security researchers. Moreover, despite the EF currently stating that "AI has not replaced researchers," as AI models continue to develop and evolve, the EF security team, and even the organization as a whole, may face further reductions. In other words, the EF will also face the test of AI models on its organizational structure and its ability to fulfill its functions.

Summary: A Phased End to EF Organizational Reform – Will it Become an Ecosystem Mascot?

In January last year, we provided a systematic analysis of the EF's organizational changes in the article "Vitalik Fires the First Shot of 'Reform', Where is the Ethereum Foundation Heading?". At that time, Vitalik was ambitiously and forcefully driving EF organizational change; by May this year, after over a year of organizational innovation, Vitalik seemed to change his tune, stating that "The Ethereum Foundation should not be the center of the ETH ecosystem and will shift towards a smaller, long-termist approach".

It must be said that after ETH has grown into an asset with a market cap exceeding one hundred billion dollars, the EF, an official ecosystem organization established nearly 10 years ago, has entered an awkward state where "it's hard for a large ship to turn." It's no wonder Vitalik previously stated that he would "no longer write regular blog posts and decided to try writing some science fiction about the theme of decentralized governance."

As former EF researcher and Ethlabs member Ansgar Dietrichs said on a podcast earlier this month, "After five years without breaking $5,000, ETH still lacks a clear value narrative."

Currently, it seems difficult for the EF to carry the banner of "revitalizing the Ethereum ecosystem and driving the price of ETH higher." Future large-scale adoption and institutional investment might only be hoped for from organizations like ETHlabs, Ethereum Institutional, and Etherealize.

Perhaps, in the not-too-distant future, playing the role of an "ecosystem mascot" might be more suitable for the EF.