Original author: Nancy, PANews

In just a few months, many core members have left the Ethereum Foundation (EF) one after another, further frustrating the already low morale of the Ethereum community, especially now that the price of ETH is relatively sluggish.

During the critical period of EF’s transformation, senior veterans left collectively

In mid-2025, faced with slow execution efficiency, insufficient ecological support, and long-term doubts about governance transparency, the Ethereum Foundation launched a round of internal adjustments, reorganized the research and development team, and publicly laid off layoffs for the first time. This move was seen by the outside world as a belated self-correction.

In March 2026, EF released another 38-page mission statement. While reaffirming the core vision of Ethereum, the foundation clearly stated that its role has changed from "the first guardian" to "one of many guardians." In order to show its determination, EF even produced a meme of "SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE" (source seppuku license), indicating that if it fails to fulfill its commitment to Ethereum, it will "suffer the consequences and kill itself."

However, while EF's organizational adjustments continue to advance, core members continue to lose. Since February this year, seven core members or senior contributors have left.

In February, Tomasz Stańczak announced his resignation as co-executive director of EF, less than a year after he took office. During his tenure, he promoted the development of privacy protection, post-quantum security, and decentralized AI. He said that the current Ethereum ecosystem is in a relatively healthy stage, so he hopes to return to front-line product construction and focus on exploring the path of combining AI and Ethereum. At the same time, he also pointed out that his independent execution space in EF is gradually shrinking, and continuing to stay is more like a transitional handover. The successor is Bastian Aue, who joined EF in 2019. In comparison, Aue has disclosed less information and was previously mainly responsible for key support tasks such as organizational collaboration and operational optimization.

About two months later, in mid-April 2026, core figure Josh Stark announced his resignation after seven years at EF. He had been deeply involved in many key upgrades of Ethereum, including The Merge, Dencun, Fusaka and Pectra, and served as co-chairman of the trillion-dollar security plan. The reason he gave for leaving was "planning to take a break and spend time with his family."

On the same day, Trent Van Epps also announced his departure from EF. He has long been responsible for the organization and coordination of the Protocol Guild, promoting the construction of the funding mechanism for Ethereum core developers, and participating in network upgrades and financial support related matters. After leaving his post, he will focus on Protocol Guild and Ethereum political economics research. He has previously stated publicly that the connection between EF leadership and the Milady NFT series is “puzzling.”

In May, Alex Stokes, co-head of Protocol research, announced his leave. Subsequently, Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, who had served as co-heads of the Protocol Guild, and two senior researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma also left one after another, without publicly disclosing the reasons.

Although the vast majority of departing members have not disclosed the specific reasons for their departure, it is reported that EF requires internal members to sign a document called Mandate based on the "anti-censorship principle" it emphasizes, otherwise they will face immediate dismissal. This principle emphasizes that no subject should interfere with legitimate uses or affect the operation of the system by forming persistent and exclusive control over key mechanisms. However, the above statement has not yet been officially confirmed by EF.

However, the loss of EF talent has also caused concerns about the overall Ethereum ecosystem. Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla once warned that the health of L1 core development is the foundation of the entire Ethereum ecosystem, but the salary of core developers is 50% to 60% lower than similar positions in the market, while high-performance new chains and L2 head projects such as Monad are accurately poaching at more than 10 times the salary. He warned that once senior researchers who are familiar with the underlying protocol logic are lost, Ethereum's key roadmap will face the risk of substantial shutdown.

Protocol team changes coach, worries about upgrade delay intensify

In just four months, senior veterans from the executive level to the research level have left one after another, further exacerbating the uncertainty of EF's reform, especially the adjustment of the Protocol team.

The Protocol team is the core team responsible for the design, research, development and coordination of the Ethereum base layer, covering security, cryptography, zkEVM, peer-to-peer networks and other directions. As one of the core strengths of EF, it has an important impact on the long-term evolution, security and scalability of the Ethereum protocol.

In the face of personnel changes, EF also completed the reorganization of the Protocol team this month, appointing three new Protocol co-heads Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn and Fredrik Svantes. The three have served at EF for approximately 2 to 7 years.

Among them, Will Corcoran is the Protocol Research Coordinator, focusing on cutting-edge research such as zkVM proof system, post-quantum consensus, Fast Confirmation Rule, etc. He has cross-team coordination experience and is familiar with the overall architecture;

Kev Wedderburn is the leader of the zkEVM team. He has profound experience in the fields of zero-knowledge proof, zkEVM implementation and the integration of research and engineering. He will continue to lead zkEVM-related work and promote the deep integration of the execution layer and zero-knowledge technology;

Fredrik Svantes is the head of Protocol security research. He has long led the core work related to Ethereum security, including the trillion-dollar security plan, the Ethereum Bug Bounty program and audit competition organization, etc., and will be deeply involved in cross-team collaboration.

Under the promotion of the new leadership team, Protocol will focus on promoting the launch of the Glamsterdam upgrade in the short term, preparing for the next Hegotá upgrade, and continuing to promote the implementation of the Strawmap roadmap.

Among them, Glamsterdam is the next major network upgrade of Ethereum. The core direction is to improve the throughput capacity of the Ethereum main network. It plans to increase the gas limit from the current approximately 60 million to 200 million, and adjust the transaction processing mechanism and state database management methods.

However, the Glamsterdam upgrade originally planned for June 2026 has been postponed. According to the latest test network progress and feedback from the Interop meeting, the actual main network launch time is more likely to be postponed to the third quarter of 2026. Therefore, some community members and developers are worried that recent changes in core personnel may further affect the upgrade pace and execution efficiency.

However, some people believe that this round of personnel turnover is a normal phenomenon in the EF reorganization process. Some members left after completing their phased missions, and some were in compliance with strategic direction adjustments. At the same time, the new leadership has gradually taken over, and the core roadmap has not changed. More importantly, as the Ethereum ecosystem gradually matures, EF itself intends to weaken its central role, which will help reduce the risk of single-point control, alleviate external doubts about the foundation's influence, and further strengthen Ethereum's positioning as a neutral infrastructure.

This is also in line with the "Walkaway Test" concept advocated by Vitalik. Even if the core developers completely withdraw and no longer maintain, the protocol can still operate safely, predictably, and stably in the long term.