Source: Ethereum Foundation; Compiled by: Shaw, Golden Finance

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) ushered in organizational structure adjustments. The months-long reorganization work to implement core work authorization documents and fund management policies has now been completed.

After the completion of this reorganization, the Foundation has assembled the organizational structure, business sectors and personnel teams needed to advance subsequent core work, but at the same time has reduced its staff by 54, accounting for approximately 20% of the Foundation’s total headcount. In the coming weeks, most of these departing personnel will choose to continue to contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem outside the foundation.

This article will briefly introduce the new organizational structure and detail the placement support provided by the foundation for departing employees.

New organizational structure

The Ethereum Foundation is currently divided into five major business clusters, corresponding to different business areas: Protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer and institutional layer; there is another cluster dedicated to operational affairs, and the last cluster is composed of management and a team that directly provides support to the management.

The working models and assessment objectives of each business field are different, and the internal structure is also differentiated and customized according to its own business needs. We will release a more detailed introduction to the sector next month. This article only provides an overview of the top-level framework.

Protocol layer

The protocol business cluster carries the core heritage of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and shoulders the mission of realizing the underlying vision of Ethereum - large-scale autonomy. The core work of this cluster is to lay the foundation for the reinforcement and expansion of the underlying protocol of Ethereum. Its goal is to ensure that the Ethereum protocol continues to retain its unshakable core characteristics: resistance to censorship and control, open source, privacy and security as the protocol's rigid guarantee terms.

The original intention of establishing the protocol cluster is to promote the continuous iteration of the underlying protocol and never compromise on the guarantees related to autonomy. It is not to increase the commercial popularity of Ethereum, pursue short-term profits, nor to transform Ethereum into a traditional financial channel controlled by intermediaries. The core of the work of this sector is to make Ethereum more difficult to be corrupted and captured by forces; when counterparties default, platforms are censored, government power crosses the line, and intermediaries arbitrarily extract commissions, users can still rely on Ethereum with peace of mind.

Specific work includes: Securely deploying hard forks, reducing redundant complex logic, minimizing trusted dependent components, resisting harmful MEV and privileged transaction flows to ensure transaction link security; at the same time, promoting the implementation of long-term cutting-edge research, such as post-quantum security, zkEVM, and L1 privacy solutions, and transforming research results into protocol upgrades to consolidate and optimize user autonomy on the premise of scale.

Access layer

Whether users can obtain the core features of CROPS in practice depends on the construction effectiveness of the access layer. The mission of this cluster is to make autonomy achievable, easy to understand, and sustainable in various core operations, covering five major scenarios: on-chain reading, transactions, zero-knowledge proofs, delegation authorization, and asset exit.

It is necessary to provide the above functions for ordinary users, but also to adapt to the intelligent agent (AI Agent) program that performs operations on behalf of users. The agent needs to be able to independently read the current status, historical data and related information on the chain, without relying on a third-party intermediary that cannot be verified; users can initiate transactions privately to avoid censorship risks, and the transaction results will either be fully fulfilled, or there will be a cost-free rollback if the execution conditions are not met.

With the popularity of smart agent applications, users must always have control: they can grant limited permissions to agents, revoke authorization at any time, keep transaction intentions independently, and do not expose core information to intermediaries. From the underlying hardware to the front-end interactive interface, all interaction channels must have the three major characteristics of being verifiable, easy to understand, and recoverable, and can operate normally regardless of the user's frequency of use or technical level.

The cluster follows the zero-intermediary principle: any usage path that relies on an intermediary must be equipped with a reliable, intermediary-free alternative that is permanently open and available. At the implementation level, on the one hand, the characteristics of CROPS should be strengthened in the existing infrastructure; on the other hand, since market economic incentives naturally tend to aggregate user identities and centralize management and control, this sector will also build feasible intermediary alternatives.

User layer

The user business cluster anchors all the work of the Ethereum Foundation to real users and institutions - these groups are highly dependent on autonomous Ethereum usage scenarios and continue to promote related tools and industry standards.

This section helps the foundation clarify the core functional requirements, the most harmful failure modes, and the boundary conditions that allow for trade-offs. The work content includes user stratification, user portraits, popular science education materials, application scenario research and implementation effect evaluation.

The foundation does not intend to transform the product development team, but works at the user layer to ensure that all decisions at the protocol layer and access layer are based on real existing users, potential users, objective reality constraints, and quantifiable autonomy indicators.

Community layer

The community business cluster coordinates the overall external image of the Ethereum Foundation, covering all scenarios inside and outside the Ethereum ecosystem. The core work is to clearly convey the core position of the foundation and clearly distinguish the essential differences between itself and three types of tracks: zero-sum game crypto finance, crypto projects coerced by corporate capital, and grant management institutions within the non-profit industry that maintain the status quo, have distorted incentive mechanisms, and are easily used by geopolitical forces to launder interests. The Ethereum Foundation insists on maintaining independence, eliminating all types of interest bundles that hinder its core goals, and maximizing community value.

The cluster also builds partnerships outside of the crypto industry. The concept of autonomy has a large number of natural allies: free and open source software, local-first security software and hardware, privacy cryptography research and industry advocacy organizations, civil liberties institutions, decentralized networks, public interest technology projects, etc. The community section is responsible for promoting efficient, voluntary, and high-quality cross-border cooperation between Ethereum and the above-mentioned fields.

Organizational level

The institutional business cluster is responsible for the cooperation between the foundation and various institutions. Such institutions provide end users with Ethereum interaction channels relying on the intermediary system. Cooperation partners include:

• Financial institutions: consumer payment, insurance and other financial service providers;

• Entity enterprises: various non-financial enterprises such as manufacturing, social platforms, and publishing industries;

• Government-related application projects;

• Colleges and other non-profit organizations.

The core goal of all cooperation: Create a benchmark case for the efficient implementation of Ethereum and cryptography technology, maximize the core features of CROPS, and provide complete guarantees for institutions and users, including fair and compliant contract execution, data migration and free withdrawal capabilities, privacy protection for all participants, data authenticity verification, identification of irregularities, and even prior prevention and control, etc.

We believe that a large number of enterprises, governments, and non-profit organizations will eventually find that their business missions and interests can be achieved by strengthening user autonomy while retaining the basic guarantees required for their own business, and Ethereum and cryptography technology are the carriers to achieve this goal.

In addition to directly connecting with partners, the institutional cluster will also sort out and popularize industry best practices, unified standards, reference architectures and institutional implementation tutorials to promote large-scale adoption on the institutional side.

This section also links global academic and industry advocacy organizations to allow the outside world to correctly understand the current form and long-term potential of Ethereum; it continues to track global policies and regulatory developments, and promptly responds to regulatory rules that may shake Ethereum’s autonomous positioning and violate the four core principles of anti-censorship/anti-capture, open source, privacy, and security.

About the colleagues who resigned this time

This time the foundation’s organizational structure, business segments and budget are fully adjusted. We will say goodbye to 54 colleagues today.

This decision was difficult but necessary. In the next few years, the foundation must streamline its personnel, optimize its organizational structure, and focus on the core work that only the foundation can and must undertake without excessive interference from short-term market fluctuations.

In order to ensure a smooth transition for departing colleagues, the foundation provides a complete severance settlement plan, including severance compensation and career transition support: The severance compensation shall be the higher of two standards: one is one month's salary for each year of working in the foundation; the other is the legal minimum compensation standard in the employee's location, which is consistent with employees who have resigned in recent months. Transition support consists of two parts: assisting employees in finding new job opportunities within the Ethereum ecosystem, and issuing special transition subsidies for personal transition expenses such as career counseling.

We sincerely thank each of our departing colleagues for their talent, enthusiasm and time during their tenure at the foundation, and we look forward to continuing to build Ethereum together with colleagues who have moved to other areas of the ecosystem in the future.

Follow-up planning

After this adjustment is completed, the Ethereum Foundation will become more streamlined and more focused. In the coming weeks and months, we will continue to release more details on the direction of business adjustments and how ecosystem participants will adapt to the new architecture.