The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a 20 percent reduction to its workforce as part of an internal restructuring. In an announcement made on Tuesday, the EF said 54 team members are being laid off in the backdrop of multiple leaders exiting the foundation.
The EF said the aim is to make the team leaner and more focussed on building the next iteration of the Ethereum chain, which is touted as the most commercial onchain network presently in competition with chains like Polygon and Solana.
“These decisions were hard, but they are necessary. We must be resourced and organized in a way that allows us to focus on the critical work that only EF can, and therefore must, do in the coming years, without excessive disruption from short-term market movements,” the EF said in an official blog post.
The Ethereum network has repeatedly been making to the headlines over the past few months, majorly for losing its key leaders one after the other. Just a few days ago EF’s co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang announced her departure. This left the both of the Foundation’s co-executive director positions vacant, following the exit of Tomasz Stańczak earlier this year.
Tim Beiko, Carl Beek, Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Trent Van Epps, and Josh Stark are among other veteren network researchers and core development leaders who quit the foundation within the first six months of this year.
As per reports, the EF has been delegating more funding and decision-making power to independent developer teams and the Protocol Guild — which is an on-chain collective that distributes capital directly to the core developers and researchers maintaining Ethereum’s base layer so that they are well-incentivized to stay long-term.
Because of these kinds of internal changes aimed at more dedentralization of the network, perhaps these key team members with long-time association with the network deemed it necessary to transition outside of the EF ecosystem.
The EF, detailing its plans for the terminated employees, said, “We are offering a package comprising severance and transition support. The severance is the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF and the amount locally mandated by the individual’s jurisdiction.”
The foundation will also be helping the departing team members find a new place to contribute in the ecosystem.
At the time of writing, ETH was trading at $1,661 with a 5.22 percent drop clocked in the last 24 hours, data by CoinMarketCap showed. The asset, that hit its last ATH of $4,953 in August 2025, has seen a consistent decline over the last few months owing to the global geopolitical tensions, trade wars, and changing macro-economic headwinds.
Source: CoinMarketCap
The crash of ETH under $1,000 is being widely predicted on platforms like Polymarket.
This week, a group of five Ethereum veterans launched Ethlabs, a research initiative to map out ways to make the network more efficient amid the rise of onchain AI influx. Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma are founders of Ethlabs, which will be funded by corporate heavyweights Bitmine Immersion Technologies , Sharplink, and Lubin.
