EF Restructures Amid Cuts
Ethereum Foundation Cuts Staff, Reorganizes Into Seven-Cluster Plan Amid Leadership Changes
Key Points
Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak have stepped down as Ethereum Foundation co-executive directors, with board member Bastian Aue expanding his responsibilities to oversee the transition and day-to-day operations.
The Ethereum Foundation's Treasury Management Policy targets operating expenses at 15% of treasury holdings now, with a long-term baseline toward 5%.
The foundation is rebranding its core R&D arm to an entity called 'Protocol' as part of the restructuring.
The seven-cluster structure includes clearer accountability and sharpens focus on protocol security, censorship resistance, and user self-sovereignty.
Departing staff receive severance of one month’s pay per year of service (or local minimum), plus transition assistance and ecosystem placement support.
The Ethereum Foundation cut 54 employees — about 20% of its workforce — on June 23, 2026, as part of a sweeping reorganization into a seven-cluster structure Ethereum Foundation Blog. The announcement sent the price of ETH down roughly 7%, pushing it toward $1,700 Crypto Briefing.
The cuts cap months of upheaval. Both co-executive directors have now left, and roughly eight to nine senior figures have exited in five months Unchained Crypto. Board member Bastian Aue is steering the foundation through the transition, calling the result "the structure, activities, and people necessary for execution on the critical tasks ahead."
Two Directors Gone, One Board Member Left Standing
Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director in February 2026, saying he wanted to return to building rather than managing Bankless. Hsiao-Wei Wang followed in June 2026, writing that "Ethereum has always been bigger than any one role, any one organization, or any one moment" The Defiant.
That left both top seats empty. Bastian Aue, already a board member, stepped up to run day-to-day operations. On June 22 — one day before the layoffs — he published a six-part plan outlining a shift toward MEV elimination and privacy as a default feature The Defiant.
Seven Clusters Replace Old Departmental Silos
The new structure breaks the foundation into seven focused groups: Protocol (core R&D), Institutional Adoption, User Access, Community Engagement, Security and Censorship Resistance, Operations, and Management Support Cryptonews.net. The core R&D arm is being rebranded simply as "Protocol."
Each cluster has a clear owner and a narrow mission. The Security cluster targets what the foundation calls "toxic" MEV — a practice where validators extract extra profit by reordering transactions. The User Access cluster focuses on self-sovereignty tools and protocol-level privacy The Defiant.
Treasury Policy Drives the Spending Cuts
The foundation published its Treasury Management Policy in June 2025. It set operating expenses at a maximum of 15% of total treasury holdings right now, with a target of 5% by 2030 Ethereum Foundation Blog. Analysts at Crypto Briefing estimate the foundation faced a $20–30 million annual funding gap at its old scale.
The foundation also keeps a 2.5-year buffer in fiat or stablecoins to protect core development if ETH's price drops sharply EtherWorld. Departing staff get one month of pay per year of service, plus career coaching and help finding roles elsewhere in the ecosystem Vertex News.
Glamsterdam Hard Fork Now Falls to a Leaner Team
The restructured Protocol cluster must now deliver the Glamsterdam hard fork, targeted for Q3 2026. The upgrade aims to raise Ethereum's gas limit from 60 million to 200 million — effectively tripling how much activity the network can process per block Kiln.
Glamsterdam includes EIP-7732, which separates the roles of block proposers and builders to curb MEV, and EIP-7928, which enables parallel transaction processing Foresight News. With the EF shrinking, more roadmap influence is shifting to ETHLabs — backed by ConsenSys co-founder Joseph Lubin — and the Protocol Guild, a decentralized fund for core developers Cryptonews.net.
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