The Ethereum Foundation is experiencing a wave of core team member departures.

Between April and May 2026, at least six core members have left or gone on indefinite leave, covering protocol engineering, cryptoeconomics research, and management.
The departures are concentrated in the Protocol cluster—the team responsible for the core design of Ethereum L1.
Carl Beek, who recently left, worked at EF for 7 years and was a key figure during the Beacon Chain launch phase.
Cryptoeconomics researcher Julian Ma also recently resigned after 4 years of mechanism design research at EF.
Looking further back, since September 2024, at least nine key figures have left, including Danny Ryan, who led EF’s research team for 7 years; Tomasz Stańczak, a co-CEO who stepped down after just 1 year; and senior researcher Dankrad Feist.
EF officials attribute this to the active downsizing under the Mandate framework released earlier this year, stating that one of the core goals is to reduce the foundation’s direct influence, and parting ways with some key contributors was already planned.
Core developers decreased from 225 in May 2025 to 169 in May 2026.
The total number of ecosystem developers has fallen behind Solana.
The ETH reserves in EF wallets continue to shrink, currently holding 103,660 ETH, after selling some reserves to BitMine.
This wave of departures also comes at an inopportune time.
Ethereum is being expected to become a key infrastructure layer for global finance, but the Glamsterdam upgrade has been delayed, and the ecosystem is facing a peak of intense attacks on decentralized projects.
The line between “decentralization” and “splitting up” is sometimes more blurred than imagined.
However, the Ethereum ecosystem still has 9,744 active developers, and Beacon Chain staked ETH accounts for 31% of the circulating supply.
The infrastructure remains, but the helmsmen are leaving one after another.