Ethereum Foundation will cut expenses by 40% and restructure governance - ForkLog

# The Ethereum Foundation will cut expenses by 40% and restructure governance

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced a major reorganization and introduced a revised governance structure. At the same time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reported that the foundation is reducing its budget by approximately 40%, transitioning to a long-term capital management model.

Today, the EF is changing shape, concluding a months-long process of reorganization as part of the implementation of the Mandate and the Treasury Management Policy.

We come out of this process with the structure, activities, and people necessary for execution on the critical…

— Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) June 23, 2026

Ethereum Foundation changes its structure

According to the new plan, the foundation’s activities will focus on three key areas: development of the Ethereum core protocol, ecosystem support, and network resilience.

The Ethereum Foundation stated that the new structure aims to increase transparency and accelerate the implementation of strategic tasks related to the further development of the blockchain. It revolves around three areas: protocol development (Protocol), accelerating technology adoption and ecosystem growth (Acceleration), and ensuring long-term sustainability of the network and community (Stewardship).

Source: EF blog. The changes are happening amid preparations for the next stage of Ethereum’s evolution, which the community calls Strawmap — a large-scale upgrade program affecting almost all network components.

Buterin: the foundation is shifting to an austerity mode

Meanwhile, Vitalik Buterin revealed details of the organization’s financial strategy. According to him, the Ethereum Foundation is gradually moving away from its previous spending model.

While until 2026, the foundation spent about 15% of its remaining reserves annually, after 2030, this figure is expected to decrease to 5%.

“The Ethereum Foundation is becoming an organization sustained by a long-term capital fund,” — Buterin explained.

The 40% budget cut has already led to staffing decisions and the scaling back of some initiatives.

Focus on AI and formal verification

One of the most noticeable changes will be a revision of the approach to Ethereum client security.

Buterin said that the ecosystem will gradually shift from a model based on redundancy of multiple clients to more active use of formal verification and AI-based tools to detect errors.

In his view, this will reduce costs associated with maintaining numerous protocol implementations and speed up the deployment of updates.

Ending the research era

The division of Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE), which focused on privacy and scalability research, was affected by the cut.

At the same time, the foundation emphasized that work on zero-knowledge proof technologies will not cease. On the contrary, the focus is shifting from experimental research to integrating already developed solutions directly into the Ethereum protocol and user infrastructure.

Devcon will be more modest

Changes will also affect the largest ecosystem conference, Devcon.

According to Buterin, future events will be less grand and less costly for the foundation. Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation plans to reduce the number of major initiatives outside the core development of Ethereum itself.

Some of these projects Buterin intends to support personally with his own funds.

After Strawmap — a course toward stability

In the long term, Ethereum co-founder advocates for a more conservative approach to network development.

After completing the Strawmap program, he suggests focusing mainly on fixing vulnerabilities and making small, highly practical improvements, significantly raising the threshold for deploying new features.

“It’s better to follow Bitcoin’s example than multi-million line codebases,” — Buterin noted.

He believes this approach will help Ethereum remain resilient to centralized influence while reducing the need for large development budgets.

Recall that in June, Ethereum Research published a proposal to redirect up to 10% of staking validator rewards to fund the ecosystem.