Ethereum Foundation Cuts 20% of Staff and 40% of Budget in Sweeping Reset - Unchained

The Ethereum Foundation laid off 54 employees and announced a roughly 40% budget reduction Tuesday, executing arguably one of the most sweeping structural overhauls in the organization’s history against a backdrop of sustained senior leadership turnover and mounting competitive pressure on Ethereum from rival blockchains.

The layoffs are the result of a months-long reorganization tied to the EF’s updated mandate and treasury policy. The Foundation described the outcome as “leaner and more focused,” organized around five new work clusters: protocol, access, user, community, and institutional layers. Departing employees will receive the higher of one month’s pay per year worked and the locally mandated minimum, plus transition support including career coaching and a small grant.

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Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a post on X the changes would help reduce annual spending from roughly 15% of treasury assets per year to approximately 5% by 2030. The shift is necessary to preserve funding for Ethereum’s protocol roadmap without excessive exposure to short-term treasury fluctuations, Buterin said.

The Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit is winding down as part of this shift, Buterin said. Future Devcon conferences will be smaller and less costly, he also said. The institutional strategy will narrow, he added. The Foundation plans to rely more heavily on AI-assisted formal verification to sustain protocol research with fewer staff.

The cuts land amid concerns over an exodus of EF leadership members in recent months. Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director in February, followed by co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang earlier this month, bringing total senior departures since January to nine. Bastian Aue, a board member who oversaw day-to-day operations during Wang’s recent sabbatical, has assumed an expanded interim role.

The wave of exits fed sustained community debate about who is steering Ethereum’s long-term strategy at a moment when the protocol faces competition from Solana and other chains. Separately, ETHLabs, a new non-profit backed by Ethereum treasury companies BitMine and SharpLink and co-founder Joseph Lubin, announced this week as an independent effort to accelerate Ethereum’s technical roadmap alongside the restructured EF.

Related Listen: https://unchainedcrypto.com/is-the-ethereum-foundation-too-out-of-touch-to-save-eth/