Ethereum Foundation disbands the protocol support team, and no one will take over coordinating EIP core development.

On July 10, the Ethereum Foundation officially disbanded the EF Protocol Support team. This team was responsible for coordinating Ethereum core developer meetings, tracking network upgrades, and driving EIP standardization.
(Previously: V God protects your assets! The Ethereum Foundation launches the “$1 trillion security dashboard”)
(Background: Where does the Ethereum Foundation’s annual $100 million burn go? Spending transparency is questioned)

Table of Contents

Toggle

• Team Responsibilities Overview
• Same Day: AI Red Team Testing Discovers Real Vulnerabilities
• What Does It Mean for the Ethereum Ecosystem?

On July 10, the Ethereum Foundation Protocol Support team (EF Protocol Support) officially announced its dissolution on the X platform. The team was the “behind-the-scenes hub” of the Ethereum ecosystem, responsible for coordinating core developer meetings, tracking network upgrade progress, promoting EIP standardization, and carrying out day-to-day coordination work for Ethereum protocol operations. The official announcement only briefly stated that the team had been disbanded and did not disclose the specific reasons.

Team Responsibilities Overview

According to the announcement, the functions covered by EF Protocol Support included:

• Core Developer Meeting Organization and Coordination — cross-team synchronization ahead of Ethereum network upgrades
• Network Upgrade Tracking — monitoring upgrade progress for testnets and the mainnet
• EIP Promotion Support — assisting with proposal drafting, review, and merge processes
• Protocol Day-to-Day Execution and Maintenance — ensuring stable operation of Ethereum’s core protocol

Same Day: AI Red Team Testing Discovers Real Vulnerabilities

Interestingly, on the very same day the team was disbanded, the Ethereum Foundation’s protocol security team also published a blog post. In it, they deployed an AI agent to conduct red team testing of Ethereum-dependent software, successfully discovering a panic vulnerability in the consensus client libp2p gossipsub (CVE-2026-34219), which has been fixed and disclosed.

This shows that the Foundation is reorganizing its internal resources—while the protocol support team was disbanded, the security team is actively introducing AI tools to improve detection efficiency. It reflects a trend in Ethereum development shifting from “people-intensive coordination” to “tool-driven verification.”

What Does It Mean for the Ethereum Ecosystem?

The disbandment of the Ethereum protocol support team does not mean that core development work has come to a halt. The team’s responsibilities are more like “administrative coordination”—ensuring the flow of information among development teams, handling meeting arrangements, and keeping proposal processes running smoothly. As Ethereum enters a relatively mature stage (the Merge has been completed, and the Dencun upgrade has gone live), coordination needs may decline accordingly.

However, Ethereum developer meetings have still been taking place frequently of late (Vitalik commented on the EU’s “chat control” bill on July 8). Meanwhile, new network upgrades and EIP proposals continue to move forward. How to ensure that the coordination mechanism does not fall into a vacuum due to the team’s disbandment remains an area worth watching in the next developments.