#以太坊基金会重组降本 The Foundation steps back, Ethlabs moves forward: Ethereum ushers in the biggest overhaul in history
June 23rd, the recently questioned Ethereum ecosystem received two major news. First, several former Ethereum Foundation researchers established an independent non-profit organization, Ethlabs, and received significant funding support from major ETH holders like Bitmine, SharpLink, and others.
According to its introduction, Ethlabs’ early work will focus on key needs for large-scale institutional on-chain adoption, including faster settlement speeds, native asset issuance, cross-chain transactions based on robust infrastructure, mainnet capacity expansion, and foundational research supporting ETH’s monetary properties. Soon after, the Ethereum Foundation announced the end of a months-long restructuring, laying off 54 people, about 20% of its previous staff.
This adjustment continues the “streamlining Ethereum” strategic transformation, repositioning the Ethereum Foundation as a lighter protocol governance and maintenance entity rather than a primary core builder.
In this push and pull, Ethereum is sending a clear signal: the foundation is actively ceding its position, with ecosystem organizations taking on more execution functions. Ethereum is no longer trying to be driven by a centralized non-profit to determine its route, build, promote, and adopt. This may be the most significant governance correction in over a decade. Over the past year, external criticism of Ethereum has shifted from ETH price performance to organizational efficiency, strategic expression, and ecosystem mobilization. Ethereum once appeared overly “correct,” too slow, and overly dependent on the Foundation and Vitalik’s implicit endorsement. Today’s two changes are precisely responses to these criticisms: Ethereum isn’t without direction, but is trying to change how it produces direction.
One, Ethlabs gains ecosystem support, but Vitalik is absent
The establishment of Ethlabs first signifies that the Ethereum ecosystem is developing a new organization closer to an “industrial execution layer.” Unlike traditional research institutions, Ethlabs’ goal isn’t just to propose new cryptographic directions or long-term roadmaps, but to more clearly address practical issues like institutional on-chain adoption, financial asset issuance, cross-chain transactions, mainnet capacity, and ETH’s monetary properties. Behind these issues lies Ethereum’s core anxiety over the past few years: it remains the most important smart contract network, but in real institutional adoption, on-chain finance scale, and user experience, its advantages are not as solid as market imagines. Ethereum isn’t lacking research or ideas; what it lacks is an intermediary layer to turn research into market adoption. That’s the significance of Ethlabs. On Ethlabs’ official website, many influential figures in the Ethereum ecosystem are listed as supporters, including key individuals from the Ethereum Foundation, investors from Dragonfly, Electric Capital, and others, contributors from Base, Flashbots, Uniswap, and more. Notably, Vitalik is not on this supporter list. This doesn’t necessarily mean disagreement with Ethlabs; rather, it’s more reasonable to interpret that he is intentionally avoiding giving this new organization too strong a personal endorsement or path interference. Over the years, Vitalik has been a symbol of Ethereum, proposing ideas like soul-bound tokens, DeSoc, privacy, account abstraction, and public goods funding—many forward-looking, but few have seen large-scale market adoption. The issue isn’t that these directions lack value, but that when Vitalik’s every expression is seen as “Ethereum’s next narrative,” the entire ecosystem risks falling into implicit dependence, leading to over-investment of time and resources.
This year, Vitalik has published only 2 articles on his official blog, compared to at least 15 per year previously. This change itself is intriguing. It doesn’t mean Vitalik’s influence on Ethereum is waning; rather, it’s a form of active restraint: shifting Ethereum from a “founder-driven public narrative” to a “multi-organization, multi-team, multi-stakeholder collaborative technical network.” If Ethlabs is to undertake stronger institutionalization, financialization, and execution functions, it cannot just be an extension of Vitalik’s will. It must prove it can earn ecosystem trust without the founder’s direct endorsement and respond to the market through tangible results.
Two, the new structure and positioning of the Ethereum Foundation
While Ethlabs moves forward, the Ethereum Foundation steps back. For a long time, although nominally just a non-profit supporting Ethereum, it has played multiple roles: strategic coordinator, research funder, protocol roadmap setter, and cultural hub. It neither wants to be a traditional corporate headquarters nor has it avoided functions similar to a headquarters on key issues. This structure once helped Ethereum maintain neutrality and decentralization but also caused side effects: slow decision-making, vague expression, unclear responsibility boundaries. The outside world both hopes for clearer strategies from the Foundation and criticizes its strong voice. Internally, disagreements have also been reported. The Guardian previously reported internal disputes over strategic direction, leadership adjustments, and institutional adoption, with tensions between “cypherpunk” and “pragmatic business” camps; in March 2025, the Foundation appointed Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as co-CEOs, seen as a compromise between these cultures. But clearly, after their departures, the 2025 team restructuring failed, with core figures like Josh Stark, Trenton Van Epps, Dankrad Feist leaving, coupled with persistent low prices and growing criticism. The Foundation had to reorganize again.
Post-restructuring, the Foundation will split into clusters such as protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer, and cut 54 staff, about 20% of its previous size. This isn’t just cost-cutting but boundary shrinking: the Foundation is repositioning itself as a lighter protocol governance and maintenance entity, not the main builder of all ecosystem directions. In fact, besides Ethlabs, several other non-profits have emerged in the past year, like Ethereum Applications Guild, The Ethereum Economic Zone, Argot Collective, contributing from application promotion, Rollup collaboration, to Solidity maintenance. “The privilege of managing Ethereum should not be monopolized but shared cautiously with those committed to building sovereign infrastructure, whether old friends or newcomers,” the Foundation clearly states in its latest post.
Three, turning “correctness” into “effectiveness”
Ethereum’s past advantages came from its developer community, DeFi liquidity, L2 ecosystem, and protocol security. But over the last two years, these advantages haven’t fully translated into ETH’s market performance. Community criticism of the Foundation is essentially “shareholder anxiety.” Paul Brody, chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, once commented that the Ethereum community behaves somewhat like ordinary shareholders, “they want returns.” Though harsh, it’s truthful. A month ago, Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of Bankless, tweeted, “Ethereum’s future can no longer rely on the Ethereum Foundation (EF). EF is important, but Ethereum needs new institutions to fill the gap. We need an organization that genuinely wants ETH to succeed—growth in quantity—and dares to speak out and execute. EF is not that, and never will be.”
Today, Ethlabs carries the expectations of major ETH holders like Bitmine, SharpLink, and a large coin-holding community. These two companies hold over 6 million ETH combined, and their demands for Ethereum are not just about the technical roadmap but whether ETH can bring substantial returns to their shareholders. This is inherently different from the Foundation’s role. EF must maintain trustworthiness and neutrality, not directly serve ETH’s price like a listed company, nor simplify protocol governance to maximize holder interests. But organizations like Ethlabs can take on clearer market-oriented functions.
In other words, the Foundation is responsible for keeping Ethereum “correct,” while Ethlabs needs to prove Ethereum remains “effective.” Ethereum could respond to market doubts with “long-termism” in the past, but when Hyperliquid takes over derivatives narratives, Solana captures meme narratives, and Bitcoin seizes asset narratives, Ethereum must prove it’s not only the safest smart contract platform but also the most capable network for the next wave of on-chain financial expansion. Of course, this shift isn’t without risks. With Ethlabs supported by large ETH holders and institutional forces, new concerns may arise about “Ethereum centralizing from the Foundation to large holders.” Adoption by institutions might also conflict with Ethereum’s original cypherpunk spirit. But for today’s Ethereum, the bigger risk isn’t moving too fast but remaining stuck between technical correctness and organizational sluggishness.
Markets ultimately reward not just ideas or decentralization stances but networks that can maintain trustworthiness while continuously attracting capital, applications, developers, and institutions. The establishment of Ethlabs and the Foundation’s restructuring are key steps toward this direction.
