The Ethereum Foundation laid off 54 employees this week — roughly 20% of its workforce — in a major restructuring that co-founder Vitalik Buterin says comes with a 40% budget cut.
The EF is reorganizing around five clusters: protocol, access, user, community, and institutional work. The idea is to focus resources on Ethereum’s long-term priorities — scaling, privacy, security, and censorship resistance — while pushing more development outside the foundation as the ecosystem matures.
Buterin said on X that the foundation aims to reduce annual spending from about 15% of its remaining funds to roughly 5% after 2030, shifting toward an endowment model. “The past years have been a challenging era for Ethereum,” he wrote. “However, the ecosystem is adapting, both inside the EF and outside.”
The layoffs follow a wave of departures this year, including co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang. Former contributors Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma recently launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit backed by BitMine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin to continue protocol-level research.
The foundation has also been adjusting its treasury — unstaking 17,000 ETH in April and another 21,270 ETH in May, plus selling 10,000 ETH to BitMine in an OTC deal. Former contributor Trenton Van Epps warned of a potential “slow-burning funding crisis” for Ethereum’s core development, citing spending cuts and the expiration of the Client Incentive Program.
