The Ethereum Foundation has now lost at least eight senior researchers and contributors in 2026, with five departures occurring in May alone, raising pointed questions from the community about the organization’s direction and internal governance.
The latest exits came Monday when Carl Beek and Julian Ma both announced their resignations. Beek, whose last day is May 29, closes a seven-year tenure that included foundational work on the Beacon Chain and co-authoring the KZG ceremony. Ma, leaving after roughly four years, contributed two pieces of infrastructure that remain active: FOCIL (EIP-7805), a censorship-resistance mechanism built around inclusion lists, and the Fast Confirmation Rule, which compressed bridging time between Ethereum L1 and L2s to approximately 13 seconds.
Their departures extend a roster that already includes former co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, who stepped down in February after roughly 11 months in the role; operations lead Josh Stark; Protocol Guild organizer Trent Van Epps; and Protocol Cluster contributors Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes. A third departure was confirmed the same day: senior solutions architect Pablo Voorvaart, who spent four years across the Devcon and Use Case Lab teams, said he was leaving to pursue entrepreneurship.
The EF frames the churn as intentional. The foundation published its CROPS mandate in March, positioning itself as a temporary steward rather than a permanent governing body, and Vitalik Buterin’s 2025 reorganization explicitly pushed execution outward to independent client teams. Under that model, researchers concluding their work at the EF and moving to ecosystem roles is, the argument goes, the design working as intended. The foundation also laid off 19 employees as part of the restructuring it describes as a “Lean Ethereum” strategy.
Community reaction on X has been divided. DeFi researcher Ignas publicly asked “how many not public? And why?” while commentator Ryan Berckmans argued the exits reflect deliberate renewal: “the time for new blood is here.” Fundstrat’s Tom Lee told investors the governance turbulence was “short-term noise,” pointing instead to sustained inflows into the BlackRock ETHB staking ETF, which launched in March 2026, as the dominant institutional signal.
On-chain metrics support that framing to a degree. ETH validator counts are stable, Layer-2 activity across Base, Arbitrum, Optimism, Linea, and Scroll has not paused on any EF news cycle, and ETH is currently trading near $2,128, little changed from Tuesday’s open. Whether the foundation’s new mandate resolves the underlying tension between its decentralized ethos and community demands for transparency remains the open question heading into the summer upgrade cycle.
