{"id":438,"date":"2026-06-24T14:24:49","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:24:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/?p=438"},"modified":"2026-06-24T14:24:49","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:24:49","slug":"ethereum-foundation-cuts-54-jobs-and-slashes-budget-40-in-sweeping-overhaul","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/?p=438","title":{"rendered":"Ethereum Foundation cuts 54 jobs and slashes budget 40% in sweeping overhaul"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Ethereum Foundation announced Tuesday it is eliminating 54 positions \u2014 roughly 20%<\/strong> of its approximately 270-person workforce \u2014 and cutting its 2026 operating budget by approximately 40%<\/strong> as part of a structural overhaul designed to transition the nonprofit toward a leaner, endowment-based model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The layoffs, confirmed in a blog post on June 23, conclude a months-long internal restructuring that began in June 2025 when the Foundation adopted a new mandate and treasury management policy. Vitalik Buterin published a separate post disclosing the budget figure directly, framing the cuts as a permanent shift rather than a response to short-term market conditions. The Foundation’s stated goal is to reduce its annual spending rate from roughly 15%<\/strong> of treasury assets to a 5%<\/strong> baseline by 2030 \u2014 a pace it describes as sufficient to sustain operations indefinitely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The restructuring reorganizes the Foundation into five domain-focused clusters: protocol, access, user, community, and institutional layers, with separate operations and management functions. The new institutional layer marks a notable strategic addition, focused on enterprise engagement, financial infrastructure, and policy coordination. Among the units being wound down is the Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team \u2014 one of the Foundation’s primary zero-knowledge research groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The announcement arrives after nine senior leaders have exited the organization since January 2026. Co-executive director Tomasz Sta\u0144czak departed in February; co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned on June 18, leaving both top posts vacant. Board member Bastian Aue is now serving as sole executive director. The scale of turnover has drawn sustained scrutiny over the Foundation’s governance and its ability to maintain continuity on long-horizon research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The layoffs coincide with a structural funding concern flagged by former EF coordinator Trent Van Epps, who warned last week that maintaining Ethereum’s network of more than ten client teams requires roughly $30 million<\/strong> annually \u2014 a gap that may materialize within three to nine months as the Client Incentive Program, which expired in April 2026, is not renewed under the new spending model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day before the EF’s announcement, five former Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit backed by publicly traded ETH<\/strong> treasury companies BitMine and SharpLink, alongside Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin. The EF acknowledged the launch as consistent with its own stated repositioning: from Ethereum’s primary development engine to “one of many guardians.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ETH<\/strong> traded near $1,660<\/strong> at the time of announcement \u2014 down roughly 66% from its August 2025 all-time high of $4,950<\/em>, per CoinMarketCap data \u2014 with no material sell-off triggered by the restructuring news. Whether the distributed model of independent organizations like Ethlabs can absorb the development capacity the Foundation is stepping back from remains the open question heading into the second half of 2026.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Ethereum Foundation announced Tuesday it is eliminating 54 positions \u2014 roughly 20% of its approximately 270-person workforce<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":439,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-altcoins"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":440,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438\/revisions\/440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1stblock.info\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}