The EF’s new structure

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) today announced the culmination of a months-long, strategic reorganization process, significantly reshaping its operational structure and workforce in alignment with its newly defined Mandate and a rigorous Treasury Management Policy. This extensive overhaul sees the non-profit organization streamline its efforts, focusing on critical tasks deemed essential for the long-term health and decentralization of the Ethereum protocol, while simultaneously reducing its global staff by 54 individuals, representing approximately 20% of its total workforce. The move underscores a strategic pivot towards a leaner, more resilient, and deeply focused entity, poised to navigate future challenges and opportunities within the rapidly evolving blockchain landscape.

A Strategic Reorientation for Enduring Impact

The reorganization, initiated as a proactive measure to enhance the EF’s efficacy and sustainability, stems directly from the implementation of its comprehensive Mandate and the recently established Treasury Management Policy. These foundational documents outline a clearer strategic direction, emphasizing the EF’s commitment to fostering the core technological advancements and foundational principles of Ethereum. The Mandate likely articulates a refined scope for the Foundation, prioritizing fundamental research, protocol hardening, and ecosystem support that directly contributes to Ethereum’s censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security – collectively referred to as "CROPS properties." The Treasury Management Policy, on the other hand, reflects a pragmatic approach to financial stewardship, designed to insulate the Foundation from the volatile swings characteristic of the cryptocurrency market and ensure sustained operations irrespective of short-term economic fluctuations.

This strategic recalibration is not merely an administrative adjustment but a profound philosophical reaffirmation. The EF, a cornerstone of the Ethereum ecosystem since its inception, has historically played a broad role in nurturing various aspects of the network, from core development to community engagement and educational initiatives. However, as the ecosystem matured and diversified, the need for a more concentrated effort on the EF’s unique responsibilities became evident. The leadership recognized that maintaining a broad operational footprint could dilute focus and potentially expose the organization to unnecessary risks. The current restructuring is therefore a deliberate effort to concentrate resources where the EF can exert the most foundational and enduring impact, particularly on aspects that might not be adequately addressed by commercial entities or other decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

Timeline and Background Context

The roots of this reorganization can be traced back several months, indicating a carefully planned and deliberated process rather than an abrupt reaction to market conditions. The "months-long process" suggests a methodical review of the EF’s internal structure, existing projects, and personnel deployment against the backdrop of its evolving mission. This period likely involved extensive internal consultations, strategic planning sessions, and a thorough assessment of where the Foundation’s resources could be most effectively deployed to uphold Ethereum’s core values.

While the exact start date of this specific restructuring phase is not disclosed, the announcement follows a trend observed across the broader cryptocurrency industry, where many organizations undertook significant operational adjustments during periods of market downturn, often referred to as "crypto winters." These periods typically necessitate a re-evaluation of spending, staffing, and strategic priorities to ensure long-term viability. The EF’s mention of previous layoffs in "the past few months" further contextualizes this current move as part of an ongoing process of optimization, rather than a singular event. This proactive approach to financial prudence, guided by the Treasury Management Policy, aims to establish a more stable operating model, less susceptible to market-driven disruptions.

The implementation of the Mandate serves as the guiding star for this reorientation. It delineates the specific areas where the EF believes its unique contributions are indispensable. This includes fundamental research into future protocol upgrades, ensuring the security and robustness of the underlying blockchain, and advocating for the principles that make Ethereum a distinct and valuable global public good. By explicitly articulating its core mission, the EF seeks to avoid mission creep and reinforce its commitment to maintaining the integrity and decentralization of the Ethereum network at its most foundational levels.

A New Organizational Architecture: Five Strategic Clusters

At the heart of the reorganized Ethereum Foundation lies a new operational framework comprising five distinct "clusters" dedicated to specific domains of work, complemented by clusters for operations and management. This tiered approach is designed to ensure specialized focus, clear accountability, and tailored internal structures for each area, reflecting the diverse nature of tasks required to support the Ethereum ecosystem.

1. Protocol Layer: This cluster is positioned as the torchbearer of the EF’s foundational legacy. Its paramount responsibility is to safeguard and advance the core Ethereum protocol, ensuring it continues to deliver on its promise of scaling self-sovereignty. This involves rigorous work on hardening the protocol against vulnerabilities, optimizing its performance, and facilitating safe and timely network upgrades (forks). Critically, the Protocol Layer is charged with upholding Ethereum’s non-negotiable properties: censorship and capture resistance, open-source principles, privacy, and security. Its mandate is distinctly not to make Ethereum commercially marketable or cater to short-term financial interests, but rather to fortify its resilience against corruption, external capture, and reliance on centralized intermediaries. Key initiatives include reducing unnecessary complexity, minimizing trusted dependencies within the protocol, defending the transaction pipeline against toxic Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and privileged order flow, and pushing the boundaries of long-horizon research such as post-quantum security, zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine (zkEVM) advancements, and Layer 1 privacy solutions. These efforts are geared towards enhancing self-sovereignty at scale, ensuring Ethereum remains a robust platform in an increasingly complex digital landscape.

2. Access Layer: Focused on the practical realization of self-sovereignty for individuals, the Access Layer is where Ethereum’s CROPS properties are translated into tangible user experience. Its mission is to ensure that individuals can interact with the Ethereum network in a way that is accessible, understandable, and resilient against external pressures. This encompasses facilitating core actions like reading chain state and history, transacting privately and without censorship risk, proving data authenticity, delegating authority securely, and exiting the network without undue friction. A core principle guiding this cluster is the "zero option" – the commitment to ensure that for every intermediated path to interact with Ethereum, a credible, intermediary-free alternative must exist and remain accessible. This acknowledges the reality of aggregation and control in many digital services, but strategically ensures that users always retain a sovereign path, whether through verifiable interfaces or direct interaction with the protocol.

   

3. User Layer: This cluster acts as the user-centric compass for the entire Foundation. Its role is to keep the EF’s work firmly grounded in the needs and interests of actual users and organizations who rely on self-sovereign use of Ethereum. By conducting research into user segments, developing personas, crafting educational materials, exploring various use cases, and evaluating impact, the User Layer ensures that technical decisions made at the Protocol and Access Layers are informed by real-world constraints, user capabilities, and acceptable tradeoffs. The objective is not for the EF to become a product development studio, but rather to ensure that all foundational work ultimately serves to empower individuals and organizations with robust self-sovereignty, making Ethereum genuinely useful and resilient for its diverse user base.

4. Community Layer: The Community Layer is responsible for defining and communicating the Ethereum Foundation’s identity and values within and beyond the Ethereum ecosystem. Its primary function is to articulate what the EF stands for, distinguishing its mission from purely financialized crypto ventures, corporate-compromised projects, and traditional non-profit models that might be susceptible to geopolitical or vested interests. This cluster is tasked with maintaining the EF’s independence and maximizing its community value by avoiding entanglements that could compromise its core principles. Beyond the immediate crypto space, the Community Layer cultivates relationships with allied fields such as free and open-source software, secure hardware development, privacy and cryptography research, civil liberties advocacy, and public-interest technology. This outward-looking approach seeks to foster fruitful collaborations and shared understanding, leveraging common goals to strengthen the broader decentralized movement.

5. Institutional Layer: This cluster engages with traditional institutions – including financial entities, non-financial enterprises, government bodies, universities, and other non-profit groups – that interact with or are considering integrating Ethereum. The goal is to facilitate the effective adoption of Ethereum and cryptographic technologies in ways that maximize CROPS properties for both institutions and their end-users. This involves showcasing integrations that guarantee fair and correct execution, ensure data portability and practical exit options, protect privacy, prove data authenticity, and prevent misbehavior. The EF believes that many institutions will increasingly recognize the long-term benefits of serving users in ways that strengthen self-sovereignty while meeting their operational needs. The Institutional Layer achieves this through direct engagement, establishing best practices, developing standards, creating reference architectures, and providing educational materials. Furthermore, it works with academics and advocacy organizations globally to ensure a correct understanding of Ethereum and to proactively track and respond to policy and regulatory developments that could impact Ethereum’s commitment to self-sovereign use and its core principles.

Impact on Personnel and Support for Departing Colleagues

The reorganization inevitably led to difficult decisions regarding staffing. A total of 54 colleagues, approximately 20% of the EF’s total workforce (which would imply an initial staff count of around 270 individuals), are parting ways with the Foundation. This substantial reduction, while painful, is framed as a necessary step to align the EF’s resources with its sharpened strategic focus and to ensure its long-term financial independence from short-term market volatility. The Foundation emphasizes that these decisions were made to ensure it is "resourced and organized in a way that allows us to focus on the critical work that only EF can, and therefore must, do in the coming years."

Recognizing the personal impact of these changes, the EF has committed to providing a comprehensive support package for its departing employees. This includes a severance payment calculated as the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF or the amount mandated by the individual’s local jurisdiction. This severance policy mirrors that offered to colleagues who left the EF in preceding months, indicating a consistent and equitable approach to workforce transitions. Beyond financial compensation, the EF is offering "transition support," which includes assistance in finding new roles within the vibrant Ethereum ecosystem and a small transition grant. This grant is earmarked to cover individual transition expenses, such as career coaching and similar professional development services, aiming to facilitate a smooth transition for these skilled individuals.

While no direct statements from departing employees were immediately available, such reorganizations typically evoke a mix of emotions – understanding of the organizational necessity balanced with the personal challenges of job displacement. The EF’s expressed gratitude for their "talent, dedication, and time" underscores the value placed on their contributions. The Foundation also voiced its anticipation of continuing to collaborate with many of these individuals as they "find homes elsewhere in the ecosystem," framing this as a redistribution of talent that will continue to benefit the broader Ethereum community.

Broader Implications and Future Outlook

The restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation carries significant implications for the future trajectory of Ethereum development and the broader ecosystem. By embracing a "leaner and more focused" operational model, the EF is signaling a strategic shift away from being a generalized patron of the ecosystem towards becoming a highly specialized guardian of the core protocol and its foundational principles.

For core protocol development, this refined focus promises increased efficiency and a more concentrated effort on long-horizon research and critical infrastructure hardening. Projects like post-quantum security and zkEVM, which require sustained, deep technical expertise and long-term investment, are likely to receive intensified attention. This could accelerate the implementation of crucial upgrades that enhance Ethereum’s scalability, security, and privacy at the base layer.

For the wider Ethereum ecosystem, this move implies a clearer delineation of responsibilities. While the EF will continue to support vital foundational work, other entities – including grants organizations, DAOs, corporate ventures, and community-led initiatives – will be implicitly encouraged to step up and fill roles related to broader application development, localized community building, and specific use-case promotion. This could foster greater decentralization in ecosystem development, distributing responsibility and innovation across a more diverse range of actors. Industry analysts suggest this maturation of the EF’s role is a positive sign, indicating that the ecosystem has grown robust enough to support many of its own initiatives, allowing the Foundation to concentrate on what only it can truly steward.

The commitment to "self-sovereignty" as an overarching theme across all new clusters is particularly noteworthy. It reinforces Ethereum’s philosophical backbone, positioning the network as a bulwark against centralization and control, whether from corporate, governmental, or other powerful entities. This ideological grounding, now deeply embedded in the EF’s new structure, suggests a long-term vision that prioritizes user empowerment and systemic resilience above all else.

In the coming weeks and months, the Ethereum Foundation has pledged to share more detailed information about how its work is changing and how the ecosystem can best engage with its new structure. This forthcoming transparency will be crucial for external stakeholders to understand the nuances of the new clusters, identify opportunities for collaboration, and adapt their own strategies in light of the EF’s redefined role. Ultimately, this significant reorganization positions the Ethereum Foundation to be a more agile, impactful, and resilient force in ensuring Ethereum’s enduring legacy as a decentralized, self-sovereign global computing platform.