Author: Nancy, PANews

In the post-Foundation era, Ethereum is welcoming a new standard-bearer.

On June 23, several former EF researchers announced the establishment of Ethlabs, a non-profit R&D institution, which the community views as an important complementary force to the EF. The organization has received support from multiple parties in the Ethereum ecosystem, including financial backing from two Ethereum DAT companies, BitMine and Sharplink, as well as Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.

Former EF Core Members Start Anew, Backed by Largest ETH Treasury BitMine

As the Ethereum Foundation (EF) gradually shifts behind the scenes, discussions within the community about "who will take up the mantle" continue to heat up.

In the early hours of today, the independent non-profit R&D institution Ethlabs announced its establishment. Unlike EF's path of gradually fading from the ecosystem's central role, Ethlabs focuses more on core protocol R&D, infrastructure construction, and product implementation, aiming to propel Ethereum toward becoming a global economic settlement layer and accelerate institutional-grade large-scale on-chain applications.

Ethlabs was co-founded by Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma. All five previously worked at the Ethereum Foundation and left successively in the first half of 2026.

During their tenure at EF, they were deeply involved in the research and advancement of key Ethereum technical directions, covering core topics such as finality mechanisms, scalability, data availability, EVM and zkEVM optimization, protocol economics, and L1/L2 interoperability, making them important participants in the evolution of the Ethereum protocol.

Beyond the attention drawn by the core team's background, Ethlabs' supporting lineup is equally substantial. Currently, the institution has received support from over 50 ecosystem contributors, covering forces including DeFi developers, Ethereum core developers, L2 network teams, and venture capital institutions.

More notably, Ethlabs has simultaneously received financial support from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, as well as two Ethereum DAT companies, BitMine and Sharplink. Among them, BitMine holds approximately 5.67 million ETH, accounting for about 4.7% of the total supply; Sharplink holds approximately 870,000 ETH. As one of the largest ETH treasuries currently on the market, BitMine not only possesses ETH reserves far exceeding those of the EF but has also been regarded by the community as an important influential force after Ethereum enters the institutionalization era, once being one of the community's most favored candidates for the next leader.

Judging from the team background, financial strength, and ecosystem support, the community views Ethlabs as the most promising new force in the post-EF era.

EF Steps Back, Ethereum Enters the Ecosystem Alliance Era

In addition to Ethlabs, multiple "grassroots" organizations have already joined Ethereum's ecosystem development. Over the past two years, a batch of institutions focusing on different areas have been established successively, covering multiple directions such as protocol R&D, infrastructure construction, and application ecosystem expansion.

As early as October 2024, Ethereum Foundation members initiated the non-profit R&D group Argot Collective, focusing on maintaining free and independent software related to Ethereum. EF subsequently announced in 2025 that it would provide three-year operational funding support to advance the Solidity language and other key open-source infrastructure construction.

In March this year, funded by the Ethereum Foundation, Gnosis and Zisk jointly launched the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ), aimed at enhancing collaboration efficiency among Ethereum's various L2 networks, reducing the time and cost of cross-network transfers, and improving the interaction experience for developers and users in the multi-chain ecosystem.

A month later, the Ethereum Applications Guild (EAG) was officially established. Jointly advocated by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin and HashKey Group Chairman Xiao Feng, its goal is to promote the development of the application layer ecosystem and accelerate Ethereum's extension from the infrastructure phase to the application phase. The organization focuses on four directions, including promoting real-world application implementation, connecting cross-domain ecosystem networks, establishing unified evaluation and development frameworks, and building sustainable funding mechanisms. EAG will feature a membership contribution system based on institutional scale (such as valuation, market cap, or AUM), and through a staking yield donation mechanism, direct a portion of ETH staking yields into an ecosystem growth fund.

From Argot Collective to EEZ, and then to EAG and the newly established Ethlabs, these organizations cover different segments including R&D, infrastructure, cross-chain collaboration, and application ecosystems. They are not replacements for EF but rather assume, in their respective fields, some of the responsibilities that were previously highly dependent on the Foundation's promotion.

In the view of azeem, co-founder of the privacy blockchain Miden, people leaving the Foundation are forming new organizations that are truly aligned with Ethereum, rather than merely offering verbal support. These new organizations can secure better financing and bring social capital out of the Foundation, creating an "external coup" effect. In the coming months, we will see more former Ethereum Foundation teams executing according to the Ethereum roadmap after fundraising, which is a positive for the entire ecosystem.

As more similar organizations join in the future, Ethereum's development will shift from single-point promotion by the Foundation to multi-party collaborative construction. This means Ethereum is moving from the "Foundation Era" to the "Ecosystem Alliance Era", which will also bring it greater resilience and innovative vitality.

Amid Renewed Governance and Funding Controversy, EF Responds by Adhering to Mission Rather Than Catering to the Market

The community's focus on new Ethereum leaders partly stems from long-standing dissatisfaction with the Ethereum Foundation's (EF) management model. Recently, EF has once again faced external criticism on issues such as fund management, liquidity reserve utilization, and talent loss.

Marc Zeller, founder of the Aave Chan Initiative (ACI), recently pointed out that EF originally held a "good hand." In his view, the Foundation could have simply needed basic budget management capabilities, used funds reasonably, and leveraged its reserve assets as collateral to support truly valuable ecosystem projects. At the same time, he believes Ethereum's PoS transition took too long; if the upgrade had been completed within a shorter-than-expected cycle, the Foundation could have staked its large ETH holdings, achieving long-term, sustainable self-sufficiency through continuous staking yields.

Former EF member Trent Van Epps bluntly stated that EF's long-implemented subtraction strategy was originally intended to reduce the Foundation's direct influence on the ecosystem, but in actual execution, the Foundation still retains significant institutional influence in areas such as branding, credibility, funding, core developer employment relationships, and media resources. As the Ethereum Foundation's treasury continues to shrink and the client incentive program expires in April 2026 with no alternative plan in place, he warns that the ecosystem may face a slowly brewing protocol funding crisis within the next 3 to 9 months, thereby weakening core development, research, and coordination capabilities, and impacting responses to long-term challenges like scaling and quantum resistance.

In his view, the Ethereum Foundation will not be the primary guardian of Ethereum for the next decade; the ecosystem needs to quickly explore new social, political, and economic contracts, clarify governance responsibilities for shared resources like software, networks, and assets, and establish scalable, accountable, and neutral funding mechanisms to support Ethereum's subsequent scaling, maintenance, and institutional succession.

To promote the sustainable development of the Ethereum ecosystem, the community is also seeking alternatives. For instance, BitMine Chairman Tom Lee recently proposed that Ethereum treasuries currently hold about 7% of the ETH supply, generating approximately $500 million in staking rewards annually. These yields could be directly used to fund core development, grants, public goods, and ecosystem building, rather than relying on EF. He also emphasized that the probability of an Ethereum funding crisis is zero, stating that "the funds are already in place."

Facing market controversy, EF Interim Co-Executive Director Bastian Aue reiterated the Foundation's mission direction in a recent post. He pointed out that EF exists to ensure Ethereum becomes and remains a truly permissionless, autonomous infrastructure, possessing characteristics such as censorship resistance, resistance to capital and state capture, privacy, and security, rather than pursuing the Foundation's own influence, catering to short-term speculators, or endorsing ecosystem projects.

Simultaneously, Bastian Aue also disclosed that MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) may become the next main battleground in the cypherpunk war, and EF will prioritize reducing order flow monopolies, decreasing extractive MEV, enhancing transaction inclusivity, and exploring open order flow solutions to prevent Ethereum from being formally permissionless but actually controlled by private order flows, Builder Cartels, or intermediary supply chains. Furthermore, Aerugo stated that privacy should become a default capability of Ethereum, not an optional add-on; EF is also gradually shifting employee compensation and major financial relationships to ETH and compliant Ethereum-native stablecoins, to encourage the team to directly use and experience Ethereum ecosystem products.

Regarding the recent controversy over EF personnel departures, he stated that reasons for leaving include strategic disagreements, role fit, normal institutional changes, or personal choices. EF will not discuss individual personnel matters on social media but expressed that departing individuals should have a dignified exit; if public statements seriously mislead public perception of EF's direction or decisions, the Foundation may clarify at the policy and factual level, but will not publicize personal affairs. As for the criteria for EF funding external teams, he admitted that the judgment is based on whether the work is mission-critical, whether there is a more suitable executor, and whether it can be completed without increasing capture risk or dependency, rather than simply because the team was formerly part of EF.

However, EF's strategic restructuring has also garnered considerable support within the community. For example, Grayscale Head of Research Zach Pandl believes that, in the long term, the ongoing institutional adjustments at the Ethereum Foundation are positive for Ethereum, primarily for two reasons: first, more development work will be transferred to commercial organizations, which can reduce the development responsibilities borne by the Foundation and potentially lead to more work being driven by commercial entities, thereby improving overall ecosystem efficiency; second, the structural adjustment helps uphold Ethereum's core principles as digital currency infrastructure. An Ethereum Foundation with clearer responsibilities and a more focused scope may be better positioned to ensure Ethereum continues to adhere to the CROPS principles required for building sound digital currency. He indicated that if the Ethereum Foundation reduces its direct involvement in ecosystem development in the future and focuses on maintaining Ethereum's long-term core goals, it could help strengthen ETH's positioning as decentralized digital asset infrastructure.

The founder of Etherealize believes that EF's deliberate "step back" is not a governance flaw but an important design principle of a decentralized system. The underlying infrastructure of the future financial system should not be dominated or controlled by any single institution; the Foundation's more important duty is to uphold the network's core values, including security, censorship resistance, privacy protection, and open standards, while continuously advancing long-term technical directions such as zero-knowledge proofs (ZK) and quantum resistance.

Overall, EF's gradual withdrawal from the role of ecosystem execution center has become a trend. The next phase of Ethereum's research and evolution will increasingly rely on the dynamic balance and self-organizing optimization of multiple forces within the ecosystem.

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