Fifty-four employees — roughly one in five — are leaving the Ethereum Foundation. The nonprofit confirmed the cuts on June 23, closing out a months-long restructuring process. Alongside the layoffs, Vitalik Buterin proposed slashing annual spending from roughly 15% of the Foundation's remaining reserves to 5% after 2030.
The EF operates from an endowment: a large pool of crypto assets built up in Ethereum's early years. Spending 15% annually was sustainable when ETH prices were high, but it meant steadily drawing down capital as prices fell. The new 5% target is a different philosophy — less per year, structured to last decades rather than run dry in a few market cycles.
Organizationally, EF is splitting into five clusters: protocol, access, user, community, and institutional. Each handles a distinct layer of work, from core protocol research to managing relationships with regulators and corporate partners. The intent is to eliminate redundancy and concentrate resources where they actually move the protocol forward.
The cuts follow a broader leadership exodus that started well before today's announcement. About 19 employees and executives have left the Foundation in 2026 alone, including both co-executive directors — Tomasz Stańczak in February, Hsiao-Wei Wang earlier this month. A group of former contributors has already spun out Ethlabs, a nonprofit focused on scaling research backed by several ecosystem stakeholders.
The Ethereum Foundation does not ship the client software most nodes run — but it funds the research that shapes Ethereum's roadmap and backs developers through grants. Losing a fifth of the team while cutting spending this aggressively changes the level of support the ecosystem can count on. The five-cluster structure is the Foundation's bet that focused, lean teams outperform sprawling ones. Whether that holds for something as complex as Ethereum's long-term development is the practical test that starts now.
