Ethereum Foundation Lays Off 20% of Staff Amid Restructuring and Budget Cuts

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has laid off 54 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, as part of a major organizational restructuring.

According to a blog post published Tuesday, the EF will reorganize around five specialized clusters covering protocol, access, user, community and institutional work. The Foundation said the changes are intended to concentrate resources on Ethereum's long-term technical priorities, including scaling, privacy, security and censorship resistance.

Under the new structure, separate teams will oversee Ethereum's core protocol, user access tools, community engagement and work with institutions, while management and operations functions remain organized independently.

The announcement came a day after former Ethereum Foundation contributors Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma announced the launch of Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research organization.

Backed by BitMine, SharpLink and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Ethlabs said it will focus on scaling, interoperability and other protocol-level improvements.

In a Tuesday X post, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation is reducing its budget by roughly 40% as it transitions toward a long-term, endowment-based organization. He said the foundation aims to lower annual spending from about 15% of its remaining funds to roughly 5% after 2030, a shift he said necessitated difficult staffing decisions. Buterin's post said:

The past years have been a challenging era for Ethereum. However, the ecosystem is adapting, both inside the EF and outside.

Buterin said the foundation would continue prioritizing major protocol initiatives while shifting some work outside the EF as Ethereum development becomes more distributed.

The Ethereum Foundation has also adjusted its treasury strategy in recent months. The organization unstaked 17,000 Ether in late April and another 21,270 ETH in early May after nearly reaching 70,000 ETH staked earlier this year. The foundation also sold 10,000 ETH to BitMine in an over-the-counter transaction on May 1.

Last week, former EF contributor Trenton Van Epps warned that Ethereum's core development ecosystem could face a "slow-burning funding crisis," arguing that spending cuts and the expiration of the network's Client Incentive Program have left some contributors searching for new funding sources.

The warning came amid broader changes at the EF, including co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang's departure and a wave of exits that had already reached an estimated 19 employees and executives this year before Tuesday's announcement of additional layoffs.