Ethereum Foundation Lays Off 54 Employees Amid Restructuring to Become 'Leaner and More Focused'

In brief The Ethereum Foundation is laying off 54 employees, around 20% of its staff, as it restructures to become “leaner and more focused.” The cuts follow of a months-long overhaul built around its March "Mandate" and a new treasury policy, with work now split into five core "clusters" plus operations and management. They come on the heels of a run of leadership exits, including the departure of co-director Hsiao-Wei Wang last week.

The Ethereum Foundation is parting ways with 54 employees, around 20% of its total workforce, amid reorganization efforts designed to make the non-profit “leaner and more focused.” The move concludes a months-long process according to the organization, following the March publication of its “Mandate,” a 38-page document that serves as “part constitution, part manifesto,” and the implementation of its treasury policy.

“We come out of this process with the structure, activities, and people necessary for execution on the critical tasks ahead of us,” the Foundation tweeted.

As part of the restructuring, the Foundation will move forward working in five distinct clusters—protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer—each designed to achieve specific goals as it relates to the future success of Ethereum. Two additional clusters will focus on operations and management.

“Each domain of work requires a different approach, is held accountable for different kinds of results, and has a different internal structure tailored to the work that needs to be done,” the Foundation wrote in a blog post. In other words, the organization’s protocol layer will work on fulfilling needs related to the scaling and hardening of Ethereum mainnet while its access layer will focus on transacting, reading, and delegating on-chain.

The Foundation’s announcement comes just one week after its co-director, Hsiao-Wei Wang, left her post at the organization, the latest in a series of exits that have shaken up leadership over the last year. Prior to her departure, former co-director Tomasz Stanczak left his position in February and leading researcher Dankrad Feist left last year to work on Stripe’s stablecoin blockchain, Tempo.

Despite telegraphing the move to a leaner team last month, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin said he would not pretend “that nothing of great value was lost,” highlighting the contributions of the departing members to both the Foundation and Ethereum.

“The past years have been a challenging era for Ethereum,” he tweeted. “However, the ecosystem is adapting, both inside the EF and outside, and I am confident that Ethereum is very well-positioned to succeed and thrive.”

The Ethereum ecosystem gained a notable contributor with the Monday launch of Ethlabs, a new non-profit research and development organization founded by former Ethereum Foundation researchers.