The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has officially unveiled a sweeping organizational restructuring, concluding a months-long internal review aimed at aligning the non-profit organization with its core mission. The overhaul, which implements the recently established EF Mandate and Treasury Management Policy, marks a significant turning point for the stewardship of the world’s leading smart contract platform.
As part of the transition, the Foundation is parting ways with 54 colleagues, representing approximately 20% of its total workforce. Leadership notes that while the downsizing decisions were exceptionally difficult, they were deemed necessary to ensure the organization remains resilient, properly resourced, and laser-focused on its long-term objectives without being overly vulnerable to short-term cryptocurrency market fluctuations.
The restructuring divides the Foundation’s operations into five distinct functional clusters, alongside dedicated groups for internal operations and management support. By streamlining its activities and refining its internal architecture, the EF aims to direct its energy toward critical protocol advancements, user accessibility, community alignment, and institutional integration.
The New Structure
Under the newly implemented framework, the EF’s operations are now distributed across five core domain clusters: the protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer. These are complemented by specialized operational units and management support teams. According to Foundation leadership, each domain requires a tailored operational approach, distinct internal structures, and specific metrics for accountability. Further details regarding the inner workings of these clusters are expected to be shared publicly in the coming weeks.
Protocol Layer
The protocol cluster bears the historical legacy and ongoing responsibility of ensuring that Ethereum delivers on its foundational promise of scaling self-sovereignty. Its primary mandate is to lay the groundwork for hardening and scaling the Ethereum core protocol itself, safeguarding the essential properties that make the network defensible against corruption and capture.
These non-negotiable guarantees include censorship resistance, complete openness, open-source integrity, robust security, and deep user privacy. The cluster explicitly operates to advance the core protocol without catering to short-term market interests, commercial packaging, or the creation of financial rails controlled by intermediaries. Instead, its focus is on making Ethereum exceptionally difficult to corrupt while remaining reliable during platform censorship, geopolitical overreach, and institutional failures.
Tactically, this involves safely shipping network upgrades, minimizing unnecessary protocol complexity, reducing trusted dependencies, and defending transaction pipelines against toxic Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and privileged order flows. Furthermore, the cluster accelerates long-horizon research initiatives—such as post-quantum cryptographic security, zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVM), and Layer 1 privacy—transforming these complex areas into protocol-level enhancements that reinforce self-sovereignty at scale.
Access Layer
The access layer addresses the practical realities of how individuals interact with Ethereum to maintain self-sovereignty. The cluster’s core mission is to make fundamental actions—such as reading blockchain data, executing transactions, generating cryptographic proofs, delegating authority, and exiting the system—available, legible, and survivable for everyday users and automated agents alike.
Users must be able to verify current states, historical data, and related information without relying on opaque, unverifiable intermediaries. Transactions must occur privately and free from censorship risks, with outcomes explicitly guaranteed or failing safely without cost if prescribed conditions are unmet. As automated agents increasingly manage on-chain activities, users must retain absolute custody of their intents and bounded authority, keeping interfaces verifiable, understandable, and recoverable regardless of technical expertise.
The cluster operates under the strict principle of the "zero option," which dictates that for every intermediated pathway available to a user, a credible, intermediary-free alternative must also exist and remain fully accessible. Tactically, this involves identifying opportunities to embed stronger self-sovereign properties into existing infrastructure while acknowledging where alternative paths are required to counter economic incentives that favor centralization and identification.
User Layer
The user layer cluster serves as the institutional bridge connecting EF initiatives directly with the individuals and organizations whose primary interest lies in the self-sovereign utility of Ethereum. This group is responsible for expanding the tooling, educational materials, and cultural norms necessary for secure, sovereign blockchain engagement.
By conducting comprehensive user-segment research, analyzing real-world failure modes, and evaluating impact metrics, the cluster helps the EF understand the capabilities and compromises that matter most to real participants. While the EF does not operate as a commercial product studio, this cluster ensures that decisions made within the protocol and access layers remain deeply informed by genuine user constraints and measurable standards of self-sovereignty.
The community layer governs how the Ethereum Foundation presents itself to the broader world, both within the immediate blockchain ecosystem and across external industries. Its objective is to clearly articulate what the EF stands for and how its mission diverges from zero-sum speculative crypto markets, corporate-compromised frameworks, and status-quo non-profit grant structures that are vulnerable to geopolitical co-optation. The Foundation remains committed to preserving its independence from counterproductive entanglements to maximize its value to the public.
In addition to internal ecosystem relations, this cluster builds bridges with aligned external fields, including free and open-source software movements, local-first hardware and software developers, privacy researchers, digital civil liberties advocates, and public-interest technologists. By fostering high-quality, unforced collaboration between Ethereum and these allied sectors, the cluster aims to strengthen the broader ecosystem of decentralized technologies.
Institutional Layer
The institutional layer oversees the EF’s engagement with established institutions that provide intermediated pathways for end-users to interact with Ethereum. This domain encompasses a broad spectrum of sectors, including consumer finance, insurance, traditional manufacturing, publishing, digital media, government applications, and academic institutions.
The primary objective in this space is to curate showcases of effective cryptographic integration that maximize self-sovereignty and user guarantees. These include ensuring fair and verifiable execution, guaranteeing data portability, preserving user privacy, proving data authenticity, and proactively preventing malicious behavior. The Foundation believes that enterprises, governments, and non-profits will increasingly recognize that serving users through privacy-preserving, decentralized architectures aligns with their own long-term missions.
To achieve this, the institutional cluster establishes and promotes best practices, industry standards, reference architectures, and educational resources tailored for institutional adoption. It also collaborates upstream with academic researchers and advocacy organizations worldwide to ensure that Ethereum’s technical capabilities, current form, and future potential are accurately understood, while actively monitoring regulatory developments that could impact censorship resistance, open-source principles, and privacy guarantees.
The People Leaving
The structural reorganization and corresponding shifts in operational spending have resulted in the departure of 54 employees. Leadership acknowledged that while these decisions were painful, they were necessary to ensure the organization remains properly resourced to execute its long-term mandate without external market distractions.
To support departing staff through the transition, the EF is offering a comprehensive severance and transition package. Severance compensation is calculated as the higher of one month’s pay for every year worked at the Foundation or the statutory minimum mandated by the individual’s local jurisdiction—mirroring the package provided to colleagues who departed in previous months. Additionally, the Foundation is providing dedicated transition support, including assistance in finding new roles within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, alongside a modest transition grant earmarked for individual career coaching and related expenses.
Leadership expressed profound gratitude to every departing colleague for their dedication, time, and talent contributed to the Foundation, expressing optimism about continuing professional relationships with those who transition to other roles across the ecosystem.
What Comes Next
The Ethereum Foundation that emerges from this comprehensive reorganization is structured to be leaner, more focused, and strictly aligned with its core principles. Foundation leadership intends to release further updates in the coming weeks and months regarding specific operational shifts and guidance on how the wider community can effectively engage with the newly established organizational structure.
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
Ethereum & Smart Contracts
