The Ethereum Foundation is cutting its workforce by 20% and laying off about 54 staff members following a month-long reorganization.

 

The layoffs aim to make the foundation leaner, aligning with the foundation’s March updated Mandate and Treasury Management Policy, which together eliminate activities that fall outside the foundation’s core priorities. Affected staff will still be able to contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem from outside the EF, with the foundation stating that plans are in place to compensate those who have been laid off.

 

“In order to make sure those who are leaving are set up well for the transition, we are offering a package comprising severance and transition support. The severance is the higher of one month’s pay per year worked at the EF and the amount locally mandated by the individual’s jurisdiction,” the Ethereum Foundation wrote in a blog post.

 

“This is the same severance we offered to the colleagues who left the EF in the past few months. The transition support includes help finding a new place to contribute in the ecosystem, plus a small transition grant earmarked to cover individual transition expenses.”

 

The New 5-Cluster System

As part of its restructuring effort, the Ethereum Foundation will adopt a five-cluster system that effectively divides the foundation into five layers or domains of work. The clusters include:

 

Protocol Layer: This layer will focus on the protocol’s core priorities, playing a key role in scaling and hardening Ethereum while preserving the protocol’s core features, including censorship resistance, privacy, and security. Members of this cluster will also be involved in the safe deployment of protocol upgrades, addressing toxic MEV, reducing complexity and trust dependencies, and advancing long-term research.

 

Access Layer: The main role of this layer is to ensure self-sovereignty for users and agents. Team members in this cluster will work to ensure that key protocol actions, such as reading chain state, transacting privately, and delegating authority, are possible without relying on unverifiable intermediaries.

 

User Layer: This layer will be responsible for bridging the gap between what Ethereum provides and its relevance and usefulness to users. Team members in this cluster will conduct research on user segments and use cases, and focus on education, to ensure that protocol decisions reflect users’ needs and choices.

 

Community Layer: This layer will manage the foundation’s external presence and relationships. Team members in this cluster will help clarify and advocate for what the Ethereum Foundation represents and how it differs from financial or corporate crypto organizations. They will also focus on building the foundation’s relationships beyond the crypto sector.

 

Institutional Layer: This layer will manage the foundation’s engagement with institutions, including financial firms, enterprises, governments, universities, and nonprofit organizations. To support large-scale adoption, members of this cluster will work to ensure Ethereum meets institutional needs while complying with regulatory standards.

 

 

Hsiao Wei Wang, co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), has announced her departure from the foundation, shortly after co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak left in February this year.

 

“After my sabbatical, I have decided to step down as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation, effective today,” Wang wrote in an X post.

 

“Serving as EF co-executive director let me see the bigger picture of how the Ethereum community collaborates. I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished, not only at the EF, but across the builders, researchers, educators, validators, users, and many other contributors who have helped build, maintain, secure, and use the infrastructure and applications on top of it.”

 

Wang joined the EF research team in 2017, where she worked on protocol design, consensus mechanisms, sharding proofs-of-concept, and distributed systems. In March 2025, she was appointed co-executive director and board member alongside Tomasz Stańczak. During her time at the EF, Wang contributed to a range of projects, including sharding research, data availability sampling, EIP 4844, ETHTaipei, and the Taipei Seminar.

 

Reacting to her departure, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin commended Wang for her contributions to the foundation. “I still remember her early days in the Ethereum research community, first outside the Foundation and then inside it, and the thought and care she put into making Ethereum research and consensus work more organized and legible,” Buterin wrote in an X post.

 

“Last year, she, along with Stańczak, voluntarily took on the burden of what is perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum and, realistically, a challenging time for all of humanity. She handled the task skillfully and gracefully, and has constantly strived to find and insist on outcomes that are right both for the Ethereum protocol and for the human beings who build and maintain it.”

 

Wang’s departure from the Ethereum Foundation comes as several notable researchers have left the organization, including Tomasz Stańczak and Josh Stark, who departed in April. So far, at least eight senior researchers have left the Ethereum Foundation this year.

 

 

The Ethereum Foundation has appointed Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as co-leads of its protocol cluster, following the departure of some of its prominent engineers.

 

“While Barnabé and Tim are moving on from the Ethereum Foundation soon, and Alex Stokes will be on sabbatical, the Protocol cluster, as it exists today, is in large part due to their work. Under their coordination, Protocol launched tracks and helped to ship Fusaka to mainnet in December 2025, introducing PeerDAS and raising the mainnet gas limit on the path to 200M and beyond,” the foundation wrote in a blog post.

 

“Tim, Barnabé, and Alex shaped Protocol in ways that will outlast their time as cluster leads. We are grateful, and we are looking forward to what each of them takes on next.”

 

What to Know About the New Co-Leads

Will Corcoran is a research coordinator within the protocol, with experience working on zkVM proving, post quantum consensus, and the Fast Confirmation Rule. He has also facilitated numerous community calls, breakout rooms, and in-person protocol events, giving him a deep understanding of how the protocol works.

 

Kev Wedderburn leads the zkEVM team in the protocol and has experience working at the intersection of research and engineering, while Fredrik leads the protocol’s security and has been deeply involved in cross-cluster work.

 

About the Protocol Cluster 

The protocol cluster, often called the protocol, is the core group within the Ethereum Foundation responsible for designing, researching, coordinating, and developing Ethereum's base layer, or L1, blockchain protocol. After its rebranding in 2025, it had one goal: to tackle Ethereum's biggest challenges.

 

To address these challenges, the protocol prioritizes three main areas: enhancing Ethereum's scalability, improving user experience, and strengthening the security and resilience of the Ethereum blockchain network.

 

The protocol also oversees several technical domains, including AllCoreDevs meetings, cryptography, prototyping, security, zkEVM, and peer-to-peer systems. It is currently working on Glamsterdam, the next major Ethereum L1 upgrade, which will introduce features such as enshrined proposer builder separation, known as ePBS under EIP 7732, and gas repricing to support higher gas limits.

 

The restructuring of the Ethereum protocol comes shortly after key figures in the foundation, Josh Stark, last month, and Tomasz K. Stańczak, more recently, left the protocol. Other developers within the foundation have also departed to join other Layer 1 blockchain projects such as Tempo.

 

 

The Ethereum Foundation has committed $1 million to subsidize smart contract security audits for developers building on Ethereum mainnet, a move that signals how seriously the organization is taking security as the network continues its push toward broader adoption. The initiative, called the Ethereum Security Subsidy Program, was announced April 14 on X and arrives at a time when the cost of professional audits has long been a sticking point for smaller teams trying to ship responsibly.

 

The program was built in partnership with digital asset advisory firm Areta, along with Nethermind and Chainlink Labs. Through Areta Market, the foundation is connecting builders with a pool of more than 20 vetted audit firms, including well-known names like Certora, BlockSec, Quantstamp, Spearbit, Sherlock, Zellic, Hacken, Cyfrin, Dedaub, Immunefi, and Nethermind Security. Rather than running a slow, confusing grant process, approved projects get subsidies applied directly through the platform, then request quotes, and can reportedly get them back within 48 hours.

 

How It Works

Builders submit applications through a form on Areta Market. From there, an Expert Committee, made up of representatives from the Ethereum Foundation, Areta, Nethermind, Chainlink Labs, and audit partners, reviews each submission. Selected teams can receive subsidies covering up to 30% of their total audit costs, with higher support possible on a case-by-case basis for certain projects. There is no fixed deadline for applications. The subsidy pool is distributed on a first-come basis until the $1 million is exhausted, with new cohorts picked every month.

 

The program is open to all Ethereum mainnet builders regardless of project size or development stage, though the foundation has said it will prioritize teams aligned with what it calls the CROPS principles: Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security. The foundation published this framework just last month as part of a broader mandate defining its role and what it expects from builders in the Ethereum ecosystem.

 

Part of a Bigger Push on Security

This subsidy program did not come out of nowhere. It sits inside the foundation's broader Trillion Dollar Security Initiative, which launched last year and is explicitly focused on raising the network's security standards as Ethereum scales to handle more complex applications and larger sums of on-chain value. The thinking behind that initiative has always been that security infrastructure needs to grow alongside adoption, and audit access has been one of the more persistent gaps.

 

Areta CEO Fin Boothroyd framed the launch this way on X: the program is a joint initiative with top-tier audit providers, backed by an expert committee made up of leading voices from organizations that know Ethereum well. Notably, Areta ran a comparable $1 million audit subsidy for Solana developers prior to this, which gives the firm a useful blueprint for how these programs tend to play out in practice.

 

The Ethereum Foundation has been active on several fronts beyond this. In March 2026, it partnered with Morpho to expand its involvement in decentralized finance. In February, it rolled out Project Odin, a separate effort aimed at supporting teams building core infrastructure, particularly those that provide essential services but struggle to secure reliable funding. The audit subsidy program fits neatly into that broader pattern of trying to shore up the ecosystem before problems develop rather than after.

 

Wider Industry Context

The Ethereum Foundation is not alone in making these kinds of moves right now. Last month, Aave Labs announced a $1.5 million audit program focused specifically on securing the newly released Aave V4 protocol, another sign that some of the larger DeFi players are taking the cost-of-security problem seriously. The pattern emerging here looks like a coordinated, if informal, industry-wide shift toward treating security infrastructure as something worth investing in upfront.

 

Smart contract audits have always been considered a baseline best practice before deployment, yet for many teams, particularly earlier-stage ones, the cost has been prohibitive enough to skip or delay. If the program works as intended, more code gets reviewed before it goes live. That matters to the network given how much value is at stake on Ethereum at any given moment, and how frequently vulnerabilities in unaudited contracts have led to significant losses across DeFi.

 

There is still the question of whether $1 million is really enough to move the needle at scale. Audit costs vary widely depending on protocol complexity, and covering 30% of fees, while helpful, still leaves a meaningful share of the bill on the builder. The foundation has left the door open to higher support for select projects, which suggests it knows the ceiling matters. For now, the program represents a concrete, operational step rather than just a policy statement, and that puts it ahead of most security initiatives that never get past the announcement stage.