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Key Takeaways
- The Ethereum Foundation will cut its budget by roughly 40% and reduce headcount by 20%, including the wind-down of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit.
- Vitalik Buterin outlined a path from approximately 15% annual treasury spending before 2026 to a long-term target of 5% after 2030.
- Nine senior Ethereum Foundation figures have departed since January, including co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang.
The Ethereum Foundation will reduce its budget by roughly 40% this year as part of a shift to an endowment-style operating model, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said in a blog post published Tuesday. The same day, the organization confirmed a 20% headcount reduction and the resignation of co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang.
Nine Senior Figures Have Left the Ethereum Foundation Since January
Wang’s departure brings the total number of senior Ethereum Foundation figures to leave since January to nine. Both co-executive directors appointed in 2025 have now exited: Tomasz Stańczak departed in February after less than a year in the role, and Wang resigned effective June 18 after eight years with the organization.
Board member Bastian Aue has assumed sole executive leadership during the transition. Researchers and engineers who departed since January also include Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, Carl Beek, and Julian Ma. Wang addressed her exit publicly:
“I’ve come to feel that this is the right moment for me to step back. Ethereum has always been bigger than any one role, any one organization, or any one moment,” she wrote.
Buterin acknowledged the human cost of the restructuring directly. “I respect my EF colleagues far too much to pretend that there was not much that is lost,” he wrote, describing the cuts as involving “difficult decisions” and the departure of experienced engineers who have worked on Ethereum for years.
Buterin Sets a Path From 15% Annual Treasury Spending to 5% After 2030
The budget reduction targets a transition from the foundation spending approximately 15% of its remaining treasury annually before 2026 to a long-term rate of roughly 5% per year after 2030. Buterin described the goal as preserving funding for what he called Ethereum’s “third iteration” of protocol development, while reducing costs elsewhere across the organization.
Among the specific changes outlined in the blog post were a wind-down of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit, smaller and less costly Devcon conferences, a narrower institutional strategy, and a shift toward more specialized client teams supported by AI-assisted formal verification.
Buterin Outlines a “Lean-and-Done” Model for Ethereum’s Protocol Future
Buterin also used the post to reiterate his preference for a long-term approach he called “soft lean-and-done.” In a statement, he had this to say:
“In the longer term, I personally favor a ‘soft lean-and-done’ approach to Ethereum. Once the current technical roadmap is finalized, the network should “generally stick to security fixes and small high-value changes, and have a much higher bar for considering new feature additions to the protocol.”
He added that this approach would allow Ethereum to remain “capture-resistant without demanding very large budgets,” and said the ecosystem should “learn less from multimillion-line-of-code behemoth projects, more from bitcoin.”
Foundation Sets No Timeline for Reaching 5% Annual Spending Target
The simultaneous announcements covered budget targets, staffing reductions, and organizational changes including the wind-down of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit. The foundation did not announce a timeline for completing the transition to the 5% spending target, and no details were provided regarding which specific roles or teams are affected by the 20% headcount reduction beyond the wind-down of the Privacy and Scaling Explorations unit.
