The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has officially concluded a months-long organizational
overhaul, introducing a newly restructured framework aimed at refocusing its mission on core protocol guarantees, self-sovereignty, and long-term ecosystem stability. This transition, which follows the formal implementation of the EF Mandate and the Treasury Management Policy, brings significant changes to the organization’s internal layout, operational focus, and headcount.
As part of this comprehensive restructuring, the EF is parting ways with 54 colleagues, representing approximately 20% of its workforce. Leadership noted that while these workforce reductions were difficult, they were deemed necessary to ensure the foundation remains properly resourced and organized for the critical challenges ahead. The newly shaped organization emerges leaner and more targeted, designed to execute its foundational tasks without being overly vulnerable to short-term cryptocurrency market volatility.
To ease the transition for departing personnel, the foundation has established a comprehensive support package. This includes severance pay calculated as the higher of one month’s salary for every year worked at the EF or the statutory minimum mandated by local jurisdictions—mirroring the terms offered to departing staff in previous months. Additionally, the EF is providing transition assistance to help former employees find new roles within the broader Ethereum ecosystem, complemented by specialized transition grants intended to cover individual expenses such as career coaching.
The New Structure
Under the updated organizational framework, the EF has been divided into five distinct domains of work—categorized as the protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer. These are complemented by dedicated clusters focused on operations, as well as management and direct support teams.
Foundation leadership emphasizes that each domain requires a tailored operational approach, distinct internal structures, and clear accountability for specific results. While detailed operational plans for each cluster will be rolled out in the coming month, the foundation has outlined the high-level objectives guiding each domain.
Protocol Layer
The protocol cluster holds the foundational legacy and responsibility of ensuring that Ethereum successfully delivers on its core promise of scaling self-sovereignty. Its primary objective is to lay the groundwork necessary to harden and scale the underlying Ethereum protocol, safeguarding critical properties that make the network defensible against outside pressures.
These non-negotiable guarantees include censorship resistance, capture resistance, open-source transparency, robust privacy, and uncompromising security. According to the EF, this cluster does not exist to pursue short-term marketability or to cater to interests that might transform Ethereum into a conventional financial rail controlled by intermediaries. Instead, its mandate is to make the core protocol progressively harder to corrupt or capture, providing a resilient foundation that users can rely on when conventional platforms censor, governments overreach, or intermediaries extract value.
Practically, this involves safely shipping network forks, minimizing unnecessary complexity, reducing trusted dependencies, and defending transaction pipelines against toxic Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) and privileged order flow. Furthermore, the protocol cluster accelerates long-horizon research initiatives—such as post-quantum security, zero-knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machines (zkEVM), and Layer 1 privacy—transforming these complex areas into protocol-level upgrades that preserve self-sovereignty at scale.
Access Layer
The access layer bridges the gap between foundational protocol guarantees and the practical experiences of individuals who rely on decentralized systems. This cluster is tasked with ensuring that self-sovereignty remains accessible, legible, and survivable across fundamental user actions, including reading the blockchain, executing transactions, generating proofs, delegating authority, and exiting the system safely.
These capabilities must be supported not only for human users but increasingly for autonomous agents acting on their behalf. Such agents must be able to verify current states, historical records, and related data without depending on unverifiable intermediaries. Users must retain control over their intents through bounded authority that can be revoked at will, keeping custody of their assets away from centralized chokepoints.
To achieve this, the access cluster applies a "zero option" principle, ensuring that for every intermediated pathway available, a credible, intermediary-free alternative exists and remains accessible. Tactically, this involves identifying areas where stronger censorship-resistant properties can be integrated into existing infrastructure, while establishing credible alternatives where economic forces naturally tend toward aggregation, identification, and control.
User Layer
The user layer cluster maintains the EF’s connection to the individuals and organizations whose primary interests lie in the self-sovereign use of Ethereum. By conducting user research, developing personas, and creating educational materials and impact evaluations, this cluster ensures that the EF understands the capabilities that matter most to real participants, the severity of various failure modes, and the acceptable trade-offs required during technical development. While the EF is not transforming into a commercial product studio, this cluster ensures that strategic decisions made within the protocol and access layers remain deeply informed by real-world constraints and measurable self-sovereignty outcomes.
Community Layer
The community cluster governs how the EF presents itself to the wider world, both inside and outside the traditional cryptocurrency ecosystem. Its responsibility is to clearly articulate what the foundation stands for and how its mission differs from zero-sum financial speculation, corporate-compromised blockchain projects, and status-quo non-profit structures vulnerable to geopolitical capture.
By maintaining strict independence from counterproductive entanglements, the EF aims to maximize its community value. This cluster also builds alliances beyond the traditional crypto sphere, engaging with communities dedicated to free and open-source software, local-first hardware, privacy and cryptography research, civil liberties, the decentralized web, and public-interest technology. These relationships are designed to foster fruitful, unforced collaboration across aligned movements.
Institutional Layer
The institutional cluster manages the EF’s interactions with broader institutional entities that provide intermediated pathways for end-users to access Ethereum. These entities span financial institutions, non-financial enterprises across manufacturing and publishing, government applications, and academic or non-profit organizations.
The primary goal of this cluster is to showcase effective integrations of Ethereum and cryptographic technologies that maximize fundamental network guarantees. These include fair and correct transaction execution, data portability, practical exit options, robust privacy protection, data authenticity verification, and the prevention of misbehavior. The foundation believes that many institutions will recognize the long-term benefits of serving users in ways that enhance self-sovereignty while meeting their own operational compliance and mission requirements.
Beyond direct engagement, the institutional cluster establishes and communicates best practices, reference architectures, and educational standards to guide institutional adoption. It also collaborates upstream with academic researchers and advocacy groups globally to ensure that Ethereum’s current capabilities and future potential are accurately understood, while actively monitoring policy and regulatory developments that could impact the network’s core commitments.
What Comes Next
With the structural reorganization officially finalized, the Ethereum Foundation moves forward with a leaner, more focused organization. Leadership plans to release further updates in the coming weeks and months regarding how specific workflows are evolving and how the broader ecosystem can effectively engage with the newly established structure.
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