Liquidation of ETH, large-scale layoffs, transformation, why did Bankless leave Ethereum?

Written by: Rhythm

On May 21, David Hoffman announced on X that he has liquidated all of his ETH.

On the same day, Ryan Sean Adams followed up with a post. He said he "still believes in ETH and still believes in Bankless". But Bankless has entered its "second era", and he plans to take a step back. The weekly podcast will continue, but the content direction and guest selection will no longer be led by him; "David will take full command".

Former Bankless member Lucas posted on social media: "Let me clarify what cannot be said openly — Bankless clearly laid off most of the team yesterday. There was no thank you, nor a public announcement to help team members find new jobs."

All of this happened at the same time as another large-scale restructuring within the Ethereum Foundation.

They were once the most loyal loudspeakers of ETH

Bankless is not an ordinary crypto media.

In September 2020, David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams co-founded this brand, starting from a newsletter, which has grown into one of the most important content matrices in the English-speaking crypto community over five years. Podcasts, videos, paid membership Citizenship, derived DAOs, plus the venture capital fund Bankless Ventures established separately in 2023, with a scale of about 35 million USD. The program specifically has Ethereum Weekly.

It is the most significant amplifier of ETH narratives, without exception. And the core arguments of this amplifier mainly come from David Hoffman.

David Hoffman comes from a counseling background and entered the crypto space in 2017, initially serving as COO at the real estate tokenization platform RealT, and began writing in-depth pieces on ETH fundamentals in 2019. He is the research wing within Bankless and a narrative architect. Ryan Sean Adams has an older investment background, building his position in crypto through Mythos Capital around 2017, leaning towards macro cycles and a preacher role in the show.

Since 2019, David Hoffman has written several works such as "Ether: The Triple Point Asset", "Ether is Equity", "Ethereum's Economic Engine", "The Ethereum Watershed". The core argument is that ETH has the triple attributes of currency, bond, and equity, making it a "triple-point asset". This narrative provided ETH holders with a fundamental toolkit, making ETH not just a coin but a foundational asset in the digital financial stack.

David Hoffman himself has taken this argument to extremes. He has publicly stated that 99% of his net worth is in Ethereum, and he does not even have a bank account. At the Davos Forum in January 2026, he was still talking about how Ethereum would create a new global order in 2026.

Only four months have passed since his announcement of liquidation today.

What happened inside Bankless

The collapse of Bankless's narrative on ETH did not happen overnight:

In April 2025, as ETH dropped to 1415 USD, David Hoffman publicly stated that the leadership and culture of Ethereum were "driving away users and developers”, calling for the Ethereum Foundation to make changes.

In October 2025, he "lamented" the departure of Dankrad Feist, the longest-serving researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, who joined the stablecoin L1 project Tempo, publicly expressing concerns about talent at the Ethereum Foundation being siphoned by profit-driven companies.

In December 2025, he wrote "Crypto's Yearly Candles", admitting that 2025 was a down year for ETH and BTC.

In January 2026, he wrote "This Crypto Cycle Skipped ETH", believing that this cycle's upswing skipped ETH. In March 2026, on the day the Ethereum Foundation released the new Mandate, he wrote "The EF's Endless Manifestos", criticizing the Ethereum Foundation for "not intending to fight for ETH's market share".

Thus, today's liquidation is not sudden.

Besides David Hoffman, the handling on Adams's side is worth mentioning. He said "still optimistic about ETH," not "reduced positions," nor "following David". This marks a relatively dignified internal power transfer, accompanied by the recent layoffs at Bankless.

Adams passing content leadership to David means that Bankless will become more "de-ETHfied" next, with more focus on Solana, Hyperliquid, prediction markets, and the revival of ICOs.

Ethereum Foundation undergoes another major restructuring

Since Vitalik promoted the restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation in 2025, the Ethereum Foundation has experienced several rounds of significant restructuring:

The long-time leader Aya Miyaguchi stepped down as executive director, with Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang appointed as co-executive directors. The community’s dissatisfaction with the Ethereum Foundation's lack of transparency, slow pace, and failure to capture the value of ETH has been accumulating for a long time.

But this reshuffling has continued into 2026.

On February 13, 2026, Stańczak announced his resignation as co-ED at the end of February, less than a year into his tenure. Bastian Aue succeeded him.

On March 13, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation released a 38-page "Ethereum Foundation Mandate". The core is the CROPS framework, which stands for censorship-resistant, open source, private, secure. The document clearly states that the Ethereum Foundation will revert to a "neutral guardian" role, will not lead ecosystem expansion, and will not be responsible for the price of ETH. The document also includes an anime illustration referencing Remilia's "Source Seppuku License", depicting the foundation’s commitment to Ethereum, which if violated would lead to self-termination by sword.

It is rumored in the community that the Ethereum Foundation required its employees to sign acceptance of the new Mandate, otherwise they would leave.

From March to May 2026, all three heads of the Ethereum Foundation's Protocol Cluster left, and in May alone, five senior researchers departed. The complete list includes: Carl Beekhuizen (a seven-year veteran), Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Trent Van Epps, Alex Stokes, Josh Stark, along with former co-ED Stańczak. Eight people in a year.

The controversy around the Mandate document itself closely aligns with the core disputes surrounding the ETH investment rationale.

We could say this is a return to a neutral guardian Ethereum Foundation, reinforcing decentralization, openness, and trustworthy neutrality. But we can also interpret another point: at a time when institutional interest accelerates into the blockchain, the Ethereum Foundation's active choice to give up responsibility for capturing the value of ETH is equivalent to the issuer tearing up the most crucial argument in the ETH investment rationale.

David Hoffman's quote from that March article was: he did not want to read another Ethereum Foundation document in 2026 telling its readers "not intending to fight for ETH's market share," while focusing on a “cyberpunk ideology that does not help ETH's market value”.

The exit of a spokesperson for ETH may not immediately change the ETH price.

But any asset is essentially a narrative asset; what will happen to ETH without its loudest spokesperson in the future?