Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)

Author | Azuma (@azuma_eth)

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has undergone the largest organizational restructuring in recent years.

On the evening of June 23, EF formally announced a comprehensive reorganization of its internal structure, which will be divided into multiple functional clusters, including protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer. At the same time, the foundation will reduce its overall staff by about 20%, with approximately 54 employees leaving.

At the same time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also disclosed more detailed reform ideas on X: EF will gradually reduce spending over the next few years, cutting the budget by about 40% compared to before, and plans to decrease the annual spending rate from about 15% in the past to about 5% after 2030, transitioning to a donation-driven operational model.

Clearly, this is a significant and unconventional restructuring of the organization. When combined with the controversies and challenges Ethereum has faced over the past year, this reform seems more like a long-overdue positioning correction.

From ETH's prolonged price slump to the debates over the success or failure of scaling routes; from the ongoing community skepticism about the foundation's execution power to the successive departures of core members... criticisms surrounding EF have hardly ceased over the past year. This time, EF's layoffs, restructuring, and budget adjustments are seen by many as the foundation's first systematic response to these issues.

Why is EF always embroiled in controversy?

In the past few years, as the most influential higher consciousness entity in the entire Ethereum ecosystem, EF's every move has always been accompanied by controversy.

Some criticize the foundation for selling ETH for a long time, undermining community confidence; others question EF's overly strong emphasis on public goods and long-term research, neglecting market competition and ecosystem growth; some also believe that in the face of increasingly fierce industry competition, EF has always lacked clear strategic expression and execution capabilities... Whenever the market expresses dissatisfaction with Ethereum, EF often becomes the most direct target of criticism.

These controversies may seem varied, but they point to the same reality — for more than a decade, EF has played an extremely special role. It is not only an important promoter of protocol research but also a funder of ecosystem construction; it is responsible for coordinating the interests of all parties, and to a large extent represents external perceptions of Ethereum.

In the early development of Ethereum, such a role positioning played an important role, but as Ethereum gradually grew into a global network with a huge developer community, an asset scale of hundreds of billions of dollars, and numerous institutional participants, the market's expectations for EF have quietly changed.

What role should EF play? Is it just a nonprofit organization focused on research, or is it to be the de facto coordination center of the entire ecosystem? Does it need to be accountable to ETH holders? Should it respond to market expectations regarding growth, adoption, and value accumulation?

For these questions, EF has long failed to provide clear answers. As a result, controversies over token sales, execution power, governance, and even staff turnover have continually accumulated, ultimately evolving into a war of words surrounding the foundation itself. Moreover, with the continued slump in ETH prices, the community needs an outlet for its emotions, and EF happens to be the most suitable role for that.

EF's answer: Redefining boundaries

If the community's doubts about EF over the past few years ultimately point to the ambiguity of the foundation's role, then the most critical content of this reform is that EF has finally begun to redefine itself, clarifying what it should and should not do.

From the latest published organizational structure, EF has clearly divided the focus of future work into the following five directions:

• Protocol layer: responsible for promoting core protocol development and network security;
• Access layer: focusing on wallet, development tools, and infrastructure experience;
• User layer: focusing on applications and user experience;
• Community layer: responsible for developer and ecosystem coordination;
• Institutional layer: responsible for promoting government, enterprise, and traditional institution adoption of Ethereum.

While clarifying functional clusters, EF is also actively contracting through a 20% reduction in staff and a 40% budget cut. It is worth noting that Vitalik did not package this reform as a simple “improvement in quality and efficiency,” but frankly stated that this means real losses — some projects will be terminated, some capabilities will disappear, and some long-term contributors will leave.

Vitalik illustrated this by stating that the long-term focus on privacy and scaling frontier research, the PSE (Privacy and Scaling Explorations) team, will gradually exit the historical stage; Devcon will also transition to a smaller scale, lower-cost model in the future; the foundation's investment in large projects outside Ethereum will decrease; and work related to institutional cooperation will further focus and contract.

However, Vitalik also emphasized that this does not mean that the overall investment in these directions by Ethereum will simultaneously decrease. Quite the opposite, many efforts are merely transitioning from the “exploration” phase to the “implementation” phase, moving from within EF to the broader ecosystem.

For an organization that has long simultaneously undertaken responsibilities for research, funding, coordination, and even part of ecosystem promotion, this signifies a distinct retreat in its role. EF is no longer trying to become an all-encompassing ecosystem center, but hopes to return to core functions such as protocol research, public goods support, and ecosystem coordination. As for more specific construction work, it will gradually be handed over to independent teams and market forces within the ecosystem.

Ecological forces are filling the gap

If EF's reform indicates a proactive retreat, then another important question is who will fill the space it leaves behind? The answer has already emerged — the ecosystem.

Just before the foundation announced its reorganization, Ethlabs, founded by several former core researchers of EF, was officially established and quickly gained support from ecological forces such as BitMine, SharpLink, and Joseph Lubin. (Recommended reading “Did the Ethereum Foundation split up?! Understand the 'bright future' of Ethlabs”)

In the past, such talent outflow could easily be interpreted as a signal of the foundation's declining influence, but this time the market's response has been quite the opposite. More people have viewed the emergence of Ethlabs as a positive development for Ethereum because it signifies that talent, resources, and research capabilities previously highly concentrated within the foundation are now spreading to more independent organizations.

In addition to Ethlabs, over the past year, several independent organizations such as Argot Collective and Ethereum Applications Guild have also emerged within the Ethereum ecosystem. At the same time, publicly listed treasury companies represented by BitMine and SharpLink have also begun to engage in ecological construction through funding, research grants, and other means.

Compared to ten years ago, the power structure of Ethereum has undergone fundamental changes. Formerly, Ethereum was almost equivalent to EF; today, Ethereum's development can no longer rely on a single organization but increasingly requires collaboration and division of labor among different organizations within the ecosystem.

Acknowledgment from competitors

Of course, EF's reform does not mean that Ethereum's problems have been resolved.

Whether it is the controversy over ETH's value capture, the process of institutional adoption, or issues regarding ecological competitiveness and execution efficiency, they will not automatically disappear because of an organizational restructuring, but at least EF has begun to acknowledge one thing — as Ethereum grows, the foundation's power has become increasingly limited, and it can no longer continue to play the role of “the one who solves all problems.”

Just after EF announced the reform, Solana co-founder Toly posted on X, stating: “Bullish, budget constraints force us to distinguish priorities and focus our efforts. Ethereum will not disappear. A smaller, more streamlined Ethereum Foundation will be more decisive, act faster, and adjust direction more quickly.”

The endorsement from an old rival may be the highest praise for EF's current reform.

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