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Ethereum Foundation Cuts Put Long-Term Solvency Back In Focus

Ethereum Foundation Cuts Put Long-Term Solvency Back In Focus

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TL;DR

  • The Ethereum Foundation has reportedly announced a reorganization aimed at reducing long-term operating costs.
  • The plan centers on lower annual spending, a tighter mandate, and a clearer set of internal work clusters.
  • For ETH holders, the key question is whether leaner coordination strengthens Ethereum’s long-term roadmap or creates short-term uncertainty.

Ethereum’s Core Steward Enters A Leaner Phase

The Ethereum Foundation is back in the spotlight after a reported reorganization put its staffing, annual budget and long-term treasury strategy under renewed scrutiny. The update matters because the EF is not a normal crypto company. It does not run Ethereum like a corporate network, but it remains one of the ecosystem’s most important coordination bodies for protocol research, grants, client development and public goods funding.

According to the official Ethereum Foundation announcement, the organization is moving toward a tighter mandate and a lower-spending model designed to protect long-term solvency. That is a significant signal at a time when Ethereum is trying to balance institutional adoption, scaling work, staking economics and pressure from rival networks. The Foundation’s challenge is to support core development without becoming the single point of dependency that Ethereum’s decentralization story is built to avoid.

Why The Budget Shift Matters

The headline for markets is not simply the number of roles or the size of the budget cut. It is the direction of travel. A lower operating burn can make the Foundation more durable if crypto markets remain choppy, ETH prices stay under pressure, or grant demand continues to rise. It also suggests that EF leadership is trying to move from a cycle-driven spending model toward something closer to an endowment approach.

That shift may be viewed positively by some long-term ETH investors. A leaner Foundation with a clearer mandate could reduce internal sprawl and force sharper prioritization. But there is also a trade-off. Ethereum’s roadmap is broad, and work around protocol upgrades, privacy, wallet access, user experience, institutional integration and ecosystem support all competes for attention.

Ethereum Still Needs Coordination

Ethereum’s strength has always been that no single organization controls it. Still, decentralization does not remove the need for coordination. The ecosystem depends on researchers, client teams, app developers, auditors and community groups moving in broadly compatible directions. The Foundation’s reorganization therefore lands at a delicate moment: Ethereum is becoming more important to institutions while also facing criticism over speed, complexity and user experience.

The practical question is whether the new structure can make Ethereum’s public-goods engine more focused. If the Foundation can cut costs while improving execution, the reorganization may eventually look like a sign of maturity. If it slows core work or creates uncertainty around grants and research priorities, the market may treat it more cautiously.

What ETH Investors Should Watch

For now, this is less about immediate ETH price action and more about Ethereum’s operating model. Investors and builders will be watching whether the Foundation’s new mandate translates into faster protocol progress, clearer grant priorities and a healthier relationship with independent ecosystem teams.

The timing also matters. Ethereum is already dealing with ETF flow pressure, staking debates, MEV concerns and questions over how much institutional finance will actually settle on public chains. A leaner EF does not solve those issues by itself, but it does show that the ecosystem’s core institutions are preparing for a longer, more disciplined phase.

This coverage is based on information from Ethereum Foundation.

This article was written by the News Desk and edited by Samuel Rae.

This report is based on information from Ethereum Foundation, available at Ethereum Foundation

Ethereum Foundation Cuts Another 40% But Solana Founder Calls It Bullish

Ethereum Foundation Cuts Another 40% But Solana Founder Calls It Bullish

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The Ethereum Foundation is cutting its budget by roughly 40% and reducing staff by about 20%, concluding a planned shift toward a leaner, endowment-style organization with a narrower set of priorities.

Co-founder Vitalik Buterin called the cuts a deliberate trade, not an efficiency drive. Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko went further, arguing the leaner foundation will move faster and prove bullish for Ethereum.

What the Budget Cut Removes

The foundation confirmed it is cutting 54 roles, close to one-fifth of its staff. It is reorganizing into a seven-cluster structure built around protocol security, censorship resistance, and privacy.

Buterin did not frame the reductions as pure efficiency. He named concrete losses. These include a smaller Devcon, the wind-down of Privacy and Scaling Explorations, and fewer projects beyond Ethereum.

The Ethereum co-founder also signaled his diminishing influence on the board.

The foundation’s June 2025 treasury policy set annual spending at 15% of holdings, with a 2.5-year cash buffer. It mapped a glide path to a 5% endowment baseline by about 2030.

To sell less ether (ETH), it now leans on staking and DeFi yield instead of principal.

“This year, the EF is decreasing its budget by roughly 40%, which entails some difficult decisions… the EF is transitioning into being a long-term-oriented endowment-based organization…” Vitalik Buterin wrote.

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Buterin tied the budget to Ethereum’s Strawmap, which he calls the network’s third iteration after the Merge.

He wants that core protocol overhaul finished, then a higher bar for new features. He also expects leaner shipping.

Buterin said more of the protocol will shift from client redundancy to AI-assisted formal verification, reducing upgrade costs.

Solana Co-Founder Sees Upside

Not everyone reads the cuts as a decline. Solana co-founder Yakovenko argued that tight budgets force focus.

“Bullish… Budget constraints force prioritization and focus. Ethereum isn’t going away. A smaller and leaner EF will be more decisive and will move faster and will be able to course correct faster,” the Solana executive wrote.

Skeptics see risk. Former foundation contributor Trent Van Epps warned of a roughly $30 million annual funding gap for core development.

BitMine chairman Tom Lee dismissed the crisis talk, betting private backers and stakers will step in.

That bet is already taking shape. Days earlier, five former foundation researchers launched an independent nonprofit, Ethlabs. Lee and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin backed it to push institutional adoption.

Ethereum reflected the unease. Ether’s price action slid below $1,660, down about 5% over 24 hours. It retained its rank as the second-largest cryptocurrency, valued at about $200 billion.

Ethereum Price performance. Source: BeinCrypto
Ethereum Price Performance. Source: BeInCrypto

The next treasury reports and protocol milestones will test the bet.

They will show whether a smaller foundation ships faster, as Yakovenko predicts, or whether the lost talent slows Ethereum’s most ambitious upgrade yet.

The post Ethereum Foundation Cuts Another 40% But Solana Founder Calls It Bullish appeared first on BeInCrypto.

Ethereum Foundation cuts 20% of staff in big reorganization move

Ethereum Foundation cuts 20% of staff in big reorganization move

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The Ethereum Foundation officially reduced its staff by 54 employees (roughly 20% of its workforce) yesterday, June 22, 2026.

The Foundation described the recent staff cuts as the final step in a restructuring process that began in June 2025 when the Foundation adopted a new set of objectives and a stricter treasury policy. 

This was done to improve the Foundation’s financial discipline and focus resources on the most important development priorities.

Ethereum Foundation moves from the old structure to five new domains

The Ethereum Foundation published a blog post earlier today, sharing a new operational plan that reorganizes the company around five main areas: the protocol, access, user, community, and institutional layers.

As such, management and general operations will be handled by separate teams.

Each cluster has a specific objective. The protocol layer will be responsible for strengthening Ethereum against censorship and external control, ensuring that network upgrades are launched safely, and conducting long-term research into areas like post-quantum security and Layer 1 privacy.

The access layer will be tasked with making it practical for users to interact with the blockchain independently, such as reading data or sending transactions without needing intermediaries.

Finally, the institutional layer was created to help enterprises, governments, and non-profits easily adopt Ethereum’s cryptographic tools.

The wave of resignations before the layoffs

The restructuring comes just after eight senior contributors left the organization. The most recent exit was co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang’s resignation on June 22 after eight years with the research team, following the departure of her co-director, Tomasz Stańczak back in February. As a result, board member Bastian Aue is now the sole executive leader in charge of daily operations.

Researchers and engineers who departed since January include Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, Carl Beek, and Julian Ma.

Former researcher Dankrad Feist attributed the exits to management problems rather than strategic disagreements. Coinbase head of engineering Yuga Cohler called the situation “dysfunction,” according to Cryptopolitan’s coverage of the departures.

Money troubles causing the layoffs

These layoffs are happening alongside growing funding concerns. As a core development coordinator from 2021 till April this year, Van Epps recently warned that developer funding could hit a crisis point within the next three to nine months. He estimated that maintaining Ethereum’s network of more than ten client teams requires roughly $30 million annually.

The Foundation’s four-year Client Incentives Program, which bankrolled the teams building and maintaining Ethereum’s core software, expired in April 2026. The Foundation has signaled plans to bring annual spending down from about 15% of its treasury to a 5% baseline by 2030, a strategy it calls “Subtraction.”

Protocol Guild, an independent collective that pools donations for Ethereum contributors, has distributed roughly $38 million since 2022. However, because it relies entirely on voluntary donations rather than a set budget, its funding remains unpredictable.

One day before the Foundation announced its cuts, five former EF researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research lab. Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma founded the organization with backing from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Bitmine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink, Anchorage, and more than 50 community partners.

What next for the Ethereum Foundation?

The Foundation will share more details about each cluster’s work by next month.

Ethereum’s co-founder, Vitalik Buterin, has also introduced the CROPS framework (censorship resistance, capture resistance, openness, privacy, and security) to anchor this new direction.

In his latest post on X, Buterin emphasized that this tighter focus is essential, and that he views the rise of independent, community-funded organizations like Ethlabs as the necessary evolution to ensure Ethereum’s core development stays strong and decentralized even as the Foundation reduces its own spending.

However, there’s still a heightened sense of uncertainty surrounding Ethereum, as shown by the significant drop in ETH’s price. The token is currently trading at $1,662 according to CoinMarketCap, which is a sharp fall from its near $4,950 peak in August 2025.

Whether this new approach (supported by independent communities) can cover the estimated $30 million annual cost of core development is now the question racing through everyone’s minds as we move into the second half of the year.

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Sui Set To Integrate Native Private Transactions Into Core Protocol — What This Means

Sui Set To Integrate Native Private Transactions Into Core Protocol — What This Means

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The Sui Network is moving to redefine the balance between transparency and confidentiality by integrating native private transactions directly into its core protocol. Unlike traditional systems where transparency is the default, Sui aims to make confidentiality a built-in feature, eliminating the need for users to rely on external tools.

Why Sui’s Native Privacy Upgrade Matters For Blockchain Adoption

The SUI network is preparing to make a move in blockchain infrastructure by embedding native private transactions directly into its base protocol in 2026. Crypto analyst Kyle Chasse highlighted that, unlike traditional approaches, this model requires no optional privacy tools and no separate privacy layer, with transaction details visible only to the sender and receiver by default.

Mysten Labs Chief Product Officer, Adeniyi Abiodun, believes privacy is essential for mainstream blockchain adoption, particularly in the payments sector. Abiodun stated that achieving mass global consumer adoption for digital payments is impossible without built-in privacy protections.

Most blockchains have treated privacy as an add-on layered on top of existing infrastructure. SUI is taking a different approach by making privacy a first-class primitive, enabling developers to build applications on it.

This shift directly addresses a long-standing barrier to on-chain institutional adoption. In today’s transparent systems, transaction flows are visible in real time, allowing competitors to monitor activity, strategy, and liquidity movements.

A major shift is underway in one of the world’s most powerful crypto markets. The Sui Intern has revealed that South Korea’s massive crypto liquidity is beginning to move on-chain, driven by a wave of new regulations that are reshaping how capital flows through the ecosystem.

Recent developments surrounding stablecoin legislation, tokenized asset frameworks, and broader digital asset regulation are opening the door for Korean exchange capital to flow directly into decentralized finance protocols, self-custody wallets, and on-chain finance systems.

As a result, one of the most liquid crypto markets in the world may be shifting away from centralized platforms and into on-chain infrastructure. Among the potential beneficiaries is Sui Network, which is positioning itself as a high-performance destination for this incoming liquidity.

Sui Network Strength Continues Turning Heads Across Crypto Market

Sui Network is showing explosive momentum, with price action breaking out of a 7-month descending trendline and moving through three key resistance levels. According to the Sui Community on X, the rally has sparked renewed bullish momentum in the SUI, with many anticipating the $1.36 level as the next major breakout point. A confirmed move above this zone could open the door to $1.71 and potentially reach the $3.32, which would mark a new all-time high.

Sui

Sui Community noted that this is a remarkable development in the market, with Sui Network showing incredible strength. If this trajectory holds, SUI could be entering a high-volatility phase, where rapid price expansion becomes the norm, and many market participants will start to pay attention to SUI.

Sui