Inside the Ethereum Foundation’s Leadership Shake‑Up

Taken together, the exits represent one of the largest shifts in personnel inside the EF’s technical leadership in recent years.

A New Leadership Structure for Ethereum’s Protocol Team

As these contributors stepped back, the Ethereum Foundation introduced a new leadership model for its Protocol cluster—the internal group responsible for coordinating core network upgrades and research.

Three new co‑leads now oversee protocol development:

• Will Corcoran
• Kev Wedderburn
• Fredrik

They replace the previous leadership structure centered around Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, and Alex Stokes.

Each of the new leaders focuses on a different technical area. Corcoran has worked on cross‑team coordination and post‑quantum security research, Wedderburn leads work related to zero‑knowledge technologies, and Fredrik oversees protocol security initiatives such as the "Trillion‑Dollar Security" effort.

The shift moves Ethereum toward a more distributed leadership structure rather than relying heavily on a small group coordinating most protocol work.

The Organizational Reset Behind the Changes

The leadership transition is tied to a broader restructuring of Ethereum Foundation engineering teams that began earlier.

The foundation rebranded its Protocol Research & Development (PR&D) division simply as "Protocol", reflecting a more focused mandate around Ethereum’s core infrastructure.

The reorganized group centers its work on three priorities:

• Scaling Ethereum’s base layer
• Expanding blobspace capacity for rollups
• Improving user experience across the network

The restructuring also involved layoffs and internal realignment designed to simplify coordination across Ethereum’s many client teams and research groups.

Foundation leadership has acknowledged that delivering protocol upgrades in a decentralized ecosystem is inherently complex, since development is distributed across independent teams and organizations rather than a single centralized engineering group.

Why Criticism of the Ethereum Foundation Has Intensified

The reshuffle has drawn significant attention partly because it coincides with growing criticism from segments of the Ethereum community.

Common themes in those discussions include:

Execution speed. Some developers and investors argue Ethereum upgrades move too slowly compared with newer blockchain competitors.

Governance clarity. Ethereum’s decentralized coordination model can make it difficult to determine who is responsible for major decisions.

Communication and transparency. Critics say the foundation sometimes communicates roadmap changes or priorities too slowly.

These concerns have circulated for more than a year and intensified as leadership changes became public.

Supporters of the EF counter that Ethereum intentionally prioritizes long‑term security and decentralization over rapid feature deployment.

The Next Major Upgrade: Glamsterdam

Despite the internal changes, Ethereum’s development roadmap continues moving forward.

The next major protocol upgrade is Glamsterdam, which developers have been preparing through multi‑client development networks and interoperability testing.

At a recent developer interoperability event in Svalbard, Norway, teams focused on stabilizing features and coordinating client implementations for the upcoming fork.

Key areas of work in the upgrade include:

• Improvements to scalability and transaction throughput
• Better block efficiency
• Protocol‑level mechanisms related to maximal extractable value (MEV), including work tied to proposer‑builder separation

Developers have also discussed potential infrastructure improvements that could enable significantly higher gas limits after the upgrade, with research suggesting a possible target floor of around 200 million gas under certain conditions.

Why Some Features Moved to the Hegotá Upgrade

To keep Glamsterdam focused and easier to ship, several complex protocol changes have reportedly been shifted to a later fork called Hegotá.

Research updates suggest that features such as:

• Verkle Trees
• FOCIL proposals
• Some account‑abstraction improvements

are now expected to appear in Hegotá instead of the immediate upgrade.

This sequencing strategy allows developers to ship incremental improvements while continuing research on more technically complex upgrades in parallel.

The Ethereum Foundation’s Evolving Role

Beyond individual departures, the reshuffle highlights a deeper question about the Ethereum Foundation’s long‑term function in the ecosystem.

Unlike many blockchain projects, Ethereum development is distributed across multiple independent teams, companies, researchers, and open‑source contributors. The EF funds research and coordinates parts of the process but does not directly control the network.

Recent policy updates and internal mandates suggest the foundation is attempting to clarify its role as:

• A coordinator of protocol research
• A funder of ecosystem development
• A steward of Ethereum’s long‑term values and principles

This model reflects Ethereum’s philosophy of decentralization, though it can also make leadership transitions more visible and occasionally chaotic.

The Bottom Line

The Ethereum Foundation is clearly undergoing a significant internal transition—but it does not signal a halt in Ethereum’s development.

A combination of leadership turnover, organizational restructuring, and roadmap prioritization reflects an attempt to adapt the foundation to Ethereum’s next stage of growth.

The real test will be execution. If the new protocol leadership can keep upgrades like Glamsterdam on track while improving coordination and communication, the current reshuffle may ultimately look less like a crisis and more like Ethereum entering a more mature phase of development.