Author: @cynthiaju333 ; Review: @NPC_Leo
Over the past two months, a series of important events have occurred within the Ethereum ecosystem: the Ethereum Foundation (hereinafter referred to as EF) completed an organizational restructuring; Ethlabs was established as an independent non-profit R&D organization; Ethereum Institutional officially launched as an independent entity serving as an institutional on-ramp; and Etherealize continues to push the narrative of Ethereum for Wall Street and capital markets. The community has engaged in extensive discussions around EF's organizational restructuring, the establishment of new community-driven teams, initiatives for institutional adoption, and the division of R&D labor and governance structures.
On April 21, 2026, the ETH HK Hub officially opened in Hong Kong, hosting two significant conversations. One was a Chinese-language dialogue between Vitalik Buterin and Hong Kong Legislative Council Member Duncan Chiu. They discussed the development of the Chinese-speaking community over the past twelve years, touching on Layer 2, core protocol development, the anti-quantum roadmap, Layer 1 scaling, and the directions truly worthy of builders' investment in Ethereum. The other was an English-language roundtable between EF Chairperson Aya Miyaguchi, Council Member Duncan Chiu, and QZ, Partner at an ecosystem fund. This conversation focused on the role of EF, the philosophy of subtraction, the Walk-away Test, and Hong Kong's position within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Looking back from over two months later, how can we more deeply understand the changes occurring across the entire Ethereum community? The two conversations with Vitalik and Aya provide important context and reference points, making it easier to grasp that Ethereum is entering a new stage of development, a future of community multi-nodes and the possible continued evolution of its direction.
What Happened to Ethereum Over the Past Two Months?
On May 24, Vitalik Buterin posted a lengthy thread on his X account, publicly sharing his personal views on EF's future direction. He emphasized that EF will pursue "longevity over breadth", reduce ETH sales and the Foundation's financial expenditures, and focus more on the core values of CROPS (Censorship-Resistance/Opposition-resistance, Open Source, Privacy, Security). He also pointed out that EF is not the center of Ethereum, but rather "one node, with a defined purpose", and advocated for an ecosystem structure of pluralism where multiple focused nodes collaborate.
On June 23, EF officially announced a new organizational structure on its official blog. The new structure includes layers for Protocol, Access, Users, Community, and Institutions, along with supporting structures for operations and management. Through this restructuring, EF aims to align its organizational form more closely with long-term strategic goals, ensuring Ethereum's sustainable development in the future.
Almost simultaneously, the independent non-profit R&D organization Ethlabs announced its establishment, co-founded by five former senior EF researchers: Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma, with funding support from Bitmine, Sharplink, Joe Lubin, SNZ, and others. Its goal is to prepare Ethereum for the next phase's needs, such as institutional adoption, agentic finance, DeFi, stablecoins, and RWAs, and to coordinate with EF in advancing Ethereum protocol development across different domains, jointly building a multi-node ecosystem.
On July 1, EF's Global Policy & Strategy team released a guide for governments and institutions: "Ethereum for Governments & Institutions: Why Neutral Infrastructure Is Crucial Now." This report actively helps policymakers and large institutions worldwide better understand Ethereum. Its core premise is: the world today needs "shared, neutral digital public infrastructure not controlled by any single centralized entity," and Ethereum is a public, programmable network designed precisely for this purpose.
On the same day, Ethereum Institutional officially launched as an independent non-profit organization, positioning itself as the "dedicated institutional front door" to the Ethereum ecosystem. It has taken over the institution-facing work conducted by the Ethereum Foundation's go-to-market team over the past year, operating with a clearer mission, broader geographic coverage, and long-term financial independence. Key focus areas include institutional education and outreach, institutional insights, ETH and ecosystem marketing, standards and best practices, and institutional events.
Concurrently, Etherealize continues to drive connections between Ethereum and traditional finance. Its website positions itself as "Rewiring Wall Street with Ethereum", building financial infrastructure for tokenization, Ethereum-native settlement, and institutional-grade privacy protection aimed at multi-trillion dollar markets. Wall Street's interest in Ethereum is shifting from proof-of-concepts and pilot projects to viewing public chains as production infrastructure; discussions have also expanded beyond stablecoins to include tokenized stocks, bonds, real estate, and investment funds.
Viewed together, these events point to a larger shift: Ethereum is transitioning from a phase where the Ethereum Foundation (EF) primarily undertook significant coordination and public narrative-building, to a new phase where multiple specialized organizations collectively assume different capabilities. EF is becoming more focused on protocol governance, credible neutrality, self-sovereignty, and long-term resilience. Ethlabs is taking on R&D for next-stage adoption and infrastructure capability building. Ethereum Institutional is handling institutional education, standards development, market awareness promotion, and serving as an entry point for global financial institutions. Etherealize continues to advance Ethereum's narrative in capital markets and traditional finance.
These organizations are not part of a single centralized plan, nor should they be simply understood as EF's outsourcing or replacements. Together, they reflect a clearer division of capabilities emerging within the Ethereum ecosystem: protocol neutrality, institutional adoption, capital market narrative, application-oriented R&D, and local community coordination are now being undertaken by different nodes.
More accurately, Ethereum is entering a new stage of development and ecosystem structure. And if we return to the scene of the ETH HK Hub on April 21st, we find that what Vitalik and Aya discussed that day were precisely the long-term principles underlying these changes.
EF Chairperson Aya on the Philosophy of Subtraction
During the roundtable at the ETH HK Hub, Aya Miyaguchi repeatedly mentioned a concept: the Walk-away Test.
Her point is that EF's long-term goal is not to become a larger, more controlling central organization, but to ensure that the entire system can continue to function even without EF.
She said: "Ethereum must pass the Walk-away Test—the whole system must still be able to function normally even without the Ethereum Foundation."
Aya recalled that when she joined EF, it was during the ICO boom. Many people suggested the Foundation expand rapidly, establish roles like CTO and CMO like a traditional tech company, and take on more centralized functions.
But EF did not do that.
She explained: "If the Foundation builds everything for the entire ecosystem, participants will become dependent. In the long run, this will weaken competition, and without competition, optimal solutions cannot emerge."
This is rooted in a fundamental belief of Ethereum: the health of the system does not come from the strength of a single organization, but from the ecosystem's own ability to continually generate new capabilities, new organizations, and new builders.
So when Aya says: "Success means the Foundation does less, and Ethereum becomes stronger."
This statement gains more specific context two months later.
From this perspective, the emergence of Ethlabs, Ethereum Institutional, Etherealize, and global Ethereum community Hubs is more like a manifestation of EF's philosophy of subtraction: as the foundational protocol matures, what the ecosystem needs is no longer an all-powerful command and dispatch center, but multiple independent organizations with shared beliefs, each assuming different responsibilities.
Vitalik on the Boundaries of Protocol Coordination
In his dialogue at the ETH HK Hub, Vitalik also made a crucial distinction that appears very relevant today.
He said, "Core protocol development and L2 development are completely different in terms of difficulty. L2 is more like a free market. If an outsider builds something better, they have a chance to win."
But the core protocol is different. Core protocol development requires long-term coordination with existing developers and must achieve consensus among client teams, researchers, the community, and upgrade roadmaps.
Therefore, the truly important question is: Do these efforts still serve Ethereum's long-term protocol goals? Do they still uphold credible neutrality, security, privacy, censorship-resistance, and the fundamental attributes of Ethereum as public infrastructure?
The most core work for Ethereum remains the continuous evolution of a decentralized protocol through long-term coordination.
Why Hong Kong?
In Aya's roundtable, she mentioned that "the community Hubs emerging in Hong Kong are themselves an embodiment of EF's philosophy of subtraction."
If Ethereum's future is not driven by a single center but built collectively by multiple independent nodes, then a local Hub is not just an event venue or a community event organizer. It is more like a new type of ecosystem infrastructure.
It connects not only developers, but also institutions, researchers, capital, policymakers, public goods builders, and new participants entering Ethereum from traditional finance, AI, hardware, stablecoins, RWAs, and payments.
Hong Kong happens to be at the intersection of these forces. It is an international financial center and a place where Eastern and Western capital, policy, and technological contexts converge; it connects Chinese-speaking builders with the global Ethereum community and is close to Shenzhen's hardware, AI, and manufacturing ecosystems.
Therefore, when Hong Kong and Singapore appear in Ethereum Institutional's global layout, when SNZ appears among Ethlabs' supporters, when ETH HK Hub becomes Asia's first physical Ethereum community center, they all point to a trend: Asia is becoming an important node for Ethereum's institutional adoption and builder coordination.
This is also the role that SNZ and ETH HK Hub hope to play. Our role is to establish a long-term coordination node in Hong Kong and Asia, where builders, researchers, institutions, capital, policymakers, and the global Ethereum community can meet, and extend the dialogues from each event into longer-term construction.
Two Months Later, What Has Really Changed?
Over the past two months, many have asked: What's happening with EF? Who left? Who started new organizations? Will Ethlabs replace EF? Does Ethereum Institutional mean Ethereum is actively vying for the institutional market?
If we start from the two conversations on April 21st, perhaps the answer becomes clearer.
EF is focusing more on what it should most protect: protocol neutrality, long-term security, openness, privacy, censorship-resistance, and self-sovereignty. At the same time, more specialized organizations have emerged within the ecosystem, taking on R&D, institutional adoption, capital market narrative, local community coordination, developer education, and policy communication respectively.
EF doing less does not mean Ethereum is doing less. On the contrary, it requires more people, more organizations, more regions, and more builders to step forward.
Perhaps the main theme of the past two months is that Ethereum continues to prove what it has always believed:
A resilient ecosystem relies on continually generating new nodes, new ways of collaboration, and new builders.
The existence of ETH HK Hub is precisely to participate in such a future.
ETH HK Hub is jointly operated by SNZ and ETHTAO, with support from the Ethereum Foundation.
