Author: Sanqing, Foresight News
On June 22nd, five former core researchers from the Ethereum Foundation (EF) – Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma – officially announced the establishment of Ethlabs, an independent non-profit R&D (Research and Development) laboratory focused on Ethereum core protocol research and institutional-grade infrastructure. The initial supporters include Ethereum treasury companies BitMine (BMNR) and Sharplink (SBET), as well as over 50 community and ecosystem participants such as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, and Base lead Jesse Pollak.
Ethlabs' mission directly targets the core: "Make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy." The official statement lists four core beliefs: credible neutrality, ETH as programmable value storage, the value of open markets in DeFi, and translating these principles into real-world adoption. All five founders served at EF for many years, deeply involved in crucial protocol work such as the Dencun upgrade (EIP-4844), Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), the anti-censorship mechanism FOCIL, and the ETH monetary economics framework.
EF Faces Dual Pressures on Funding and Talent
From early 2026, the EF underwent a wave of intensive personnel changes. Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak left at the end of February, moving into AI. Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang stepped down in mid-June, citing a need to "re-evaluate priorities."
Key personnel including Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, and Alex Stokes departed successively, with total attrition around 19 people. EF currently has only Bastian Aue performing executive functions, with no succession structure or public timeline.
The EF itself is acutely aware of this and proactively frames it as a "return to a leaner core mission." Its latest operational plan, the "EF Way," narrows the focus to core issues like MEV mitigation, privacy protection, and ETH payments, explicitly abandoning the all-encompassing, full-stack coordination role.
However, beyond this proactive adjustment, there are more urgent structural pressures.
Former EF contributor Trent Van Epps warned in a post after his departure: The "Client Incentive Program" supporting over 10 core client teams like Geth, Erigon, and Lighthouse expired in April 2026, with no renewal arrangements yet. He estimates the annual operational cost for Ethereum's core development to be around $30 million. If this funding gap is not filled, it will gradually become apparent within 3 to 9 months.
The dilemma for the EF is that it has long shouldered a function not ideally suited for a single entity in a decentralized protocol. The EF has been simultaneously a protocol researcher, a funder, and an external spokesperson. As the network scales, pressure on any of these layers is amplified by the community into a broader governance issue.
The Evolution of ETH Value Capture Narratives
In 2021, EIP-1559 introduced a burn mechanism. In 2022, the Merge compressed ETH issuance to historical lows, making "ultrasound money" the most compelling narrative for ETH: a continuously deflationary, censorship-resistant, programmable store of value. This narrative self-reinforced during ETH's price ascent cycles, forming a closed loop.
In March 2024, the Dencun upgrade activated EIP-4844, introducing an independent blob fee market, which reduced L2 data availability costs by 10 to 100 times. A significant amount of activity migrated to L2s, causing the L1 base fee to plummet. Daily ETH burn volume dropped sharply post-Merge from thousands of ETH. According to The Block, it hit a historical low of 53 ETH on a single day in 2026.
Meanwhile, staking issuance remains at approximately 1,700 ETH per day, keeping net issuance consistently positive. According to ultrasound.money data, Ethereum's annualized net inflation rate has risen to about 0.8%, with mainnet gas fees as low as 0.1 Gwei, and recent block burns near zero. The "ultrasound money" narrative has temporarily lost its effect.
The fundamental contradiction is perennial: the more successful Ethereum's L2 scaling strategy becomes, the less fee capture L1 sees, and the weaker the direct returns for ETH holders.
Controversy follows. Critics argue that L2s are "siphoning" value from L1, with value flowing to L2 operators, dApp protocols, and stablecoin issuers, not ETH holders. Supporters contend that ETH's structural position as the ultimate settlement layer, security provider, and liquidity hub is irreplaceable, and value will ultimately flow back. However, this requires time and new mechanism designs.
It is precisely in this context that Ethlabs lists the "ETH monetary economics framework" as one of its initial research priorities. The five founders were deeply involved in designing EIP-4844 and PBS; they understand the boundaries of these mechanisms better than anyone.
Entry of Treasury Companies
BitMine, led by Fundstrat Chairman Tom Lee, is the most aggressive corporate ETH treasury company, publicly stating its goal is to hold 5% of Ethereum's circulating supply. As of June 21, 2026, BitMine holds approximately 5.67 million ETH, valued at about $10.7 billion (estimated at $1,733 per ETH). Of this, 4.719 million ETH are staked, making it the second-largest cryptocurrency treasury globally and the largest Ethereum treasury.
Sharplink transformed into an ETH treasury company in 2025 after a $425 million private placement, with Joe Lubin appointed Chairman. As of May 2026, Sharplink holds approximately 869,000 ETH, valued at about $1.5 billion, making it the world's second-largest publicly-listed Ethereum treasury company, with almost its entire holdings staked.
The core logic both companies are betting on is that Ethereum will become the neutral foundational layer for global financial settlement, with ETH as the native reserve asset on this layer. Supporting Ethlabs is a natural extension of this logic.
The fundamental difference between these corporate treasury entities and traditional Ethereum funders (foundations, protocol treasuries) is their significant ETH holdings. The health of Ethereum's protocol layer and its institutional adoption can impact the ETH price, thereby affecting their asset value and stock performance.
Funding core R&D thus becomes strategic support highly aligned with their own asset value, rather than unconditional donation. Ethlabs' funding structure is designed for this isolation: an independent funding manager will be responsible for fund selection and allocation. Supporters receive transparent reports and audits but do not interfere with research directions or technical decisions.
At the Consensus 2026 conference, Joe Lubin publicly stated that the tokenization of the global economy is "inevitable" and strongly endorsed the corporate ETH treasury model as "permanent long-term capital for Ethereum." He simultaneously warned of systemic risks in imitative projects built on weak tokens.
Specialized Division of Labor with Associated Coordination Costs
Ethlabs writes in its official statement: "Ethlabs is independent, but Ethereum is a shared project. We are just one node in a larger network of stewards. This is the multi-node future."
Ethereum's governance structure is shifting from a single centralized entity (EF) towards a distributed collaboration of multiple independent, focused "steward nodes" with distinct specialties. The EF itself is actively driving this transformation, repositioning itself as a high-level coordination and funding body, encouraging external, specialized entities to undertake specific research and development work.
Protocol research, client development, institutional adoption, and standard setting are inherently different types of work. Having them independently advanced by specialized bodies can improve efficiency and reduce systemic risk from a single point of failure.
Ethlabs' funding isolation design is timely: an independent funding manager handles fund selection and allocation, providing supporters with transparent reporting and annual audits, without interfering in any research direction or technical decisions.
However, distributed collaboration itself introduces new problems. Who coordinates priority conflicts among multiple nodes? If Ethlabs' research direction diverges from the EF roadmap, can Ethereum's community consensus mechanisms effectively converge? Who fills the $30 million client funding gap under a "multi-node" framework?
A distributed structure lacking sufficient coordination layers risks transforming the complexity of protocol governance from a "single entity's execution problem" into a "multi-entity coordination cost problem."
Ethereum's experiment continues.
