Don't Just Focus on Layoffs, The New Structure of the Ethereum Foundation is More Worthy of Appreciation
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has undergone a significant organizational restructuring, with the most notable change being a strategic refocusing of its priorities rather than just a 20% staff reduction (approximately 54 people). The new structure clearly prioritizes the Protocol and Access layers, which now comprise the largest teams (57 and 34 people, respectively). This signals EF's intent to concentrate its core resources on fundamental, hard-to-outsource aspects of Ethereum: protocol evolution, security, privacy, client development, and the foundational access layer.
Key areas within the Protocol layer, led by an architecture group including Vitalik Buterin and Justin Drake, receive heightened emphasis. These include post-quantum security, zkEVM, formal verification, and long-term roadmap development ("Strawmap"). This reflects a shift towards tackling complex, interdependent challenges like scalability, privacy, and future-proofing the protocol, potentially moving from a pure "redundant security" multi-client model towards more specialized clients aided by AI-assisted formal verification.
Financially, EF's budget is being reduced by approximately 40%. The goal is to transition from spending about 15% of its remaining funds annually to a more sustainable 5% rate, akin to a long-term endowment, ensuring its longevity.
Concurrently, the restructuring involves pushing certain responsibilities—such as application development, adoption, and ecosystem coordination—to external organizations like EthLabs, the Ethereum Apps Guild, and others. This "multi-node" model aims to increase ecosystem resilience by decentralizing functions beyond the EF, though it introduces new coordination challenges.
In essence, the reorganization represents EF consciously narrowing its scope to focus on the hardest, most critical protocol-level problems while fostering a more distributed and sustainable ecosystem structure for Ethereum's future growth.
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