The foundation is reducing expenses, has laid off 54 employees, and reorganized its work into five main areas as part of a long-term strategy.
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The organization announced the changes in an official statement tied to its updated strategy and treasury management policy.
The leadership confirmed the layoffs of 54 employees and a broader budget review. The reform is aimed at strengthening focus on core long-term development tasks for the Ethereum network.
After the restructuring, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) now operates with five core clusters, an operations unit, and teams supporting management.
The Protocol Layer cluster has become the main focus, responsible for the development of the Ethereum base protocol.
The foundation stated that this unit is not focused on short-term market interests.
“This unit will focus on preserving Ethereum’s core principles, including censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security,” EF representatives said.
The foundation also aims to speed up the transition of research into production upgrades. Key priorities include quantum resistance, zkEVM development, and layer-1 privacy tools.
The Access Layer will ensure users can interact with Ethereum without mandatory intermediaries.
This includes access to blockchain data, transaction submission, validation, delegation, and the ability to exit the ecosystem without losing control over assets or data.
The Ethereum Foundation believes users and software agents should be able to independently verify network state without relying on third-party services. Transactions should also remain private and resistant to censorship.
Alongside the restructuring, the foundation announced the layoff of 54 employees – around 20% of Ethereum Foundation staff.
“The decision was difficult but necessary. We must be structured in a way that allows us to focus on critical work that only the Ethereum Foundation can do,” the foundation said.
Laid-off employees will receive severance and transition support. Severance equals at least one month of salary per year worked, or the legally required amount in their jurisdiction, whichever is higher.
The foundation will also provide support in finding new roles within the Ethereum ecosystem and offer grants to cover transition-related expenses.
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also said that in 2026 the Ethereum Foundation will reduce spending by roughly 40%.
According to him, this is part of the treasury management policy strategy.
Until 2026, the Ethereum Foundation spent about 15% of its remaining reserves annually. After 2030, the foundation plans to reduce this to around 5% per year.
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