Five former core researchers of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) have officially established Ethlabs, marking Ethereum's shift from single-institution leadership to multi-node collaboration.
Written by: Sanqing, Foresight News
On June 22, five former core researchers of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) — Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma — officially announced the launch of Ethlabs, an independent non-profit R&D (Research and Development) lab focused on Ethereum core protocol research and institutional-grade infrastructure. The first batch of supporters includes Ethereum treasury companies BitMine (BMNR), Sharplink (SBET), as well as over 50 community and ecosystem participants such as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, Uniswap founder Hayden Adams, and Base head Jesse Pollak.
Ethlabs' mission is clear: "To make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy." The official statement lists four core beliefs: credible neutrality, ETH as a programmable store of value, the open market value of DeFi, and translating these principles into real-world adoption. All five founders have served at EF for many years, deeply involved in the most critical protocol work including the Dencun upgrade (EIP-4844), Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), censorship resistance mechanism FOCIL, and the ETH monetary economic framework.
EF Under Dual Pressure of Funding and Talent Drain
Since the start of 2026, EF has undergone intensive personnel adjustments. Co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak left in late February to shift to AI; co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang stepped down in mid-June citing "reassessing priorities."
Key members like Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, and Alex Stokes have successively left, with a total of about 19 departures. EF currently has only Bastian Aue in an executive role, with no succession structure or public timeline.
EF has a clear understanding of this situation and proactively framed it as a "return to a more streamlined core mission." Its latest execution plan, the "EF Way," narrows focus to core issues such as MEV mitigation, privacy protection, and ETH payments, explicitly abandoning the all-encompassing full-stack coordination role.
Beyond proactive adjustments, there are more urgent structural pressures.
Former EF contributor Trent Van Epps warned in a post after leaving: the "client incentive program" supporting over 10 core client teams like Geth, Erigon, and Lighthouse expired in April 2026 with no renewal plans. He estimates the annual operating cost of Ethereum core development is about $30 million; if this funding gap is not filled, it will gradually become apparent within 3 to 9 months.
EF's dilemma lies in its long-term assumption of a role that a decentralized protocol is not suited to be handled by a single institution. EF acts as a protocol researcher, funder, and external spokesperson. As the network scales, pressure on any one layer is amplified by the community into an overall governance issue.
Evolution of ETH Value Capture Narrative
In 2021, EIP-1559 introduced the burn mechanism; in 2022, the Merge reduced issuance to historical lows. "Ultrasound money" became ETH's most influential narrative: continuous deflation, censorship resistance, and a programmable store of value. This narrative self-reinforced during ETH's price rise cycle, forming a closed loop.
In March 2024, the Dencun upgrade activated EIP-4844, introducing an independent blob fee market, reducing L2 data availability costs by 10 to 100 times. A large number of activities migrated to L2, causing L1 base fees to plummet. ETH's daily burn volume dropped sharply from thousands per day post-Merge; according to The Block, it hit a historical low of 53 coins in a single day in 2026.
Staking issuance remains at about 1,700 coins per day, with net issuance持续 positive. According to ultrasound.money data, Ethereum's annual net issuance rate has risen to about 0.8%, mainnet gas is as low as 0.1 Gwei, and recent blocks have almost zero burn per block. The "ultrasound money" narrative is temporarily invalid.
The fundamental contradiction is a long-standing one: the more successful Ethereum's L2 expansion strategy is, the less fee capture L1 has, and the weaker the direct benefits for ETH holders.
Controversy followed. Critics argue that L2 is "siphoning value" from L1, with value flowing to L2 operators, dApp protocols, and stablecoin issuers rather than ETH holders. Supporters believe ETH's structural position as the final settlement layer, security provider, and liquidity hub is irreplaceable, and value will eventually return — but this takes time and new mechanism design.
Against this backdrop, Ethlabs has listed the "ETH monetary economic framework" as one of its initial research priorities. The five founders were deeply involved in the design of EIP-4844 and PBS, so they know the boundaries of these mechanisms better than anyone.
Treasury Companies Enter the Scene
BitMine, led by Fundstrat chairman Tom Lee, is currently the most aggressive corporate ETH treasury company, publicly stating its goal to hold 5% of Ethereum's circulating supply. As of June 21, 2026, BitMine holds about 5.67 million ETH, worth approximately $10.7 billion (estimated at $1,733 per ETH), of which 4.719 million are staked. Its holdings rank second globally among crypto treasuries and first among Ethereum treasuries.
Sharplink transformed into an ETH treasury company after completing a $425 million private placement in 2025, with Joe Lubin as chairman. As of May 2026, Sharplink holds about 869,000 ETH, worth approximately $1.5 billion, making it the world's second-largest publicly listed Ethereum treasury company with almost all holdings staked.
The core logic behind both companies' bets is: Ethereum will become a neutral base layer for global financial settlement, and ETH is the native reserve asset on this layer. Supporting Ethlabs is an extension of this logic.
The fundamental difference between these corporate treasury parties and traditional Ethereum donors (foundations, protocol treasuries) is that they hold large amounts of ETH. The health of Ethereum's protocol layer and institutional adoption may affect ETH prices, which in turn impacts their asset value and stock performance.
Funding core R&D is a strategic support highly tied to their own asset value, not unconditional donation. Ethlabs' funding structure has been designed for isolation: an independent grant manager will be responsible for fund selection and allocation, while supporters receive transparent reports and audits without interfering in research directions or technical decisions.
Joe Lubin publicly stated at the Consensus 2026 conference that tokenization of the global economy is "inevitable" and endorsed the corporate ETH treasury model as "Ethereum's long-term permanent capital." He also warned of systemic risks in imitative projects built on weak tokens.
Specialized Division of Labor Coexists with Coordination Costs
Ethlabs wrote 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 institution (EF) to distributed collaboration among multiple independent, focused, and specialized "steward nodes." EF itself is actively promoting this transition, repositioning itself as a high-level coordination and funding body, encouraging external specialized entities to take on specific research and construction work.
Protocol research, client development, institutional adoption, and standard setting are inherently different types of work. Having specialized institutions advance them independently can improve efficiency and reduce systemic risks from single-institution failure.
Ethlabs' isolated funding design is timely: an independent grant manager handles fund selection and allocation, supporters get transparent reports and annual audits, but no interference in research directions or technical decisions.
However, distributed collaboration brings new problems. Who will coordinate priority conflicts between multiple nodes? When Ethlabs' research direction diverges from EF's roadmap, can Ethereum's community consensus mechanism effectively converge? Who will fill the $30 million client funding gap under the "multi-node" framework?
Without a sufficient coordination layer, the distributed structure may transform the complexity of protocol governance from a "single institution's execution problem" to a "multi-institution's coordination cost problem."
Ethereum's experiment continues.