Key Takeaways
- Approximately 54 employees—representing 20% of the total workforce—have been laid off by the Ethereum Foundation across multiple departments.
- Co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced plans to slash the foundation’s yearly spending by 40% starting in 2026.
- The foundation is transitioning toward a more sustainable model, aiming to spend just 5% of its treasury annually by 2030, compared to 15% previously.
- Ethereum’s price hovers around $1,660, with crucial support at $1,611 and potential downside risk to $1,524.
- Since the start of the year, nine high-level executives have departed the foundation, while a competing organization named Ethlabs has emerged.
The Ethereum Foundation has executed a significant organizational overhaul, eliminating approximately 54 positions—roughly 20% of its total staff—while committing to a 40% budget decrease for 2026. The announcement came Tuesday via a blog post from Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin.
According to the foundation, this restructuring represents the culmination of several months of strategic internal deliberations. The organization has been reorganized into five primary operational clusters: protocol development, network access, user experience, community engagement, and institutional relations. Two supplementary clusters handle operations and executive management.
Buterin explained that these fiscal adjustments are components of a broader strategic pivot. The foundation intends to decrease its yearly treasury expenditure from approximately 15% (the rate maintained before 2026) to roughly 5% annually following 2030.
“I respect my EF colleagues far too much to pretend that there was not much that is lost,” Buterin stated, openly recognizing the personal impact these workforce reductions have created.
The organizational changes also involve discontinuing the Privacy and Scaling Explorations division, scaling back Devcon conference events, and implementing a more focused institutional engagement approach.
Executive Exodus and Mounting Challenges
These workforce reductions come on the heels of co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang’s resignation. Including her exit, a total of nine senior-level foundation members have departed since the beginning of January. Notable exits include former ecosystem development leads Tim Beiko and Josh Stark.
Crypto analyst Daan Crypto Trades (@DaanCrypto) provided commentary on ETH’s market movement via X, observing that Ethereum continues facing resistance at the $1,750 threshold—a level that marked February’s low point. He emphasized that bullish traders need to establish a higher low in that price zone and successfully breach resistance on subsequent attempts. “If they can’t, this will just start bleeding lower and test that ~$1.5K region again,” he commented, noting his preference to see ETH maintain prices above $1,750 for bullish confirmation.
This week, a new research and development entity called Ethlabs officially launched to support the Ethereum ecosystem. The organization was established by five former senior Ethereum Foundation researchers and has secured financial backing from BitMine, SharpLink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.
Ethereum Price Faces Technical Challenges
ETH currently changes hands near $1,660. The asset is trading beneath its 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day exponential moving averages, which sit at $1,753, $1,901, and $2,064 respectively.
Over the previous 24-hour period, liquidations totaling $157 million have occurred, with long positions accounting for $140 million of that figure, per data from Coinglass.
ETH is now testing the $1,611 support zone after encountering rejection at both the descending trendline and the 20-day EMA. Should the asset break beneath $1,611, traders will be watching $1,524 as the next significant level, followed by $1,404 and $1,155 on further declines.
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