Ethereum Foundation Logs Another Exit, Refuses to Clarify Who's Steering The Ship 🛳️

The Ethereum Foundation has lost co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang, who announced on X that she has stepped down effective immediately following a recent sabbatical. Wang's departure brings the foundation's estimated 2026 layoff and departure count to roughly 19, with senior-level exits drawing the most public attention. She has not yet disclosed her next role. "Ethereum has always been bigger than any role," Wang wrote. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin responded on X, acknowledging that Wang had taken on "the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation" alongside Tomasz Stanczak, who stepped down as co-executive director earlier this year. Bastian Aue, who was named interim co-director after Stanczak's exit, is now the remaining co-director following Wang's announcement. "During my break, Bastian guided the transition with care and thoughtfulness, and I appreciate the work he and many others have put into that process," Wang said. "Over time, I've come to feel that this is the right moment for me to step back."

The wave of departures has intensified scrutiny of the foundation's leadership, governance philosophy, and ability to retain core talent as the network faces mounting competitive and market pressure. In May, former top researcher Dankrad Feist, who left the foundation last year, said on X that the community needs to "create an organization that's economically aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it," adding that it requires "a leader who is competent and wants to fight." Feist said the new organization would need at least $1 billion in ETH funding. The foundation has also faced questions over its ETH sales, though it recently published a more transparent treasury policy and began staking its holdings, with a stated goal of staking around 70,000 ETH, or roughly $119 million worth at current $ETH prices. $ETH is down approximately 1.4% over the relevant reporting period.

In a March mandate update, the foundation reaffirmed its role as a steward of the Ethereum ecosystem, prioritizing decentralization. "Our ultimate goal is for Ethereum to pass the walkaway test: its protocol and core application layers become robust and trustless enough that they would continue to reliably function and evolve even if the Foundation and today's core developers disappeared tomorrow," the foundation said. Buterin has pushed back on criticism that the foundation should play a more active promotional role, stating in May that the foundation "is not the 'center of Ethereum,' rather [...] 'one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes.'"

Last month, Buterin said the foundation was moving to become a "smaller ship," with a leaner team focused narrowly on censorship resistance, privacy, and security. He has also recently argued that the original vision for layer-2 networks "no longer makes sense," contending that many have failed to achieve meaningful decentralization and that improvements to the Ethereum mainnet make it a more suitable long-term scaling solution. Buterin has separately noted that the foundation has been working through "large changes" dating back to early 2025 to better align with ecosystem builders.