The Foundation Falls, Ethlabs Forward: The Ether's biggest reorganization in history

Author: ChainCatcher

 

On June 23, the long-challenged Ethera ecology received two pounds of news。

First, a number of former Etherlabs Foundation researchers formed independent non-profit organizations, Ethlabs, and received major funding support from the main ETH holders, Bitmine, SharpLink, etc. According to its presentation, the early Ethlabs work will revolve around key needs for large-scale institutional uplinks, including faster settlement speed, issuance of primary assets, cross-chain transactions based on strong infrastructure, extension of the main network capacity, and basic research to support ETH monetary attributes。

Soon, the ETA Foundation announced that it had completed several months of restructuring, with a total of 54 staff reductions, or about 20 per cent of the previous number. This readjustment continues the strategic transformation of the “Simplified Etherwood” and will be repositioned as a lighter agreement governance and defender rather than a major core builder。

In the interim, the ETA is sending a clear signal that the foundation has taken the initiative to give birth, that ecological organizations have more executive functions, and that the ETA no longer attempts to organize, build, promote and adopt a central non-profit organization。

This is probably the most important governance amendment for the Ether Workshop in the past decade or so。

Over the past year, external criticism of the ETA has moved beyond ETH price performance to organizational efficiency, strategic expression and ecological mobilization. The ETA was once too “right”, too slow and too dependent on the hidden endorsement of the Foundation and Vitalik。

And today's two changes are precisely in response to these criticisms: instead of being unorthodox, it is trying to change the way it is produced。

 

i. Ethlabs gained ecological strength but Vitalik was absent

The establishment of Ethlabs means, first and foremost, the emergence of a new organization closer to the “industrial level of implementation”。

Unlike traditional research institutions, the goal of Ethlabs is not simply to propose a new password orientation or a long-term road map, but to address more clearly the real issues of institutional uplinks, financial asset issuance, cross-chain transactions, main network capacity and ETH monetary attributes. Behind these problems is the central anxiety of the Taifeng in the past few years: it remains the most important network of smart contracts, but the advantages are not as strong as market imaginations at the level of real institutional adoption, chain financial scale and user experience。

There is no shortage of research or of ideas in the Ether House. What it lacks is the transformation of research into the middle of the market. That's what Ethlabs came up for。

In the list of supporters of the Ethlabs network, a large number of high-impact individuals can be found in the Ethlabs network, including a number of high-impact individuals in the Ethlabs ecology, including several prominent members of the Ether Mills Foundation, investors from VCs such as Dragonfly, Electric Capital, and ecological contributors from Base, Flashbots, Uniswap。It is worth noting, however, that Vitalik did not appear on this list of supporters。

This does not necessarily mean that there is a disagreement between Vitalik and Ethlabs. On the contrary, it is more reasonable to understand that he is deliberately avoiding excessive personal endorsement and routing interference with the new organization。

Vitalik has been extremely symbolic of the ecology of the Taifung over the years. He has suggested a variety of directions in which the soul binds tokens, DeSoc, privacy, abstract accounts, public goods financing, etc., many of which are forward-looking, but which do not really form large markets。

The problem is not that these directions have no value, but that when each expression of Vitalik is seen by the market as “the next phase of the Etherfrog narrative”, the whole ecology is prone to an implicit dependency, with the wrong investment in time and financial costs。

Since this year, Vitalik has published only 2 articles in his official blog, whereas at least 15 articles are published each year. It's a very interesting change in itself. It does not mean that Vitalik's influence on the ETA has declined, but it is more like active restraint: moving the ETA from a “founder-driven public narrative” to a “multi-organizational, multi-team, multi-stakeholder technology network”。

If Ethlabs were to assume more institutional, financial and enforcement functions, it could not be simply an extension of Vitalik ' s will. It must prove that it can gain ecological trust without direct endorsement by its founders and respond to markets through tangible results。

 

II. NEW STRUCTURE AND POINTING OF THE MEDIUM FOUNDATION

Ethlabs is taking a step forward while the Etherfam Foundation is taking a step backwards。

For a long time now, the Taifung Foundation, while nominally supporting not-for-profit organizations based on the ecology of the Taifeng, has in fact long served as a multi-purpose coordinator of strategies, research sponsors, protocol-makers and cultural centres. It was not willing to become a traditional corporate headquarters, but also to perform functions similar to headquarters on many key issues。

This structure has helped to maintain neutrality and decentrization of the Taifeng, but it also has the side effects of slow decision-making, vague expression, unclear boundaries of responsibility and criticism of the Fund ' s ability to speak out, both in terms of its desire for a clearer strategy。

At the same time, differences have erupted within the Etherfrog Foundation. In March 2025, the Foundation appointed Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Starinczak as Joint Implementation Directors, also considered as a compromise arrangement between the two cultures。

It is clear, however, that after the departure of the two executive directors, this team restructuring by the EIF in 2025 was declared unsuccessful, and that the core figures Josh Stark, Trenton Van Epps, and Dankrad Feist left, along with the continuing low monetary prices and growing scepticism, the EIF had to be restructured again。

As a result of this reorganization, the organization was divided into clusters of protocol, access, user, community and institutional levels, and was downsized by 54 people, approximately 20 per cent of the previous number。This is not a simple reduction of efficiency gains, but a contraction of borders: the Foundation is repositioning itself as a lighter agreement governance and defender rather than a major builder in all directions of the ecology。

In fact, in addition to Ethlabs, various non-profit organizations have emerged in the past year, such as Etherum Applications Civil, The Etheum Economic Zone, and Argot Cooperative. They have contributed to the ecology of the Taipei from different perspectives, such as promoting applications, Rollup collaboration, and maintaining solidity。

“The privilege of managing the Ether House should not be monopolized, but should be carefully shared with those who are committed to building their own sovereign infrastructure, be they old friends or newcomers.” In its latest post, the Etherfrog Foundation has made its attitude clear。

 

For “right” read “effective”

In the past, the advantages of the ETA came from the developers ' community, DeFi mobility, L2 ecology and protocol safety. Over the past two years, however, these advantages have not been fully translated into ETH market performance. Community criticism of EF is essentially a “shareholder anxiety”。

Mr. Paul Brody, President of the Enterprise Etheum Alliance, has commented that the community of Taifeng behaves to some extent like ordinary shareholders, “they want to invest in return”. That's a harsh sentence, but it's true。

A month ago, Ryan Sean Adams, a co-founder of Banks, said, “The future of the Ether Workshop can no longer depend on the Ether Workshop Foundation (EF). EF, while important, requires new institutional involvement and gaps. We need an organization that truly wants to win — a quantitative increase — with ETH assets, and that is bold enough to speak out for practical implementation. EF is not and never will be.”

Today, Ethlabs carries the expectations of ETH's main holders, Bitmine, SharpLink, and large groups of currency holders. Together, these two companies hold more than 6 million ETH, and their claim to the ETA is clearly not just whether the technology road map will continue, but whether ETH will provide significant returns to the company ' s shareholders。

This is a natural difference from the location of the Etherwood Foundation. EF must be credible and neutral and not serve ETH prices as directly as a listed company, or streamline the governance of the agreement to maximize the interests of the holders. However, new organizations such as Ethlabs could assume clearer market-based functions。

In other words, EF is responsible for keeping the Ether Workshop “right”, and Ethlabs needs to prove that the Ether Workshop remains “effective”。

The ETA used to respond to market challenges with “permanentism,” but when Hyperliquid took derivative narratives, Solana took meme narratives, Bitcoin took asset narratives, the ETA had to prove not only that it was the safest smart contracting platform, but also that it was the best able to take on the next chain of financial expansion。

Of course, this turn is not without risk. Ethlabs, with the support of large ETH holders and institutional forces, may raise new concerns as to whether “the Ether House will go from foundation to home”. The institution's use may also have a tension with the Punk spirit of the Taifeng code。

But the greater risk for today's Ether Workshop is not to turn too fast, but to continue to remain between technological correctness and organizational delay。

Ultimately, markets will not reward only ideas, nor will they reward only decentrized postures. It rewards networks that are both credible and neutral and that continue to attract capital, applications, developers and institutions。

The establishment of the Ethlabs and the reorganization of the Foundation are key steps in this direction。