Ethereum Foundation Loses Eight Key Staff in 2026 as Developer Departures Accelerate
The Ethereum Foundation has lost at least eight key staff members in 2026, with developers Carl Beek and Julian Ma among the most recent to depart, according to reporting published May 19. The exits span research, protocol development, and operational roles, covering a broad cross-section of the organization’s technical capacity.
No single explanation has been given publicly for the pattern. The departures come as Ethereum (ETH) trades near $2,136, down from its 2026 highs, and as spot Ethereum ETFs recorded six consecutive days of outflows totaling more than $86 million through May 18.
Who Has Left and What They Did
Carl Beek and Julian Ma are the latest confirmed departures, bringing the 2026 total to at least eight named individuals across the foundation.
The Ethereum Foundation is the Swiss nonprofit that funds core Ethereum research and development, employs protocol researchers, and coordinates major network upgrades including the ongoing rollout of Ethereum’s scaling roadmap.
Earlier 2026 exits included research and engineering personnel working on areas such as consensus mechanism improvements and developer tooling. The foundation has not published a consolidated statement addressing the volume of departures or offered a unified explanation.
Individual departing staff have cited reasons ranging from pursuing independent projects to joining other Web3 organizations.
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What the Ethereum Foundation Is
The Ethereum Foundation was established in 2014 to support the development of Ethereum and related technologies. It operates with an endowment accumulated from early ETH holdings and has historically funded some of the most consequential research in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, including work on proof-of-stake, the consensus mechanism that replaced Ethereum’s original proof-of-work system in September 2022 during the event known as the Merge.
The foundation does not operate Ethereum directly.
The network runs through a decentralized set of validators who lock up ETH as collateral to participate in block production. The foundation’s role is closer to that of a standards body and grant-making organization than a traditional technology company.
That structure means departures affect research output and coordination capacity more than day-to-day network operation.
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Background
Staff turnover at the Ethereum Foundation is not a new phenomenon. The organization went through notable leadership changes in 2021 and 2023, with some departing researchers going on to found influential Layer-2 networks and competing smart contract platforms.
The foundation’s executive director Aya Miyaguchi stepped back from the role in early 2024, with leadership responsibilities becoming more distributed.
What makes 2026 unusual is the pace and breadth. Eight named departures across a single calendar year, concentrated in technical roles, represents a higher-than-typical turnover rate for an organization of roughly 200 to 300 staff.
Ethereum’s competitive environment has intensified, with Layer-1 rivals including Solana (SOL) and newer high-throughput chains attracting developer talent and application activity. That competitive pressure may be contributing to staff evaluating other opportunities.
Several former foundation employees have joined teams building on or competing with Ethereum.
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What to Watch
The practical risk from continued departures is a slowdown in research output affecting Ethereum’s upgrade schedule. The network’s next major milestone involves further improvements to data availability and validator economics, both of which require sustained specialized effort.
If the foundation cannot retain or replace researchers at pace, timelines could slip.
The broader question is whether a decentralized protocol’s nonprofit coordinator retains enough institutional pull to attract top talent in an environment where competing projects offer token-based compensation that can dwarf foundation salaries. Ethereum’s supporters argue the protocol’s scale and developer community remain unmatched.
Critics argue the foundation model is structurally disadvantaged as the ecosystem matures and market alternatives multiply.
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