Ethereum Foundation undergoes year-long leadership restructuring and governance changes throughout 2026.
Regulation & Gov ·
The Ethereum Foundation underwent a series of leadership transitions and organizational restructuring throughout 2026, marked by departures including ETHGlobal co-founder Josh Stark stepping down amid continued turnover. These personnel changes moved beyond routine career shifts to become a governance question, with community observers and researchers questioning whether the Foundation's structure remained appropriate as Ethereum faces competition from faster, cheaper Layer 1 networks.
The Foundation responded with substantive action in May 2026, announcing leadership changes across development teams while publishing progress on the Glamsterdam upgrade, a combined hardfork merging previously separate upgrade tracks. The timing of these transitions coincided with broader scrutiny around protocol foundations' role in decentralized systems—particularly the tension between crypto's decentralization claims and the outsized influence held by foundations and core development teams in practice.
What remains unclear is the full scope of structural changes beyond the named departures, the specific roles filled in the reorganization, and whether the Foundation's revised approach will address community concerns about transparency and organizational fitness as competition in the Layer 1 space intensifies.