The Ethereum Foundation announced layoffs and reorganization of the R&D team into "Protocol", focusing on 3 major strategic goals: expanding L1 and Blobs, and improving user UX experience

The Ethereum Foundation announced the reorganization of its R&D team, focusing on three core areas to cope with market competition and technical challenges.
(Previous summary: Vitalik’s new Ethereum expansion proposal: reduce node requirements with increased Gas Limit and create some stateless nodes)
(Background supplement: Vitalik disclosed Ethereum Rollup transition mathematical model: moving towards “complete decentralization” in three stages)

Contents of this article

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced on 2 announced through its official blog today that it will reorganize its research and development team, along with some layoffs. The official explanation is that the goal of this move is to focus resources more on solving the core design challenges of the Ethereum protocol. It is regarded as a major strategic shift taken by the organization to maintain its competitiveness in the blockchain field.

Ethereum is on the verge of a major breakthrough. The rapid progress of zkEVM allows us to re-architect Layer 1 while achieving scalability, verifiability, security, and censorship resistance. Layer 2 is stabilizing, starting to actively contact users and meet their needs, and can’t wait to use Ethereum as the foundation of trust to add strength.

In short, the age of the world's computers is ready to begin.

Resources focus on three core areas

According to the announcement, the original "Protocol Research and Development (PR&D)" department will be renamed Protocol. Its focus will clearly shift to three priorities:

1. Expanding the scalability of the Ethereum base layer (L1)
2. Expanding the blobspace data space relevant to Layer 2 development
3. And improving the overall user experience.

EF said the key to implementing these strategies lies in leaders the community trusts. Therefore, responsible persons will be assigned more clearly to improve the transparency and accountability of the plan:

• Extended L1: Tim Beiko and Ansgar Dietrichs
• Extended L2: Alex Stokes and Francesco D’Amato
• Improving UX: Barnabé Monnot and Josh Rudolf
• Dakrad Feist will serve as a strategic consultant for the three main lines to assist in the advancement of related plans.

Organizational adjustments and personnel changes

In addition, the foundation also confirmed that this reorganization will result in the resignation of some original PR&D team members. The foundation said in a statement:

"Some members of PR&D will no longer remain in the Ethereum Foundation, and we sincerely thank them for their contributions to Ethereum."

Before this reorganization, the Ethereum Foundation completed its leadership adjustment on March 1 this year and appointed a new co-executive director and founder Vitalik Buterin. It is more focused on setting a long-term vision, and the daily operations are handed over to the new management, which partially responds to the community’s previous concerns about the foundation’s management methods and technology development direction.

Accelerate technology upgrades and node optimization

Based on the current technical route, expanding blobspace is the foundation’s current priority development project. The Pectra hard fork, completed in May 2025, has doubled the target number of blobs per block from 3 to 6 (with a maximum number of 9). This move provides greater data availability for Layer 2 Rollups, significantly reduces transaction fees and increases overall network capacity.

The foundation is also committed to improving the node operating experience, such as promoting the EIP-4444 proposal to limit historical data storage, with the goal of lowering the hardware threshold for running Ethereum nodes and further strengthening the decentralized nature of the network. The future Fusaka hard fork is also expected to further increase the number of blobs.

In summary, the Ethereum Foundation’s recent organizational reorganization and technological upgrades reflect its changes in response to market competition and community doubts, and also conform to the overall blockchain industry’s shift to a more streamlined, efficient and focused operating model to better adapt to the continued fluctuation environment of the cryptocurrency market.

ETH stands back at US$2,600

As for the currency price, against the background of Bitcoin’s rebound, ETH has also stood back at US$2,600 at the moment of writing, and is now trading at US$2,620.