Eight Contributors Leave Ethereum Foundation as Criticism Grows — Blockchain Technology
Eight contributors have left the Ethereum Foundation since January 2026, putting blockchain technology’s most influential nonprofit back at the center of Ethereum’s culture fight. The departures land at a time when Ethereum secures trillions of dollars in assets across its ecosystem.
Zak Cole, a longtime Ethereum contributor, said the EF is completely out of touch during a recent appearance on Laura Shin’s Unchained podcast. He added, "They’re funding hippos in Asia and doing a bunch of stuff nobody in the world gives a s*** about other than Vitalik and his little cabal."
Ethereum Foundation’s central role
The Ethereum Foundation is a Switzerland-based nonprofit founded in 2014 ahead of Ethereum’s launch in 2015, and it has long served as the closest thing the network has to a central steward. The foundation originally funded client teams, coordinated developers, supported research and helped shepherd the network through technical upgrades and existential crises.
Hudson Jameson, a former Ethereum Foundation coordinator and now head of ecosystem at Certik, said, "The Ethereum Foundation started as the single sole organization around Ethereum" and that, "Over time it has tried to minimize itself in order to raise other organizations and coordinating entities up." He also said, "There was still this need for a central coordinator," which is the tension now facing the foundation as Ethereum has grown into a broader ecosystem of companies, developers, layer 2 networks and venture-backed startups.
Eight departures since January 2026
The latest criticism matters because the foundation is no longer only managing a young protocol. It is now being judged against a sprawling network that already secures trillions of dollars in assets, so every senior departure raises the same practical question for builders and holders: who is actually coordinating upgrades, research and crisis response when the old center is shrinking?
Recent weeks have sharpened that debate, with critics accusing the foundation of becoming insular, slow-moving and disconnected from blockchain industry realities. For anyone building on Ethereum, the immediate issue is not the argument itself but whether the ecosystem can keep enough trusted coordination in place while its original steward tries to make itself smaller.
