Key Takeaways
- Ethereum Foundation co-director Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned recently, the eighth senior exit in five months.
- Roughly 19 staff have left in 2026 as ether lags and a $30 million annual funding gap looms.
- Board member Bastian Aue steps in as the foundation searches for stable leadership in 2026.
A Second Co-Director Walks
Hsiao-Wei Wang stepped down as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation, effective immediately, the organization confirmed. Wang subsequently issued a note of his own, writing:
“I’ve come to feel that this is the right moment for me to step back. Ethereum has always been bigger than any one role, any one organization, or any one moment.”
Her departure leaves the foundation without a permanent co-executive director for the second time this year, following the exit of fellow co-executive director Tomasz Stanczak earlier. For the time being, board member Bastian Aue has stepped in to help oversee the transition.
Wang is the latest in a steady procession of senior departures, given at least eight senior figures have left the Ethereum Foundation over the past five months. The pattern is part of a broader churn that has seen roughly 19 layoffs and exits across the organization in 2026. Five of those senior researchers departed in May alone, a concentration that has intensified scrutiny of the foundation’s priorities and direction.
The exodus has unfolded as Ethereum faces mounting competition from rival blockchains and as its native token, ether, has badly lagged. Bitcoin.com News recently reported that ETH has traded roughly flat over nine years and sits well below its inflation-adjusted 2017 high, a backdrop that has amplified community questions about whether the foundation is steering the network effectively.
A Funding Clock Ticking in the Background
The leadership turnover collides with a separate worry, one pertaining to funding and the foundation’s fast-vanishing money reserves. Trent Van Epps, who coordinated funding for Ethereum’s core developers, exited in April and warned that core devs could run short of funding within three to nine months, citing spending cuts and the winding down of the foundation’s Client Incentive Program. He estimated that sustaining Ethereum’s core development ecosystem costs about $30 million a year.
That warning gives the leadership churn sharper stakes as the people responsible for paying and coordinating the engineers who maintain Ethereum are precisely the ones leaving, raising the risk that institutional knowledge walks out the door alongside the org charts.
Why the Departures Matter
The Ethereum Foundation is not a company in the conventional sense but rather a nonprofit steward meant to fund research, support client teams and guard the network’s neutrality. That makes its leadership less about quarterly earnings and more about continuity and credibility.
A revolving door at the top can stall long-term research commitments, complicate grant decisions and unsettle the developer community that does the actual work of upgrading the chain. In all of this, Wang, a long-tenured figure who took a sabbatical before deciding to step away, made sure to posture her exit as a personal decision rather than a crisis at the foundation.
For now, Bastian Aue and the remaining board will have to stabilize the organization while it searches for durable leadership. The foundation has signaled it wants to slim down and refocus, and supporters argue a leaner structure could ultimately sharpen its mission.
Furthermore, if the foundation can recruit credible replacements and shore up core-developer funding before the three-to-nine-month window closes, the turnover may register as a painful but survivable reset. If it cannot, the departures could mark the start of a deeper governance crisis at the heart of the world’s second-largest crypto network.
