Organizational

Today, we are announcing a transition in the executive leadership team at the Ethereum Foundation. After extensive contributions to the Foundation’s mission and operations, Tomasz Stańczak has decided to step down from his role as Co-Executive Director. The Foundation’s Board has appointed Bastian Aue to serve as interim Co-Executive Director, effective immediately. Tomasz joined the management team during a critical period of growth and maturation for the Foundation. His strategic guidance helped expand our ability to reach out to broad groups of people and teams, and for the EF to understand businesses in the ecosystem more deeply. He also brought a sense of urgency and focus, helped organize EF teams to work more efficiently, and expanded enterprise community development. Through his quick execution, he achieved a remarkable

tl;dr I am stepping down from my co-ED role at the EF at the end of February 2026. Bastian Aue is taking over the co-ED role alongside Hsiao-Wei. The future is bright for builders, for Ethereum, for the EF, and for me.

The EF's Academic Secretariat team is proud to announce the launch of the inaugural PhD Fellowship Program, a pioneering initiative aimed at empowering and expanding the frontiers of Ethereum-related academic research, by supporting Ethereum-related academic work led by PhD students.

Privacy is the freedom to choose what you share, when you share it, and who you share it with. We all take this for granted in daily life: closing the door to a room, casting a secret ballot, or speaking privately with a friend. But online and onchain, these protections are often missing. Ethereum was created to be the foundation of digital trust, one that is worthy of civilizational scale. For that trust to remain credible, privacy must be part of its core, the EF, along with dozens of Ethereum teams focused on privacy, are proud to support this cause..

Today we are proud to announce a new leadership structure for privacy-related efforts at the Ethereum Foundation: Igor Barinov joins as coordinator of Privacy @ EF, guiding strategy and alignment across privacy-focused efforts including PSE and more. Igor has over a decade of experience in the Ethereum ecosystem as founder of Blockscout, Gnosis Chain, and zkBob, and is a strong advocate for open-source and privacy. Andy Guzman will now serve as coordinator of the (PSE) team, taking over from Sam Richards and leading applied cryptography, research, and development. Andy has been with PSE/EF since 2022 and has led various key product & strategy initiatives since. Together, Igor and Andy will help ensure Ethereum’s privacy work is impactful, coherent, and accountable.

On July 30, 2025, the Ethereum community marked a major milestone: ten years since the Ethereum’s genesis block and mainnet launch. What began as a whitepaper has evolved into a decentralized platform now powering thousands of applications, tools, and communities around the world.

Ethereum stands at a pivotal moment. Interest in Ethereum has expanded beyond technologists and enthusiasts, bringing enterprises, governments, and everyday users who seek practical solutions and tangible benefits. The Ethereum ecosystem is adapting to meet these needs, and the Ethereum Foundation is ready to play its part. As outlined in the Ethereum Foundation’s recent vision statement, we have two key goals: Maximizing the number of people who (directly or indirectly) use Ethereum, in such a way that they benefit from Ethereum’s underlying values. Maximizing the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure. Ecosystem Development (EcoDev) refers to teams that help achieve these goals at an ecosystem or social level, rather than a technology level. These teams help remove bottlenecks to real-world use, help users get onboarded to

Thank you to the EFers that provided valuable input and feedback to the draft document: Bastian Aue, Vitalik Buterin, Bogdan Popa, Tomasz Stańczak, Fredrik Svantes, Yoav Weiss, Dankrad Feist, Tim Beiko, Nicolas Consigny, Nixo, Alex Stokes, Ladislaus, and Joseph Schweitzer. Thank you to kpk, Steakhouse Financial, and pcaversaccio for providing valuable and insightful input and the final review of this document. The Ethereum Foundation (EF) exists to strengthen Ethereum’s ecosystem and uphold its long-standing non-negotiable objectives: enabling "applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference". EF Treasury supports EF's long-term agency, sustainability, and legitimacy. Capital deployments should be balanced between seeking returns above a benchmark rate and extending EF's role as a steward of the Ethereum ecosystem, with a