BitMine, SharpLink, and Joe Lubin Back New Ethereum Nonprofit ETHLabs

A group of former Ethereum Foundation (EF) researchers has launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit R&D organization aimed at accelerating Ethereum’s adoption as a global financial settlement layer. The initiative is backed by crypto companies Bitmine and Sharplink, as well as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.

This development comes as the EF itself is deliberately pulling back, leaving room for new institutions to take on more of the ecosystem’s core research and development work.

According to a June 22 post on X, Ethlabs was founded by five former EF researchers: Julian Ma, Josh Rudolf, Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, and Caspar Schwarz-Schilling. The organization’s mission is to make “Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy.”

Ethlabs will sit between builders working at the application layer and the core protocol itself, helping translate real-world needs into shared standards and infrastructure.

Julian Ma, who spent four years at the EF before leaving earlier this year, explained his reasoning for staying in the ecosystem. “We are at the moment Ethereum was built for,” he wrote on X. “Ethereum is best positioned to become the base layer for worldwide finance.” He said his focus at Ethlabs will be on supporting builders and improving infrastructure, and the organization will also be looking to expand distribution for Ethereum’s applications and assets.

More than 50 people and organizations are behind the new initiative, including Bitmine, Sharplink, and Lubin as anchor funders, and SNZ and Octant as contributors. Community members include Uniswap’s Hayden Adams, as well as Haseeb Qureshi and Tom Schmidt from Dragonfly. Several active EF members are also involved, including Alex Stokes and Barnabas Busa, with Zksync, Coinbase, and Polygon represented.

The EF acknowledged the launch, framing it as part of a wider pattern of new organizations stepping in. In a thread, it noted that “realizing Ethereum’s potential takes a coalition of organizations working together” and said it looks forward to seeing what Ethlabs will build.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin had previously said that the Foundation was “not the center of Ethereum” but that it was just “one node” with a defined purpose alongside other nodes. According to him, the organization is moving toward a smaller, more focused role, and allowing respected contributors to work outside it was a deliberate strategy that would attract outside capital.

Source: https://cryptopotato.com/bitmine-sharplink-and-joe-lubin-back-new-ethereum-nonprofit-ethlabs/