Ethereum Foundation Restructures With 5 Clusters After Cutting 20% of Workforce
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced Tuesday it is cutting 54 employees, roughly 20% of its workforce, as part of a months-long reorganization designed to sharpen its focus on what it calls the critical work only the EF can do.
The cuts are effective immediately, with the reorganization completed on June 23, 2026. The EF described the move as necessary to avoid “excessive disruption from short-term market movements” and said the new configuration positions it to execute on long-horizon priorities.
Departing employees will receive severance calculated as the higher of one month’s pay per year of service at the EF or the amount required under local law. The foundation is also providing transition support, including help finding positions elsewhere in the Ethereum ecosystem and a small grant to cover career coaching costs.
“These decisions were hard, but they are necessary,” EF management wrote in a formal post outlining the new structure.
The EF’s new organizational model consists of five domain clusters plus an operations group and a management support group. The clusters are: Protocol Layer, focused on scaling and hardening the core Ethereum protocol including post-quantum security, zkEVM, and L1 privacy research; Access Layer, covering how individuals and agents interact with Ethereum directly; User Layer, keeping EF decisions grounded in real user needs; Community Layer, managing public presentation and relationships outside crypto; and Institutional Layer, handling EF engagement with financial institutions, governments, enterprises, and universities.
The EF was direct about the Protocol Layer’s mandate, stating it exists to make Ethereum “harder to corrupt or capture, and easier to rely on when counterparties fail, platforms censor, governments overreach, and intermediaries extract.” The post drew a clear line between protocol work and market-facing priorities: “The Protocol Layer does not exist to make Ethereum more marketable or focused on short-term interests, or to make it easier to turn into another financial rail controlled by intermediaries.”
That framing signals a deliberate separation between the EF’s core development mission and commercial pressures, even as the new Institutional Layer engages with governments and enterprises.
The announcement comes as ether’s market performance lags. Over the last 12 months, ether is down more than 26%, trading at $1,659 per ETH, down over 66% from its all-time high of $4,946. ETH’s market cap of just over $200 billion equates to 9% of the total $2.14 trillion crypto market.
The EF said it will share more details about the new structure over the coming weeks and months, characterizing the new EF as “leaner and more focused.” Several individuals who left in recent months received the same severance terms now offered to the 54 departing employees.