The Ethereum Foundation (EF) lost three more senior team members in the span of two days this week, extending a wave of exits that has fueled an increasingly public debate about the organization’s internal stability. Protocol researchers Carl Beekhuizen and Julian Ma announced their resignations on Monday, followed by senior solutions architect Pablo Voorvaart on Tuesday.

The rapid succession of exits—nine so far this year—has sparked concern across the crypto community. Observers have openly questioned the EF’s internal alignment, its current coordination capacity, and whether the sudden brain drain will impact the delivery of upcoming network upgrades like Glamsterdam. 

“What’s happening at the EF?” asked DeFi researcher Ignas on X, underscoring the community’s concern over the lack of transparency. “How many not public? And why? Stopped believing in Ethereum? Pay is low and competitors paying more? Or just tired? Would love to know the REAL reasons.”

This story is an excerpt from the Unchained Daily newsletter.

Reactions Ranging From Concern to Dismissal

Many Ethereum community members seem to be worried about what the losses mean. As popular crypto community member Banteg tweeted, “situation: all three ef protocol leads have left,” along with a screenshot of the foundation’s org chart with the names of the former staffers struck out. 

However, others are downplaying it or even saying Ethereum needs to rely less on the EF. Ethereum community member and investor Ryan Berckmans pushed back against the panic, arguing that while internal differences of opinion over “substrategies and policies” are natural, the EF remains intensely focused on Ethereum’s long-term dominance, particularly regarding post-quantum security and scaling. “The time for new blood is here,” Berckmans wrote, framing the transition as a healthy handoff to a younger generation of developers.

Similarly Ryan Sean Adams of Bankless tweeted that the Ethereum community cannot rely on the EF, “We need an org that wants ETH the asset to win – number go up. And gets loud. And executes hard,” he said. “The EF is not that, never will be.” 

But David Phelps responded that he didn’t understand that opinion: “it’s a bit like if the president of the united states said “I don’t think about americans’ financial situation.” unpopular take, but the core institution of an economy should care about economics”

A Broader Outflow

The departures come in the wake of former Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak stepping down in February, after a year in which he was widely seen as having turned around the foundation after a long period of unrest in 2024 that saw multiple prominent members of the Ethereum community express frustration with the management of the Ethereum Foundation and concern about the future trajectory of the protocol. 

Then, in March, the Ethereum community was outraged when the foundation initially asked staffers to sign a cypherpunk manifesto and then, a few days later, after the outcry, reversed course. 

The departing members join a roster of high-profile departures earlier this year, including P2P networking lead Raúl Kripalani, Operations Lead Josh Stark, Protocol Guild founder Trent Van Epps, and Protocol Cluster leads Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko. A tenth senior member, Protocol Cluster co-lead Alex Stokes, remains with the foundation but is currently on a planned sabbatical.

The members who recently left represent years of institutional knowledge across critical layers of the network. Beekhuizen spent seven years at the EF contributing to the early design of the Beacon Chain and the KZG ceremony, while Ma spent four years co-authoring FOCIL (EIP-7805) for censorship resistance and leading the rollout of the 13-second Fast Confirmation Rule. Voorvaart anchored the Devcon and Use Case Lab teams for four years. 

The EF confirmed in a recent protocol update that Glamsterdam devnets are already live and preparations for the subsequent Hegotà upgrade are underway.

Update, May 20, 12:40 pm ET: This story has been updated to correct the number of recent departures from the Ethereum Foundation and add color around the concern about the staff changes.