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The Ethereum Foundation is deliberately shrinking its role, and five former researchers have launched Ethlabs to take over the work they worry will otherwise go undone.

Ansgar Dietrichs, co-founder of Ethlabs, joins Laura Shin to lay out the split: the Foundation will protect what should not change, while Ethlabs pushes the parts of Ethereum that must evolve. He makes the case that the global economy is moving onchain, and that Ethereum is the only candidate to sit at the center of it, or no one will.

The conversation traces why ETH the asset has been stuck between $1,000 and $5,000 for five years, why Dietrichs thinks EIP-1559 and cheap blockspace were never intentional choices, how Ethlabs divides labor with the Foundation, Etherealize, and Consensys, and what DeFi founders like Uniswap’s Hayden Adams actually need. The throughline is a single missing ingredient he keeps returning to: intentionality about what ETH is actually for.

Host:

    • Laura Shin – Founder, CEO and Host of Unchained

Guest: