The initiative follows a wave of high-profile departures from the Ethereum Foundation in the last few months.
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, with backing from crypto companies Bitmine and Sharplink as well as Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin.
This is happening at a time when the EF itself is deliberately pulling back and leaving room for new institutions to take on more of the ecosystem’s core research and development work.
What Ethlabs Is and Who’s Behind It
According to a June 22 post on X, Ethlabs was founded by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers, with a mission to make “Ethereum the settlement layer of the global economy.”
The organization will sit between builders working at the application layer and the core protocol itself, helping translate real-world needs into shared standards and infrastructure.
One of the lab’s founders, Julian Ma, who spent 4 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 also said that his focus at Ethlabs will be on supporting builders and improving infrastructure. The organization will also be looking to expand distribution for Ethereum’s applications and assets.
Other founding members include Josh Rudolf, Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, and Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, all of whom were previously part of the EF but left one after another over the past few months. Others who left include Tim Beiko, Tomasz Stańczak, John Stark, Trent Van Epps, and, most recently, co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Wang, with Ethereum insider Ryan Berckmans, who is also listed as an Ethlabs contributor, downplaying the departures, saying they reflected internal disagreements over sub-strategies rather than any loss of faith in the network itself. You may also like:
The Ethlabs announcement listed Beiko as a community member, with Stańczak pointing out that he was not part of it. However, Wang and Van Epps have yet to make any public announcements about their involvement in the initiative, if any.
Funders, Contributors, and Community Members
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. There are also several active Ethereum Foundation members in the mix, including Alex Stokes and Barnabas Busa, with Zksync, Coinbase, and Polygon represented as well.
The EF itself acknowledged the launch, framing it as part of a wider pattern of new organizations stepping in. In a thread posted today, it noted that “realizing Ethereum’s potential takes a coalition of organizations working together” and said they look forward to seeing what Ethlabs will build.
Network co-founder Vitalik Buterin had also previously said that the Foundation was “not the center of Ethereum” but that it was just “one node,” which had a defined purpose alongside other nodes. According to him, the organization is moving toward a smaller, more focused role and that allowing respected contributors to work outside it was a deliberate strategy that would attract outside capital.
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