Original article by: Sam @IOSG
Original source: IOSG Ventures
In March 2025, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced a major leadership change: Executive Director Aya Miyagotchi stepped down from her duties as executive director and became chairman of the foundation; at the same time, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak were appointed as new co-executive directors; former EF researcher Danny Ryan joined Etherealize.
Faced with fierce competition, Ethereum is facing a transformation moment. This change is not only a personnel adjustment, but more like a strategic game around the future direction of Ethereum. For a long time, Aya has promoted Ethereum to build an infinite garden with an idealistic vision. However, as market competition intensified and problems such as high gas fees and network congestion emerged, the community raised many questions about its conservative resource allocation and cultural promotion strategies. There were even extreme criticisms and attacks against Aya, prompting Vitalik Buterin to call for calm.
In this context, EF has tried to respond to external dissatisfaction and find a new balance between idealism and market reality by adjusting its leadership. This article will explore the achievements of its strategic transformation so far from three dimensions: the changes in EFs organizational structure, the positioning of Etherealize, and EFs recent adjustments and future prospects.
Dual leadership: a new pattern of power and responsibility
Aya Term of office
Aya Miyaguchi has served as Executive Director of EF since 2018. Aya’s leadership coincided with Ethereum’s major transition from Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake.
At the strategic level, Aya advocates and implements a guiding principle known as the subtraction philosophy. This principle requires the foundation to consciously avoid expanding into a highly centralized authority and to disperse more opportunities and responsibilities to the entire community. At the same time, EF adheres to the core values of openness, credible neutrality and decentralization, avoiding the pursuit of profits or aggressive marketing strategies.
In terms of internal structural adjustments, Aya led the establishment of multiple new teams and projects. Take the EF Fellowship program launched in 2022 as an example. Through this project, the Foundation supports builders in emerging communities and contributes to the vision of the next billion. In addition, new conference formats such as Devconnect launched since 2021 also show EFs new attempts in conference organization and community building.
EF Architecture and Recent Changes
As a non-profit organization, the Ethereum Foundation does not have a pyramid-like hierarchical structure, but has evolved into a team community. The Foundation supports many semi-autonomous teams that operate independently in their respective areas of expertise while organically collaborating under the guidance of common values.
EFs organizational structure can be divided into four functional sections: Protocol Research and Development (PRD), Ecosystem Development (EcoDev), Operational Support (Ops) and Privacy and Extension Exploration (PSE). Each section has its own responsibilities and collaborates with external communities, research institutions and development teams under the coordination of the Protocol Guild and Protocol Support teams.
The Foundation plays a bridging role in coordinating cross-team collaboration, such as organizing client interoperability workshops, promoting network upgrades, and hosting global events such as Devcon. At the same time, EFs management always avoids micromanaging each project, but encourages each team to work in an atmosphere of self-centeredness and fulfilling their responsibilities.
The research team responsible for the core development of the protocol also underwent significant changes from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025. The Ethereum Foundation Research Department (EFR) was reorganized from the original single research team into five specialized groups in early 2025: the Application Research Group (ARG), the Consensus RD Group, the Cryptography Group, the Protocol Security Group, and the Robust Incentives Group (RIG). This split stems from the rapid expansion of the Foundation in the field of cryptography and security, which requires more professional teams to focus on different research directions and improve RD efficiency and transparency. At the same time, long-term researchers Alex Stokes and Barnabé Monnot took over as co-research leaders to jointly lead the research direction.
As a key group focusing on zero-knowledge proof and privacy technology research, the PSE team was formerly the AppliedZKP team within EF. It has now become an independent interdisciplinary team community model, operating in parallel with other semi-autonomous teams of the foundation. Through workshops, summer camps, experimental networks (such as Alphanet, Testnet) and other forms, it helps the Ethereum network evolve in the direction of equal emphasis on privacy and expansion. The establishment of PSE stems from the urgent need of the Ethereum Foundation for the practice of privacy and expansion technology. In the past, zero-knowledge and MPC research mostly remained at the academic level. PSE came into being to promote the maturity of technology in an application-driven way and fill the gap between research and engineering. In 2024, the team underwent a major reorganization. The original members resigned in large numbers later that year, and the team almost achieved a restart.
After the latest personnel changes, EFs management structure is as follows: Aya will become chairman, responsible for promoting strategic cooperation and maintaining relationships, and will reduce direct involvement in specific matters; in terms of management, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz will serve as co-executive directors, handling management work in a parallel and collaborative manner; in the research field, Barnabé Monnot and Alex Stokes will serve as co-heads of research, while Tju Liang Chua will continue to serve as EFs general counsel, while Bastian and Josh Stark will continue to assume the management and operational responsibilities of EF.
The current EF leadership is as follows:
Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz: Dual engines of technology and management
EF introduced a dual leadership structure in this transformation, appointing two executive directors with strong technical backgrounds and rich practical experience:
Hsiao-Wei Wang
Since joining EF in 2017, Wang Xiaowei has been a core researcher. She graduated from National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan with a degree in network engineering and has a solid technical foundation. She has deep experience in sharding and beacon chain related technologies, and played a key role in The Merge in 2022. Today, as an executive director, Wang Xiaowei is not only responsible for leading the direction of research and development, but also shoulders the important task of promoting community building. Her appointment is seen as a key turning point for Ethereum to regain its technological innovation and grassroots spirit.
Tomasz Stańczak
Tomasz is widely known for his leadership at Nethermind. After more than seven years of hard work, Nethermind is now second only to Geth in the execution client market, with a market share of about 35%. At the same time, Nethermind continues to expand its business areas, launch various products, and actively carry out cooperation and research to contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem. Tomasz not only led Nethermind to achieve great success in client development, but also actively explored cutting-edge issues such as MEV and PBS. The rich experience Tomasz accumulated at Nethermind has injected management experience and strategic vision into EF.
The new architecture aims to achieve the following goals:
Distributed decision-making responsibilities: The two executive directors each have independent full decision-making space, which not only reduces the risk of single point failure, but also makes it easier for stakeholders to choose the connection object according to their own preferences. For example, institutions or developers in Europe can meet and communicate with Tomasz directly according to his tour schedule from April to July. At the same time, this also allows stakeholders to flexibly connect with different regional affairs and independently control the rhythm of cooperation.
Complementary technical and management advantages: Wang Xiaoweis in-depth research on Ethereums core innovations (such as the beacon chain, sharding technology, and ETH 2.0) and Tomaszs mature experience in organizational expansion and operational management form a strong complement.
Aya becomes chairman, Vitalik returns to research
At the same time, former executive director Aya Miyagotchi became chairman, focusing more on external strategic cooperation and relationship maintenance. Aya, who has served as executive director for seven years, is now focused on strategic guidance and external liaison, while daily operations management is fully controlled by Wang Xiaowei and Tomasz Stańczak.
According to Tomasz, one of the goals of this leadership change is to allow Vitalik to focus more on research and exploration rather than daily coordination or crisis response. Vitaliks recent articles on RISC-V and zkVMs have opened up promising research directions, and his discussion on privacy has helped the community realign EFs core values. At the same time, although Vitaliks proposals are important, they are more intended to spark discussion and promote progress in difficult research areas; community reviews may significantly change or even reject these proposals.
Community Response
After the new appointments were announced, the Ethereum community congratulated and welcomed Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz.
Paradigms CTO Georgios Konstantopoulos said Tomasz has reached new heights: he is smart and experienced, good at grasping technical nuances, and has the ability to build and lead a large and efficient team. It is generally believed in the community that Hsiao-Weis in-depth understanding of the protocol will ensure that the technical direction of the foundation is always in the hands of professionals. Sassal spoke highly of the appointment of co-executive director and regarded this leadership adjustment as a major change to push Ethereum into the next stage. Many builders are optimistic that the combination of a leader from the research field and a leader from the engineering and client teams will help achieve a good balance at the governance level.
Some community members were surprised that Danny Ryan failed to take up a major leadership position at EF. But on the same weekend, when EF announced a new co-executive director, Danny Ryan also announced that he would join Etherealize as a co-founder. Even voices that had been critical, such as Evan Van Ness, acknowledged Vitaliks decision afterwards; he believed that although he had expected to see Danny play a greater role in EF, the new co-executive director, with his solid qualifications and experience, had calmed down the previous leadership controversy.
In general, although the discussion within the community around the transition period of Aya Miyaguchis departure was heated, it eventually converged into a constructive consensus. Community members recognized Ayas contribution to EF, and many key figures publicly expressed their gratitude to her; at the same time, everyone has high hopes for the introduction of new Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, and also expects the new leadership structure to respond to past deficiencies in communication and technical collaboration.
Ecosystem Reconstruction: The Rise of Etherealize
Previously, the community generally expected Danny Ryan to directly take over the position of executive director of EF. However, unexpectedly, Danny Ryan did not return to EF, but returned to the Ethereum ecosystem as a co-founder of Etherealize. This choice also hints at another possibility: forming a new organization similar to EF to make up for EFs shortcomings and focus on promoting the real implementation of Ethereum technology and business potential.
As Danny Ryan said: Instead of talking about the vision of Ethereum, it is better to show how institutions can actually use Ethereum. Guided by this idea, he chose Etherealize, a platform focused on business expansion and marketing of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Core Mission
Etherealize is not just a marketing tool, but a multi-dimensional platform with four core missions:
Institutional access and productization: Just like BlackRocks $1 billion on-chain U.S. Treasury bonds and Franklin Templetons mutual funds, Etherealize provides traditional financial institutions with full escort from conceptual design to on-chain deployment, significantly reducing the trial and error costs of institutions.
Combining technology and market: Connecting research and development (RD) with business development (BD), rapidly iterating zero-knowledge proofs, privacy modules, and cross-Rollup bridging solutions, and instantly verifying and optimizing in real customer environments.
Policy advocacy and regulatory dialogue: In-depth participation in policy roundtables and Senate blockchain hearings, release of a series of reports on Popular Regulatory Policy Interpretations, analysis of stablecoin legislation, tokenized securities rules and market structure reforms, etc. The recently promoted Regulatory Sandbox Certification Program has attracted Swiss FINMA and Singapore MAS to participate in the co-construction.
Feedback and transparency: The Etherealize data dashboard tracks core on-chain indicators (L2 total locked value, tokenized asset size, settlement delay) and off-chain institutional dynamics (compliance certification progress, partner growth) in real time. The monthly Institutional Insights report directly converts customer operational pain points into protocol layer optimization needs.
Dual-track architecture
Etherealize has officially split into a dual legal entity structure to simultaneously advance market delivery and ecosystem governance.
The for-profit entity Etherealize Inc. (a Class C corporation registered in Delaware) focuses on providing end-to-end tokenization services, Layer 2 deployment solutions and compliance tool chains for banks and asset management institutions. Its core mission is to lower the threshold for traditional financial institutions to go online through standardized infrastructure.
The non-profit entity Etherealize Foundation focuses on open research and development, privacy tool development and policy advocacy to build a bridge between the real world and Ethereum, with a focus on maintaining Ethereums trusted neutrality and regulatory adaptability.
This dual-track model has driven Etherealize to achieve leapfrog development within the first three months of operation: the for-profit sector has successfully landed BlackRock and Franklin Templeton on-chain mutual fund projects; the non-profit sector has simultaneously conducted regulatory roundtable meetings and piloted a privacy protection solution based on zero-knowledge proof. The synergy of business closed loop + ecological foundation building has accelerated the institutionalization process of Ethereum.
Etherealize Origin
The concept of Etherealize originated from the launch of the Ethereum ETF on July 23, 2024. Grant Hummer observed that although the launch of the ETF marked Wall Streets recognition of Ethereum, the actual adoption effect was far lower than expected. This gap prompted him to work with investor James Fickle to find a leader with both Wall Street experience and Ethereum knowledge, and finally locked in Vivek Raman.
After receiving funding from Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation, the team was officially established in January 2025 and quickly expanded from pure BD to on-site delivery. Etherealize then realized that leveraging Wall Street requires not only the spread of ideas, but also the provision of seamless physical tools. For this reason, Vivek Raman introduced his close friend Zach Obront to reconstruct the technical foundation as a co-founder. Finally, Danny Ryan joined as the last co-founder as Chief Strategy Officer.
2025 Strategic Blueprint
In an interview with Bankless and DeFi Dad, Danny Ryan shared Etherealize’s recent plans. The following is the core roadmap for 2025:
Q2 launches institutional-level SDK, integrating custody interface, compliance review and gas fee optimization modules
Q3 Launch enterprise wallet pilot based on Noir zero-knowledge compiler
Q4 Entered the Asia-Pacific and European markets and customized regulatory adaptation solutions through cooperation with Singapore Digital Port, Swiss Crypto Valley, etc.
When asked about the project roadmap and future challenges, Danny and Vivek elaborated on their strategies:
Ethereum vs. Solana: Institutional competition undercurrent
The traditional financial community has long focused on Ethereum and its second-layer ecosystem. Compared with Solana, its technology applications were launched earlier and have higher market acceptance. According to RWA.xyz data, Ethereum and its second-layer ecosystem account for more than 50% of RWA’s value.
In cooperation with traditional financial institutions, since Ethereum was launched earlier, its ecosystem has established many cooperation cases:
Fidelity: Fidelity established Fidelity Digital Assets as early as 2018, and began to deploy digital assets and provide Bitcoin custody services. In 2019, Tom Jessop, head of its cryptocurrency department, expressed a strong interest in Ethereum, pointing out that the company has invested a lot of resources in the Ethereum field. Ethereum spot ETF (FETH) will be launched in 2024.
JPMorgan Chase: JPMorgan Chase launched Quorum, an open source enterprise ledger based on Ethereum technology, in 2016, supporting projects such as the interbank information network and JPM Coin. In November 2022, the first DeFi cross-currency transaction was completed using the Polygon network in Project Guardian, a collaboration with the Central Bank of Singapore.
Goldman Sachs: In 2021, Goldman Sachs served as joint lead underwriter when the European Investment Bank (EIB) issued a 100 million euro digital bond, and used Ethereum smart contracts to tokenize securities and cash.
HSBC: HSBC uses distributed ledger technology to support bond issuance, digital gold and custody services through its HSBC Orion platform, while also enabling interconnection between private chains and public chains such as Ethereum.
UBS: In November 2024, UBS Asset Management launched the first tokenized investment fund issued on the Ethereum network, UBS USD Money Market Fund Token (uMINT), converting money market fund shares into on-chain tokens. In early 2025, UBS demonstrated the results of its experiments based on Ethereums second-layer zkSync, using zero-knowledge proof technology to realize split transactions of some gold investment products and migrate retail gold products to the zkSync Validium network.
In contrast, Solana has less cooperation with traditional financial institutions. At the same time, RWA on Solana is mainly concentrated in stablecoins, and the proportion of non-stablecoin assets is lower than that of Ethereum. At present, the mainstream treasury bonds and other fund projects are shown in the figure. The number and amount of related projects are relatively small; at the same time, the categories of projects are relatively single, and have not yet covered large-scale commodity RWA projects, as well as private credit, private equity and other fields.
At present, the Ethereum platform is still leading in the value of RWA assets, and its second-layer ecosystem also carries a large number of RWA assets, far exceeding other public chain projects. Although 6 Ethereum ETFs have been approved in the market, Solana-related ETFs have not yet been approved. However, this year, mainstream institutions such as BlackRocks BUIDL and Franklin Templetons BENJI have successively launched on Solana, and the competition is becoming increasingly fierce. EF has also established a clear strategic layout to cope with challenges, and the establishment of Etheralize further demonstrates Ethereums positive attitude in seeking institutional cooperation.
Summarize
As _gabrielShapir 0 pointed out in a comment: “Etherealize can basically be seen as a second EF, a cultural and strategic diversion to make Ethereum more social and diverse.”
In fact, Etherealize marks a key political moment in Ethereum’s history — during which cultural divisions began to emerge. As a result, Ethereum’s L0 future will focus more on social decentralization, as reflected in “client diversity”. As a result, multiple competing top-level strategic visions have emerged in the market, ranging from how to promote ETH to future development directions.
Etherealize adopts a two-tier structure, covering both profit entities and non-profit organizations, which provides greater flexibility for its operation. The two parts perform their respective duties and work together. Another major advantage is that it is technology-driven and focuses on the product itself, rather than relying solely on business development. It is these characteristics that make Etherealize an efficient platform that focuses on connecting with traditional financial institutions.
EFs recent adjustments and outlook
Despite its challenges, Ethereum still has deep strengths that support its position in the crypto space—strengths that are often downplayed by its leadership, causing negative criticism to obscure its core narrative. Systematically sorting out these strengths helps to establish an objective cognitive framework for Ethereums potential.
EF Silviculture Society: Diversity Consulting and Internal Innovation
EF has launched the Silviculture Society, an informal think tank composed of external experts, which aims to provide cross-disciplinary advice and multi-angle insights to the foundation. The think tank members come from the fields of technology, law, academia and industry. They participate for a year without compensation, submit confidential opinions to the EF Board through a dedicated channel, and explore a flexible and diverse internal feedback mechanism.
doubt
It may be just a superficial cultural experiment and it is difficult to improve decision-making efficiency.
The short-term free participation model may make it difficult to attract experts with long-term and deep insights, affecting the continuity and professionalism of advice.
It is still unclear how external suggestions can actually be translated into internal decisions, and the transparency and enforceability of the feedback mechanism remain to be tested.
Financial Strategy and Budget Management
In terms of financial management, EF has introduced a budget strategy of spending 15% of the remaining funds each year to ensure the long-term sustainable operation of funds. According to public data, EFs treasury fiat assets fell from US$1.294 billion in March 2022 to US$784 million in October 2024, while holdings denominated in ETH only fell by about 11%. At the same time, EFs annual expenditure increased from US$48 million in 2021 to US$135 million in 2023, indicating that investment in ecological support, RD investment, and staff salaries has continued to increase.
doubt
EF holds a large amount of ETH. If the price of ETH continues to be sluggish, although the decline in ETH holdings will be limited, the sharp shrinkage of assets denominated in US dollars may indicate hidden dangers to financial health.
Although the remaining 15% strategy is attractive, it lacks clear implementation details. The strategy has not been effectively implemented in the past few years, but has instead led to a continuous increase in annual expenditures.
The sharp increase in annual spending could reflect inefficient resource allocation or indicate a continued increase in RD and funding costs.
Specific expenditure details and funding use plans have not been fully disclosed, making it difficult to fully assess the operating status.
Despite huge investments, actual results have not yet met expectations, showing a disconnect between internal management and market demand.
Stepping into DeFi and Ecosystem Innovation
EF announced that it would invest 50,000 ETH in DeFi projects and enter the DeFi ecosystem through a newly established multi-signature wallet. At the same time, the emergence of full-chain asset management tools such as EtherStrategy and discussions on the new governance model of Second Foundation in the ecosystem shows that EF is exploring diversified innovation models to promote the continuous evolution of the ecosystem.
Questions and doubts
Entering DeFi while staking ETH may force EF to take a stand on sensitive issues such as future hard forks, which in turn may affect its position as a global neutral platform.
The market questions whether this cross-border behavior is in line with the positioning of non-profit organizations and whether it will lead to a deviation in resource and strategic focus, thereby affecting the overall ecological stability.
Social Media and Marketing
In response to previous criticisms of its lack of presence on social media, EF has greatly increased its investment in major platforms. Since January this year, EF has reactivated multiple official accounts, and has timely communicated internal reforms and strategic initiatives through a large amount of original content and dynamic forwarding. At the same time, core figures such as Vitalik Buterin have enhanced the Ethereum brand image by changing their avatars and interacting frequently, and have strengthened the concept of Ethereum first in dialogues with traditional finance and policymakers.
doubt
Active presence on social media may only be superficial public relations and fail to address issues of internal governance and actual results.
There is still uncertainty about the actual effect of market promotion and the depth of connection with traditional financial institutions and practical applications.
EF Funding
EF launched two rounds of timed, themed special grants in 2025 - Pectra Forward-looking Special Grants and 2025 Academic Grants, both of which have now expired; at the same time, ESPs small grants (≤ $30,000, decision made within about two weeks) and project grants (no funding limit, in-depth collaborative review) continue to be open year-round.
EF Strategic Outlook
After the dust settled on the management adjustment, Vitalik was able to return to his research focus; EF also immediately synchronized the main directions of the next stage with the community: one is the overall roadmap forwarded and supplemented by Tomasz, and the other is the privacy roadmap proposed by Vitalik.
As for the overall route, the simplified roadmap focuses on three core areas:
Improve data processing capabilities through Blob-based expansion;
Improve L1 throughput through targeted protocol upgrades;
Improve user experience by deepening L2 interoperability and focusing on the application layer.
At the same time, Tomasz emphasized that in addition to this, minor matters include:
Always mint assets on L1
Winning the Real World Asset (RWA) and Stablecoin Markets
Improve communication and clarify community and user expectations
Significantly improve safety standards in a trillion-dollar economy
Promoting purpose-driven research and development within the Foundation
At the same time, Vitalik proposed his vision for the Ethereum privacy roadmap in his latest article “A maximally simple L1 privacy roadmap (https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-maximally-simple-l1-privacy-roadmap/23459)”, covering four key forms of privacy: on-chain payment privacy, partial anonymization of in-application activities, chain data reading privacy, and network layer anonymization.
The roadmap mainly includes:
Integrate privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools natively into mainstream wallets, and enable shielded balance and send from shielded balance by default;
Promote the one address per application design, and enable spontaneous transactions with privacy protection by default;
Implement FOCIL and EIP-7701 to simplify zero-replay, relay-free, censorship-resistant transactions;
In the short term, we will introduce a TEE-based RPC privacy solution into the wallet, and gradually switch to a more cryptographically guaranteed PIR in the future;
The wallet connects to multiple RPC nodes at the same time (optional mixed network access), and promotes light client support to reduce metadata leakage;
Develop a zero-knowledge proof aggregation protocol to reduce the gas cost of privacy transactions;
Create a privacy-aware keystore wallet that allows users to seamlessly upgrade signature algorithms or verification logic between L1/L2 while maintaining privacy.
Conclusion
The Ethereum ecosystem is undergoing a paradigm shift from the inside out. The introduction of a dual leadership structure has decentralized decision-making responsibilities and complemented technical and management advantages. It also allows Viltaik to focus on cutting-edge research and lead Ethereum. EFs series of changes, including the split of the research department, the new research co-chair, the implementation of pragmatism and efficiency first, and active participation in DeFi and social media operations, are all good changes that demonstrate its determination to seek breakthroughs in the fierce market competition.
The launch of Etherealize is an important milestone in strategic transformation. In terms of docking with traditional financial institutions, EF is often not the best choice due to its organizational structure, positioning and history, and has failed to meet the urgent needs of the market. Etherealize, which is customized for institutional clients, effectively makes up for EFs shortcomings with its clear Wall Street service positioning and flexible organizational structure, assisting EFs work without increasing its burden.
So far, EF and Etherealize have brought innovation and blood transfusion to Ethereums organizational structure, enabling it to better cope with a more intense competitive environment. The next challenge is the core challenge of Ethereums future: the positioning and narrative of ETH as an asset, the integration of the Ethereum ecosystem, and the improvement of performance and experience. These fundamental strategic problems are far beyond the ability of organizational adjustments or tactical improvements to deal with, and will become a key touchstone for testing the new generation of leadership.
Although challenges and doubts remain, these changes have undoubtedly opened up a path for Ethereum to explore new possibilities and marked a new era that is truly future-oriented.
