EF Executive Turmoil Again: Who Can Steer the Confused Ethereum?

Ethereum Foundation (EF) Once Again Stands at a Crossroads of Turmoil

Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak announced he will step down at the end of this month. Just 11 months after he and Hsiao-Wei Wang jointly succeeded the long-time leader Aya Miyaguchi and formed a new leadership core in March last year.

His successor will be Bastian Aue. Very little public information is available about him; his X account was registered only eight months ago, with almost no public statements. He will continue to co-lead the organization that controls core resources and direction of the Ethereum ecosystem alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.

This seemingly sudden personnel change is actually the inevitable result of internal conflicts within the Ethereum Foundation, external pressures, and strategic shifts intertwined.

A Year of Crisis: Responding to Turbulence

To understand Stańczak’s departure, we must first look back at the context when he took office.

Early 2025, the Ethereum community was in a state of anxiety. At that time, following the US elections, the crypto market was generally bullish, Bitcoin hit new highs repeatedly, and competitors like Solana were gaining momentum. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s price performance was relatively weak, and the Foundation itself was under criticism.

Criticism was mainly directed at then-Executive Director Miyaguchi. Developer communities complained that the Foundation was seriously out of touch with frontline builders, that there were conflicts of interest in strategic direction, and that efforts to promote Ethereum were insufficient. Some questioned whether the Foundation was too “laid-back,” adopting a “coordinator” rather than a “leader” stance, which was seen as causing Ethereum to lose its first-mover advantage.

As Ethereum’s “central bank,” the Foundation was expected to act decisively, not remain passive.

Amid this public storm, Miyaguchi stepped back into a board role. Stańczak and Wang were suddenly thrust into leadership roles.

Stańczak was not an outsider. He is the founder of Nethermind, one of the core execution clients in the Ethereum ecosystem, playing a key infrastructural role. He is technically skilled, entrepreneurial, and deeply understands community pain points.

He has said that when he took office, the instructions were clear: “The community was calling out — you’re too chaotic — you need to be more centralized and accelerate to respond to this critical period.”

What did he do in that year?

The combination of Stańczak and Wang indeed brought visible changes.

First, organizational efficiency. The Foundation cut 19 staff members, streamlined its structure, and tried to shed its bureaucratic image. The strategic focus shifted back to Layer 1, explicitly prioritizing mainnet scaling over Layer 2 fragmentation. The upgrade pace accelerated, with more decisive progress on EIPs.

Second, attitude adjustment. The Foundation began releasing a series of videos on social media, proactively explaining Ethereum’s technical roadmap and development direction. This “outreach” approach contrasted with the previous relatively closed, mysterious image.

Strategically, Stańczak pushed exploration into new areas: privacy protection, quantum computing threats, AI integration with Ethereum. Especially on AI, he expressed clear optimism about “agent-based systems” and “AI-assisted discovery” reshaping the world.

Financially, the Foundation started discussing more transparent budgeting and fund allocation strategies, attempting to address external concerns about fund efficiency.

Vitalik Buterin commented on Stańczak: “He has greatly improved the efficiency of several departments within the Foundation, making the organization more agile in responding to the outside world.”

Implications Behind the Resignation Statement

Less than a year later, why leave?

Stańczak’s resignation statement was quite candid and somewhat thought-provoking. He provided several key points:

First, he believes the Ethereum Foundation and the entire ecosystem are “in good health.” The time has come for a transition.

Second, he wants to return to being a “hands-on product builder,” focusing on the integration of AI and Ethereum. He said his current mindset is similar to when he founded Nethermind in 2017.

Third, and most intriguingly: “The Foundation’s leadership is increasingly confident in their decision-making and control over more matters. Over time, my ability to independently execute within the Foundation has diminished. If I stay longer, by 2026 I will mostly be just ‘waiting to hand over the baton.’”

This reveals two underlying messages: one, the new leadership team has developed self-motivation and no longer needs his intervention; two, his actual decision-making power may be shrinking — which is not very compatible with someone used to direct involvement and entrepreneurial drive.

He also mentioned, “I know many ideas about agent-based AI are still immature or even useless, but these experimental games define the innovative spirit of early Ethereum.”

This somewhat hints at a subtle critique of the current state: as the organization matures and decision-making becomes more “steady,” does the wild, experimental spirit risk being lost?

Stańczak’s departure, on the surface, is a personal choice, but behind it lies the long-standing dilemma faced by the Ethereum Foundation.

Since its inception, the organization has been in an awkward position. In theory, Ethereum is decentralized, and the Foundation should not be a central authority. But in reality, it controls substantial funds, core developer resources, and ecosystem coordination discourse, effectively playing a dual role as “central bank” and “regulatory body.”

This identity paradox has led to a long-standing dilemma: doing too much invites accusations of centralization; doing too little invites criticism of inaction. Miyaguchi’s era leaned toward a “coordinator” role, which was seen as weak; Stańczak’s attempt to shift toward an “executor” role improved efficiency but naturally concentrated organizational power.

His resignation exposes this tension: as the organization becomes more efficient and decisive, the personal space for founding team members shrinks. For an ecosystem that must balance “decentralization” and “market efficiency,” this internal friction is almost unavoidable.

Who is Bastian Aue, the successor?

Very little public info. He described himself on X as responsible for “hard-to-quantify but critical work” at the Foundation: assisting management decisions, communicating with team leads, budgeting, strategic planning, setting priorities — a low-profile style contrasting sharply with Stańczak’s entrepreneurial temperament.

Aue said in his acceptance statement: “My decision-making is based on principled adherence to certain attributes of what we are building. The Foundation’s mission is to ensure that truly permissionless infrastructure — rooted in the cypherpunk spirit — can be established.”

This sounds more like Miyaguchi’s tone: emphasizing principles, spirit, and coordination rather than dominance.

Does this mean the Foundation will shift back from “aggressive execution” to “principled coordination”? We’ll see.

Ethereum’s Uncertainty

Stańczak’s departure comes at a critical moment when Ethereum is discussing several major proposals. According to him, the Foundation is about to release key documents, including the “Lean Ethereum” plan, future development roadmap, and DeFi coordination mechanisms.

The “Lean Ethereum” proposal has been jokingly called “Ethereum’s weight-loss era” — aiming to simplify the protocol, reduce burden, and make the mainnet more efficient.

These strategic documents will profoundly influence Ethereum’s development path in the coming years. The change of core leadership at this juncture adds uncertainty to the implementation of these proposals.

On a broader scale, Ethereum faces multiple challenges: competition from high-performance chains like Solana, Layer 2 fragmentation issues, new narratives around AI and blockchain integration, and the overall market sentiment affecting ecosystem funding and attention.

On the same day Stańczak announced his departure, ETH briefly fell below $1,800. If it drops further, a stark reality emerges: the total return on ETH holdings may fall below the interest rate of dollar cash.

To put it more painfully: in January 2018, ETH first hit $1,400. Adjusted for US CPI inflation, that amount would be roughly equivalent to $1,806 in February 2026.

In other words, if an investor bought ETH in 2018 and held it without staking, after eight years, they would not have made a profit — they might have even underperformed just holding cash in the bank.

For the “E-guardians” who have believed all along, the real question may not be “who wins the ideological battle,” but “how much longer can they hold on?”

The only certainty is that this core organization, which controls one of the most vital ecosystems in crypto, is still searching for its position in a rapidly changing industry — and this journey will undoubtedly be turbulent.