jakiro
Written by: Sam @IOSG
In March 2025, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced a major leadership change: Executive Director Aya Miyagotchi stepped down from his executive directorship and transferred to the foundation’s chairman; Meanwhile, 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 moment of transformation.This change is not only a personnel adjustment, but also a strategic game around the future direction of Ethereum.Aya has long promoted Ethereum to build an “infinite garden” with an idealized vision.However, with the intensification of market competition and high gas fees and network congestion emerging, the community has raised many doubts about its conservative resource allocation and cultural promotion strategies.There have even been extreme criticisms and attacks against Aya, prompting Vitalik Buterin to come forward to call for calm.
Against this backdrop, EF has tried to respond to external dissatisfaction by adjusting its leadership, and also seeks to find a new balance between idealism and market reality.This article will start from three dimensions: the change in EF’s organizational structure, the positioning of Etherealize, and the recent adjustments and future prospects of EF, and explore the achievements made by its strategic transformation so far.
Dual leadership: a new pattern of power and responsibility
Aya Term
Since 2018, Aya Miyaguchi has served as executive director of EF.Aya’s leadership coincides with a significant transition from proof of work to proof of stake.
On a strategic level, Aya advocates and implements the guiding principles known as the “philosophy of subtraction.”This principle requires the Foundation to consciously avoid swelling into a highly centralized authority, dispersing more opportunities and responsibilities across the community.At the same time, EF adheres to the core values of openness, trustworthiness, neutrality and decentralization, avoiding chasing profits or adopting aggressive marketing strategies.
In terms of internal structural adjustment, Aya has led the establishment of several new teams and projects.Taking the EF Fellowship program launched in 2022 as an example, the Foundation supports builders in emerging communities through the project and helps the vision of “the next billion”.In addition, new conference forms such as Devconnect launched since 2021 also show EF’s new attempts in conference organization and community building.
EF Architecture and Recent Changes
As a non-profit organization, the Ethereum Foundation has not been a pyramid-like hierarchical structure, but has evolved into a “team community”.The Foundation supports numerous semi-autonomous teams that operate independently in their respective fields of expertise while collaborating organically under the guidance of shared values.
The organizational structure of EF can be divided into four functional sectors: agreement research and development (PR&D), ecological development (EcoDev), operation guarantee (Ops) and privacy and expansion exploration (PSE).Each sector not only performs its own duties, but also works with external communities, research institutions and development teams under the coordination of “Protocol Guild” and “Protocol Support” teams.
The Foundation plays a bridge 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, EF’s management always avoids micromanagement of each project, but encourages teams to work in an atmosphere of “self-oriented and fulfilling their responsibilities”.
The research team responsible for core R&D of the agreement also underwent significant changes from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025.In early 2025, the Ethereum Foundation Research Department (EFR) was reorganized from the original single research team into five task forces, including the Applied Research Group (ARG), Consensus R&D, Cryptography, Protocol Security and Robust Incentives Group (RIG).This split originates from the foundation’s rapid expansion in the fields of cryptography and security, and requires a more professional team to focus on different research directions and improve R&D efficiency and transparency.Meanwhile, long-time researchers Alex Stokes and Barnabé Monnot are the first co-students to lead research directions.
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 independently become an 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), etc., we help the Ethereum network evolve towards “privacy and expansion”.The establishment of PSE stems from the Ethereum Foundation’s urgent need for privacy and extended technology practices.In the past, zero-knowledge and MPC research mostly remained at the academic level, and PSE came into being in an “application-driven” way to promote technology maturity and fill the gap between research and engineering.In 2024, the team underwent a major reorganization.The original members left a large number of jobs later that year, and the team almost achieved a “restart”.
After the latest personnel changes, EF’s management structure is: Aya is transferred to chairman, responsible for promoting strategic cooperation and maintaining relationships, which will reduce direct participation in specific matters; on the management level, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz serve as co-executive directors, co-handling management work in a parallel and collaborative manner; in the field of research, Barnabé Monnot and Alex Stokes will serve as co-head of research, and Tju Liang Chua continues to serve as general counsel to EF, while Bastian and Josh Stark continue to assume EF’s management and operational responsibilities.
The main leadership of EF is now as follows:
Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz: The dual engine of technology and management
EF introduced a dual leadership structure in this change, appointing two executive directors with deep technical background and rich practical experience:
Hsiao-Wei Wang (Wang Xiaowei)
Since joining EF in 2017, Wang Xiaowei has been a core researcher.She graduated from Taiwan Jiaotong University with a solid technical foundation.She has worked on the technology related to sharding and beacon chains and has played a key role in The Merge in 2022.Today, Wang Xiaowei, who serves as executive director, is not only responsible for leading the R&D direction, but also shoulders the important task of promoting community construction. Her appointment is seen as a key turning point for Ethereum to regain technological innovation and grassroots spirit.
Tomasz Stańczak
Tomasz is well known for his leadership at Nethermind.After more than seven years of hard work, Nethermind is currently 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, launches various products and actively conducts cooperation and research, contributing to the Ethereum ecosystem.Tomasz not only led Nethermind to achieve success in client development, he also actively explores cutting-edge issues such as MEV and PBS.Tomasz’s extensive experience at Nethermind injects management experience and strategic vision into EF.
The new architecture aims to achieve the following goals:
-
Decentralized decision-making responsibilities: The two executive directors each have independent full-power decision-making space, which not only reduces the risk of a single point of failure, but also facilitates stakeholders to choose docking objects based on their own preferences.For example, an organization or developer in Europe can directly meet and communicate with Tomasz based on his April-July tour itinerary.At the same time, this also allows stakeholders to flexibly connect with different regional affairs and independently grasp the rhythm of cooperation.
-
Complementary advantages of technology and management: Wang Xiaowei’s in-depth research on Ethereum core innovations (such as beacon chains, sharding technology and ETH 2.0) has formed a strong complement to Tomasz’s mature experience in organizational expansion and operational management.
Aya transfers to chairman, Vitalik regression research
At the same time, former executive director Aya Miyagotchi was transferred to chairman, focusing more on external strategic cooperation and relationship maintenance.Aya, who served as executive director for seven years, has 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 devote more to research and exploration rather than daily coordination or crisis response.Vitalik’s recent articles on RISC-V, zkVMs have opened up promising research directions, and his privacy discourse has helped the community re-align the core values of EF.Meanwhile, although Vitalik’s proposals are important, they are more intended to trigger discussions and promote progress in difficult research areas; community reviews may significantly change or even reject these proposals.
Community Response
After the new appointment was announced, the Ethereum community congratulated and welcomed Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz.
Georgios Konstantopoulos, CTO of Paradigm, said Tomasz has reached a “new height”: he is intelligent and experienced, good at grasping the subtleties of technology, and has the ability to build and lead efficient large teams.It is widely believed in the community that Hsiao-Wei’s in-depth understanding of the agreement will ensure that the foundation’s technical direction is always in the hands of professionals.Sassal highly praised the appointment of the co-executive director and regarded this leadership adjustment as a “major change” that will drive Ethereum into the next stage.Many builders are optimistic that 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 expressed surprise at Danny Ryan’s failure to take up the EF main leadership position.But just the same weekend, while EF announced its new co-executive director, Danny Ryan also announced his joining Etherealize as a United Chuang.Even once-critical voices, such as Evan Van Ness, admitted Vitalik’s decision afterwards; he believes that while he had expected to see Danny play a bigger role in EF, the new co-executive director calmed down previous leadership controversies with solid qualifications and experience.
Overall, the discussions within the community, although intense, eventually came together into a constructive consensus around the transition period of Aya Miyaguchi’s departure.Community members recognized Aya’s 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 the new Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, and hopes that the new leadership structure will respond to the shortcomings in communication and technology collaboration in the past.
Ecological reconstruction: The rise of Etherealize
Previously, Danny Ryan was widely expected to take over the position of EF executive director directly.However, unexpectedly, Danny Ryan did not return to EF, but returned to the Etherealize ecosystem as the co-founder of Etherealize.This choice also hints another possibility: to form a new organization similar to EF to make up for the shortcomings of EF and focus on promoting the real implementation of Ethereum technology and business potential.
As Danny Ryan said, “Instead of talking about Ethereum’s vision, it is better to show how institutions can make practical use of Ethereum.” Guided by this concept, he chose Etherealize – a platform focusing on the commercial expansion and marketing of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Core Mission
Etherealize is not just a marketing tool, but a multi-dimensional platform. Its core mission is reflected in the following 4 aspects:
-
Institutional access and productization: Just like BlackRock’s $1 billion on-chain US Treasury and Franklin Templeton’s mutual funds, Etherealize provides traditional financial institutions with “full escort from concept design to on-chain deployment”, significantly reducing institutional trial and error costs.
-
Technology and market integration: connect R&D (R&D) and business expansion (BD), quickly iterate zero-knowledge proof, privacy module and cross-rollup bridging solutions, and instant verification and optimization in real-time in real customer environments.
-
Policy Advocacy and Regulatory Dialogue: Deeply participate in the Policy Roundtable and Senate Blockchain Hearing, and release a series of reports on “Interpretation of the Popular Version of Regulatory Policy”, analyzing issues such as stablecoin legislation, tokenized securities rules and market structure reform.The recently promoted “Regulatory Sandbox Certification Program” has attracted Swiss FINMA and Singapore MAS to participate in the joint construction.
-
Feedback and transparency: Etherealize data dashboard tracks core indicators on-chain (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 Insight” report directly transforms customer practical pain points into protocol-level optimization needs.
Dual-track architecture
Etherealize has been officially split into a dual legal entity structure to simultaneously promote market delivery and ecological governance.
Etherealize Inc. (a Class C company registered in Delaware) focuses on “providing end-to-end tokenization services, Layer2 deployment solutions and compliance toolchains for banks and asset management institutions.” Its core mission is to lower the threshold for traditional financial institutions’ on-chain 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”, focusing on maintaining the credible neutrality and regulatory adaptability of Ethereum.
This dual-track model promotes Etherealize to complete leapfrog development within the first three months of operation: the for-profit department successfully implemented the mutual fund projects on BlackRock and Franklin Templeton; the non-profit department simultaneously carried out regulatory roundtables and piloted a privacy protection plan based on zero-knowledge proof.The synergistic effect of “business closed loop + ecological foundation building” has pushed Ethereum’s institutionalization process into an accelerated stage.
Etherealize Origin
The concept of Etherealize was originally derived from the launch of the Ethereum ETF on July 23, 2024, when Grant Hummer observed that although the launch of the ETF marks Wall Street’s recognition of Ethereum, the actual adoption effect is much lower than expected.The gap prompted him to work with investor James Fickle to find a leader with both Wall Street experience and Ethereum knowledge, ultimately locking 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 not only requires the dissemination of ideas, but also requires the provision of physical tools with seamless access.To this end, Vivek Raman introduced his close friend Zach Obront to refactor the technical foundation as co-founder.Finally, Danny Ryan joined as Chief Strategy Officer as the last Lianchuang.
2025 Strategic Blueprint
In an interview with Bankless and DeFi Dad, Danny Ryan shared Etherealize’s near-term plan, which is the core roadmap for 2025:
-
Q2 launches an institution-level SDK with integrated hosting interfaces, compliance reviews and Gas fee optimization modules
-
Q3 Launches the pilot of enterprise wallets based on Noir zero-knowledge compiler
-
Q4 Entering the Asia-Pacific and European markets, customizing regulatory adaptation solutions through cooperation with Singapore Digital Port, Swiss Crypto Valley, etc.
Asked about the project roadmap and future challenges, Danny and Vivek elaborated on their coping strategies:
Ethereum vs. Solana: Institutions vs. Undercurrent
The traditional financial community has long focused on Ethereum and its second-tier ecosystem. Compared with Solana, its technology application has been launched earlier and its market acceptance is higher.According to RWA.xyz data, Ethereum and its second-tier ecosystem account for more than 50% of the value of RWA.
In cooperation with traditional financial institutions, since Ethereum was launched earlier, its ecosystem has established numerous cooperation cases:
-
Fidelity: Fidelity established Fidelity Digital Assets as early as 2018, and began to lay out digital assets and provide Bitcoin custody services.In 2019, Tom Jessop, head of its cryptocurrency department, expressed his strong interest in Ethereum, pointing out that the company has invested a lot of resources in the Ethereum field.In 2024, the Ethereum Spot ETF (FETH) will be launched.
-
JPMorgan: In 2016, JPMorgan launched Quorum, an open source enterprise ledger based on Ethereum technology, which supports projects such as cross-bank information networks and JPM Coin.In November 2022, in Project Guardian, which cooperated with the Singapore Central Bank, the first DeFi cross-currency transaction was completed using the Polygon network.
-
Goldman Sachs: In 2021, Goldman Sachs served as a co-lead underwriter when it issued 100 million euro digital bonds at the European Investment Bank (EIB), and used Ethereum smart contracts tokenize securities and cash.
-
HSBC: Through its HSBC Orion platform, HSBC uses distributed ledger technology to support bond issuance, digital gold and custody services, and at the same time realizes the interconnection of private chains and public chains such as Ethereum.
-
UBS: In November 2024, UBS Asset Management launched its first tokenized investment fund issued on the Ethereum network – “UBS USD Money Market Fund Token” (uMINT), converting fund shares into on-chain tokens.At the beginning of 2025, UBS demonstrated the experimental results of Ethereum’s second-layer zkSync, using zero-knowledge proof technology to achieve split transactions of some gold investment products, and migrated retail gold products to the zkSync “Validium” network.
By contrast, Solana cooperates less with traditional financial institutions.Meanwhile, RWA on Solana is mainly concentrated in stablecoins, with the proportion of its non-stablecoin assets being lower than Ethereum.At present, mainstream treasury bonds and other fund projects are shown in the figure, and 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-tier ecosystem also carries a large number of RWA assets, far exceeding other public chain projects.Although 6 Ethereum ETFs have been approved on the market, Solana-related ETFs have not been approved yet.But this year mainstream institutions such as BUIDL, a subsidiary of BlackRock, and BENJI, of Franklin Templeton, have been launched in Solana one after another, and competition is becoming increasingly fierce.EF has also established a clear strategic layout to meet challenges, and the establishment of Etheralize further highlights Ethereum’s positive attitude in seeking institutional cooperation.
Summarize
As _gabrielShapir0 pointed out in the comments: “Etherealize can basically be regarded as the second EF, a cultural and strategic diversion that makes Ethereum more social and diverse.”
In fact, Etherealize marks a critical political moment in Ethereum’s history—and during which cultural differences begin to emerge.Therefore, Ethereum’s L0 will pay more attention to social decentralization in the future, just as “client diversity” reflects.As a result, a variety of top-level strategic visions of competition have emerged in the market, with each focus on how to promote ETH to future development directions.
Etherealize adopts a two-tier architecture that covers both profitable entities and non-profit organizations, providing greater flexibility for their operations.The two parts perform their duties and work together.Another major advantage is that it is driven by technology and focuses on the product itself, rather than relying solely on business development.It is these traits that make Etherealize an efficient and focused platform for connecting traditional financial institutions.
EF’s recent adjustments and prospects
Despite many challenges, Ethereum has deep advantages that underpin its crypto space—which are often downplayed by its leadership, causing negative criticism to obscure its core narrative.Systematically sorting out these advantages will help establish an objective cognitive framework for Ethereum’s potential.
EF Silviculture Society: Multiple Consulting and Internal Innovation
EF launched Silviculture Society – an informal think tank made up of external experts to provide the foundation with cross-domain advice and multi-angle insights.Think Tank members come from various fields of technology, law, academic and industry. They participate for one year and free of charge, submit confidential opinions to the EF board of directors through special channels to 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 be difficult to attract experts with long-term insights, which will affect the sustainability and professionalism of the recommendations.
-
It is unclear how external suggestions can be truly transformed into internal decision-making, and the transparency and execution of the feedback mechanism need to be tested.
Financial Strategy and Budget Management
In terms of financial management, EF has launched a budget strategy of “spending 15% of the remaining funds per year” to ensure the long-term sustainable operation of funds.According to public data, EF Treasury fiat assets fell from US$1.294 billion in March 2022 to US$784 million in October 2024, while positions denominated in ETH fell by only about 11%.Meanwhile, EF’s annual spending rose from $48 million in 2021 to $135 million in 2023, indicating a growing investment in ecological support, R&D investment and staff salaries.
doubt
-
EF holds a large amount of ETH. If the price of ETH continues to be sluggish, although the decline in ETH positions is limited, a sharp decline in assets denominated in US dollars may indicate hidden dangers in financial health.
-
Although the “15% remaining funds” strategy is attractive, it lacks clear implementation rules. The failure to implement the strategy in the past few years has led to a continuous increase in annual expenditure.
-
The sharp increase in annual spending may reflect inefficient resource allocation or indicate a continued rise in R&D and funding costs.
-
The specific expenditure details and fund use plan have not been fully disclosed, and it is difficult to conduct a comprehensive assessment of the operating conditions.
-
Despite the huge investment, the actual results have not met expectations, showing a disconnect between internal management and market demand.
Going through DeFi and Ecological Innovation
EF announced that it will invest 50,000 ETH to participate in the DeFi project and enter the DeFi ecosystem through the newly established multi-signature wallet.At the same time, the emergence of full-chain asset management tools such as EtherStrategy, as well as discussions on the new governance model of “Second Foundation”, show that EF is exploring diversified innovation models to promote the continuous evolution of the ecosystem.
Questions and questions
-
Taking advantage of DeFi and pledging ETH at the same time may force EF to make statements on sensitive issues such as hard forks in the future, which will in turn affect its positioning as a global neutral platform.
-
The market questioned whether this kind of escapist behavior is in line with the positioning of non-profit institutions and whether it will lead to deviations in resources and strategic focus, thereby affecting the overall ecological stability.
Social Media & Marketing
In response to previous criticisms of insufficient presence in social media, EF has vigorously strengthened its investment in major platforms.Since January this year, EF has reactivated several official accounts and promptly conveyed internal reforms and strategic measures 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 frequent interactions, and strengthened the concept of “Ethereum First” in dialogue with traditional financial and policy makers.
doubt
-
Active performance on social media may only be on superficial PR and cannot solve the problems of internal governance and actual results.
-
There is still uncertainty about the actual effect of marketing promotion and the depth of docking with traditional financial institutions and practical applications.
EF Funding
EF launched two rounds of timely and thematic special funding in 2025 – Pectra’s forward-looking special project and 2025 academic funding, both of which have been closed; at the same time, ESP’s small funding (≤ $30,000, decision-making within about two weeks) and project funding (no capital limit, in-depth collaborative review) continue to be open all year round.
EF Strategic Outlook
After the management adjustment was settled, Vitalik was able to refocus the research; EF immediately synchronized the main directions of the next stage with the community: one is the overall roadmap for forwarding and supplementation by Tomasz, and the other is the privacy roadmap proposed by Vitalik.
Regarding the overall route, the simplified roadmap focuses on three core points:
-
Improve data processing capabilities through blob-based scaling;
-
Improve L1 throughput 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, secondary matters include:
-
Always minting assets on L1
-
Win real-world assets (RWA) and stablecoin markets
-
Improve communication and clarify community and users’ expectations
-
Significantly improve safety standards in a billion-dollar economy
-
Promote goal-driven R&D within the Foundation
At the same time, Vitalik proposed his concept of Ethereum privacy roadmap in the latest article “A maximally simple L1 privacy roadmap (https://ethereum-magicians.org/t/a-maximally-simple-l1-privacy-roadmap/23459)”, covering four key privacy forms: on-chain payment privacy, partial anonymization of in-app activities, chain data reading implicitly and network layer anonymization.
The main roadmap is:
-
Integrate privacy tools such as Railgun and Privacy Pools into mainstream wallets, and enable “blocked balance” and “send from blocked balance” by default;
-
Promote the design of “one address per application” and “spontaneous transactions” with privacy protection are enabled by default;
-
Implement FOCIL and EIP-7701 to simplify zero-replay, relay-free anti-censorship transactions;
-
Introducing TEE-based RPC privacy solutions into wallets in the short term, gradually switching to more cryptographically guaranteed PIR in the future;
-
The wallet connects multiple RPC nodes at the same time (optional hybrid network access) and promotes light client support to reduce metadata leakage;
-
Develop zero-knowledge proof aggregation protocol to compress the Gas cost of privacy transactions;
-
Create a privacy-aware keystore wallet, allowing users to seamlessly upgrade signature algorithms or verification logic between L1/L2 while maintaining privacy.
Conclusion
The Ethereum ecosystem is undergoing a paradigm innovation from the inside out.The introduction of the dual leadership structure has enabled the dispersion of decision-making responsibilities and the complementary between technology and management advantages. At the same time, Viltaik can withdraw from operational practices, focus on cutting-edge research and lead Ethereum.EF some changes, including the split of the research department, the newly appointed research joint, the implementation of pragmatism and efficiency priority, and active participation in DeFi and social media operations, are all good changes, demonstrating the determination to make changes and breakthroughs in the fierce market competition.
The advent 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 organizational structure, positioning and history, and it has failed to meet the urgent needs of the market.Etherealize, specially customized for institutional clients, has effectively made up for EF’s shortcomings with its clear Wall Street service positioning and flexible organizational structure and assisted EF’s work without increasing its burden.
So far, EF and Etherealize have brought organizational innovations and blood exchanges to Ethereum, allowing it to better cope in a more intense competitive environment.The next challenge is about the core challenges of Ethereum’s future: the positioning and narrative of ETH as an asset, the integration of the Ethereum ecosystem, the improvement of performance and experience, etc.These fundamental strategic problems, far from being able to deal with by organizational adjustments or tactical improvements, will become a key touchstone for testing the new generation of leadership.
Although challenges and doubts remain, these changes undoubtedly open up a path for Ethereum to explore new possibilities and mark a new era for the future in the true sense.
