The Ethereum Foundation’s recent budget cuts, staff departures, and restructuring have sparked ongoing community discussion. Joe Lubin, CEO of Consensys and co-founder of Ethereum, told CoinDesk that these changes are not a crisis, but rather the foundation refocusing its scope of responsibilities.
The foundation returns to protocol maintenance.
Lubin stated that the Ethereum Foundation’s responsibilities should be more focused on the network’s core technology and value preservation, rather than undertaking commercialization, ecosystem expansion, or institutional partnerships. He believes that placing business development and foundational infrastructure under the same organization risks conflicts of interest and undermines external trust in its neutrality.
In his view, the foundation needs to maintain a “trustworthy neutrality” position, focusing on the protocol itself, while leaving adoption promotion, institutional integration, and ecosystem growth to other organizations.
The dispute centers on the directional adjustment.
Over the past few weeks, debates over the foundation’s direction have intensified. Some critics argue that Ethereum has been too slow in responding to competitive pressures and improving its market performance, while others have expressed concerns about staff turnover and organizational restructuring.
Lubin believes that some of these concerns stem from misunderstandings about the role of the foundation. According to Etherscan data, Ethereum currently processes around 2 million transactions per day. He states that the current focus of adjustments is to further separate protocol maintenance from commercial development.
AI agent trading is highly anticipated.
Lubin expects that Ethereum will not be dominated by a single entity in the future, but rather will develop multiple core nodes with distinct roles, each driving progress in different areas. He also refutes the claim that Ethereum is entering a downturn, stating that the industry is merely experiencing a temporary diversion of funding and attention toward AI narratives.
He believes that Ethereum's continued efforts over the past few years to scale its infrastructure are preparing the ground for a new wave of adoption. Potential directions include autonomous AI agents executing transactions on-chain and continued institutional adoption of Ethereum-based infrastructure. According to him, the foundation has narrowed its scope precisely to concentrate resources on building capabilities at the protocol layer.