The ETA Foundation announced a reduction of 54 employees, approximately 20 per cent of the total, and completed a round of organizational restructuring that lasted for months. According to the Foundation, this is intended to streamline the team structure and focus resources to advance the key tasks ahead.

Reorganization around the March document

This round of adjustments goes hand in hand with the Mandate released by the Foundation in March this year and the new fund management policy. The Foundation stated that, following the reorganization, the existing organizational structure, work content and staffing would be better suited to implement the follow-up priorities.

Under the new arrangement, the Foundation will henceforth work around five core clusters, each covering the Protocol Layer, the Access Layer, the User Layer, the Community Level and the Institutional Level, with a separate support direction for operations and management.

For work line read five core clusters

In its blog, the Foundation indicated that the objectives, the way in which the evaluation was conducted and the internal structure of the different areas of work were not the same, and that there was therefore a need to recategorize teams by function. The new architecture is intended to move the lines forward around clearer results.

  • Protocol Layer
  • Access Layer
  • User, community and institutional levels

The Foundation did not disclose more details of the post reductions in this note, but stressed that the reorganization had ended.

Seniors and researchers have recently left in succession.

Prior to this reduction, there were a number of departures of senior and core researchers from the Ether Fountain Foundation. The Joint Implementation Director Hsiao-Wei Wang left last week; the former Joint Implementation Director, Tomasz Stanczak, left in February of this year; and the Fellow Dankrad Feist moved to the Stripe Stabilized Currency Block Chain project last year, Tempo.

Vitalik Buterin has forecast last month that the team will be further streamlined. In his latest statement, he said that he would not pretend that the adjustment had not lost significant talent, and thanked the outgoing members for their past contributions to the Foundation and the Etherak ecology.

Buterin also stated that the past few years had not been easy for Etherak, but he still believed that the conditions for its continued development were in place, both within the foundation and outside the ecology, as it was adapting to change.

New research institute Ethlabs started

Just this Monday, Ethlabs, a not-for-profit research and development agency created by researchers from the former Etherwood Foundation, was inaugurated. It is supported by companies related to the Taifung Treasury, such as Bitmine Immersion Technologies and Sharplink.

Early on, Ethlabs will focus on improving the connection between the institution and the Ether. This also means that part of the research and ecological promotion work that was originally undertaken within the Foundation may be carried over more from outside organizations in the future.