Since 2026, the ETA Foundation has continued to promote organizational restructuring. After months of dispute over the implementation of the rhythm, governance and technical priorities, the organization began to shrink its responsibilities, adjust its management and gradually shift some of its work to new organizations in the ecology.

At the beginning of the year, the controversy was driving the organization to turn

Developers, investors and some members of the Taifung community have previously consistently criticized the slow pace of the Foundation ' s advance and the excessive bias of the route towards the Layer 2 expansion, which does not fully take into account the improvement of the network itself.

In February, Co-Executive Director Tomasz Starinczak announced his departure. A few weeks later, the Foundation released a new job description document, setting out the principles of CROPS as its core work, including resistance, resilience, openness, privacy and security. At the same time, the document redefines the role of the Foundation, i.e., in favour of longer-term custodians rather than the main builder or overall coordinator of the ecology.

Several core members left.

Separations continued to expand following management adjustments. In the following months, a total of nine senior officials, researchers and managers left the Foundation. This became one of the most intense periods in the 12-year history of the Foundation.

These departures have also triggered discussions about the future direction of the Foundation. However, according to the management of the Foundation, this is not an organizational decline, but part of a larger reorganization.

Retrenchment and budget compression in June

Reorganization accelerated significantly in June. Shortly after the resignation of Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-Executive Director, the Foundation announced the largest round of adjustments to date.

  • Abolition of approximately one fifth of staff
  • 54 positions cancelled
  • Annual operating budget cut by approximately 40 per cent

The Foundation stated that this was intended to streamline the organizational structure and enhance financial sustainability. As a result of the restructuring, the remaining team was reclassified into five core operating groups, concentrating on those tasks that the Foundation considered to be best supported by itself.

New institutions take over some ecological functions

As the Foundation contracted, a number of new institutions began to take on some of the tasks that they had originally led.

Among them, ETHLabs is supported by a number of large ETH Treasury companies with the objective of accelerating protocol research, ecological coordination and product development. Ethereum Informational, published in July, focuses on enterprises, management institutions and not-for-profit organizations using the ETA, providing mainly research, education and standard-setting support.

In addition, the newly disassembled EthSystems opted for corporate operations, positioning itself to build a privacy trading infrastructure for financial institutions using the Ethers.

On the whole, the 2026 round of change constituted the deepest reorganization of the organization since the establishment of the Etherak Foundation. Previously, community criticism around governance and technical priorities led to the Foundation ' s downsizing, re-establishment of responsibilities and the entry of more independent institutions into the protocol research, institutional adoption and infrastructure-building chain.