Ethereum Foundation to Cut Budget 40% and Reduce Headcount

The Ethereum Foundation is moving ahead with a broad pullback, according to CoinDesk. The organization said it will cut its budget by about 40% this year and shift to a leaner "endowment-style" operating model. Cofounder Vitalik Buterin said the long-term objective is to bring annual spending down to roughly 5% of treasury assets after 2030. He wrote that the foundation's annual spend before 2026 is expected to be around 15% of remaining treasury assets, with the ratio tapering over the following years toward about 5% after 2030. On the same day the budget plan was announced, the foundation confirmed a 20% workforce reduction. Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang has also departed. Since January, nine senior members have left the Ethereum Foundation, underscoring an ongoing period of internal adjustment. Buterin acknowledged the downsizing required difficult choices and will include departures of senior engineers with long involvement in Ethereum development. The foundation said it aims to lower costs while continuing to fund support for Ethereum's future roadmap. The foundation also outlined a series of program cuts. It plans to gradually wind down its Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) unit, scale back institutional partnership efforts, and make Devcon smaller and more cost-effective. On the technical front, it intends to shift more work to specialized client teams and introduce AI-assisted formal verification to reduce certain development and auditing costs. Looking further out, Buterin reiterated his preference for Ethereum to enter a "streamlined and stable" phase once the current roadmap is complete, with protocol work concentrating on security patches and a limited set of high-impact upgrades rather than continuous feature expansion. For markets, the combination of budget contraction and leadership turnover signals a reallocation of resources and reduced nonessential spending at Ethereum's core organization. The foundation said the budget adjustment, layoffs, and Wang's departure were all disclosed the same day, taking the number of senior departures since January to nine.