Jul 30, 2026, 1:52 p.m.
4 min read
Summary
- Ethereum's 11th year was defined by a dramatic transformation of the Ethereum Foundation, with leadership departures, layoffs, a new CROPS mandate, and the spinout of EthLabs, Ethereum Systems, and Ethereum Institutional as the organization sought to decentralize its own role in the ecosystem.
- Despite the internal overhaul, Ethereum continued advancing technically and institutionally, rolling out the Fusaka upgrade while attracting deeper Wall Street adoption through BlackRock, JPMorgan, growing tokenized assets, and more than $11.23 billion in cumulative inflows into U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs.
On July 30, 2015, Ethereum launched with an ambitious vision: to become a decentralized world computer. Eleven years later, the blockchain has evolved into the base layer for billions of dollars in tokenized assets and the settlement layer underpinning much of decentralized finance. Yet as Ethereum enters its second decade, the story is no longer just about the network itself. It is also about the institution that has helped steward it since the beginning, and how that institution has been fundamentally reshaped over the last year.
Few periods in Ethereum's history have brought as much change to the Ethereum Foundation as the past year has. What began as mounting frustration from developers, investors and community members over the foundation's pace of execution ultimately became the catalyst for the most significant organizational overhaul since Ethereum's launch. Leadership changes, staff departures and structural reforms have transformed not only how the foundation operates, but also the nature of its role within an ecosystem that has grown far beyond any single organization.
The criticism had been building for months. As competing blockchains moved aggressively to try to attract developers and users, some members of Ethereum's community questioned whether the foundation had become too inward-looking and too slow to adapt. Calls for greater transparency, clearer priorities and stronger execution grew louder, placing unprecedented scrutiny on an organization that has traditionally preferred to work in silence behind the scenes.
That pressure culminated in sweeping internal changes. Over the past 7 months, nine senior members departed the Ethereum Foundation, including co-executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, whose resignations marked the end of an experiment in dual leadership that had itself been introduced as part of an earlier restructuring effort. The foundation also reduced its workforce by 20% through layoffs, underscoring a broader effort to redefine its mission and focus resources more deliberately.
The reorganization wasn't simply about changing leadership. In March, the foundation published its first formal mandate, effectively a manifesto for how it intends to operate going forward. At its core is a framework known as CROPS: Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy and Security, which the foundation described as the non-negotiable principles that should guide every technical and organizational decision. The document also makes another notable commitment: that the foundation's long-term success should be measured by its ability to reduce its own influence over Ethereum, reflecting a belief that the ecosystem should increasingly stand on its own rather than depend on a single institution to guide it.
That philosophy has become visible in the emergence of new independent entities that have spun out of the organization, including EthLabs, EthereumSystems and Ethereum Institutional, each designed to focus on different aspects of ecosystem development. While the foundation remains a central steward of protocol research and public-goods funding, the spinouts reflect a conscious move toward distributing responsibilities that were once concentrated under one roof.
The timing is fitting. Ethereum has always championed decentralization at the protocol level, eliminating single points of failure through distributed consensus. Now, eleven years after genesis, that same principle is increasingly being applied to its institutions.
In the same period, Ethereum's technical roadmap has continued moving forward. The activation of the Fusaka upgrade demonstrated that the network's development process remained resilient. At the heart of the upgrade is PeerDAS, an advance in data availability designed to make layer-2s efficient. While unlikely to generate the same public attention as the network’s most well-known upgrade, the Merge, Fusaka represented another important milestone in Ethereum's scaling strategy.
Amid Ethereum’s internal changes, Wall Street's relationship with the network has changed dramatically over the past year. What was once viewed primarily as the infrastructure for decentralized finance is increasingly becoming infrastructure for traditional finance as well.
Asset management giant BlackRock has continued to expand into the Ethereum ecosystem, dipping its toes in Ethereum DeFi, and launching staked ether ETFs, while JPMorgan deepened its blockchain-based settlement initiatives. Together, these efforts illustrate a broader institutional shift toward using Ethereum as the base layer for tokenized real-world assets, drawn by its security, composability and mature developer ecosystem.
TradFi’s growing acceptance of Ethereum is also evident in the markets. Since their launch in 2024, spot U.S. Ethereum spot exchange-traded funds (ETFs) have accumulated more than $11.23 billion in net inflows, reflecting steadily increasing institutional demand for exposure to ETH. Just as importantly, institutions are no longer limiting their relationship with Ethereum to holding its native asset. They are increasingly issuing financial products directly on the network itself.
That contrast may ultimately define Ethereum's eleventh year. Internally, the ecosystem has experienced one of the most consequential periods of introspection in its history, forcing its leading institution to rethink its structure, leadership and purpose. Externally, Ethereum has never appeared more firmly embedded within the global financial system.
For much of its first decade, Ethereum's challenge was proving that decentralized infrastructure could work. Its second decade begins with a different challenge: ensuring that the institutions surrounding that infrastructure can evolve without compromising the decentralized principles that made Ethereum possible in the first place.
AI Disclaimer: Parts of this article were generated with the assistance from AI tools and reviewed by our editorial team to ensure accuracy and adherence to our standards. For more information, see CoinDesk's full AI Policy.
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Anvil: The Missing Collateral Layer
Anvil: The Missing Collateral Layer
Anvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.
Jul 29, 2026
Anvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.
Why it matters:
Anvil is a shared on-chain collateral layer built on a programmable letter of credit: reserve assets as a guarantee -no loan, no interest, keep custody & yield.