Ethereum Foundation Slashes Workforce by 20% and Budget by 40% — Impact on ETH Price

Key Takeaways

• Approximately 54 employees have been laid off from the Ethereum Foundation, representing roughly 20% of total staff.
• Co-founder Vitalik Buterin disclosed plans to slash the foundation’s yearly budget by 40% starting in 2026.
• A strategic pivot toward leaner operations aims to decrease treasury spending from 15% annually to just 5% by 2030.
• Ethereum currently trades around $1,660, with critical support established at $1,611 and additional downside targets at $1,524.
• Since the start of the year, nine high-ranking EF officials have departed, coinciding with the emergence of Ethlabs, a new research entity.

The Ethereum Foundation has executed a comprehensive organizational overhaul, eliminating approximately 54 positions—roughly one-fifth of its entire workforce—while confirming plans to slash its 2026 operating budget by 40%. The announcement came directly from Ethereum’s co-founder Vitalik Buterin through a detailed blog post published Tuesday.

According to the foundation’s statement, this restructuring represents the culmination of several months of internal strategic planning. The organization has been reorganized into five distinct operational clusters focusing on protocol development, access infrastructure, user experience, community engagement, and institutional relationships. Two supplementary clusters handle operations and executive management functions.

Buterin emphasized that these financial adjustments form part of a broader long-term transformation strategy. The foundation’s objective involves decreasing its annual treasury expenditure from approximately 15% prior to 2026 down to roughly 5% annually following 2030.

“I respect my EF colleagues far too much to pretend that there was not much that is lost,” Buterin stated, openly recognizing the personal impact these workforce reductions have caused.

The organizational changes also involve discontinuing the Privacy and Scaling Explorations division, scaling back Devcon conference operations, and implementing a more focused institutional engagement approach.

High-Level Exits and Mounting Challenges

These staff reductions come on the heels of co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang’s resignation. Her exit brings the total number of senior-level departures since January to nine. Notable figures who have left include former protocol leads Tim Beiko and Josh Stark.

Market analyst Daan Crypto Trades (@DaanCrypto) provided perspective on ETH’s current technical situation via X, highlighting persistent rejection at the $1,750 threshold—corresponding to February’s low point. According to his analysis, bullish momentum requires establishing a higher low near that zone and successfully breaching resistance on subsequent attempts. “If they can’t, this will just start bleeding lower and test that ~$1.5K region again,” he observed, emphasizing the need to see ETH maintain levels above $1,750 for bullish confirmation.

Meanwhile, Ethlabs officially launched Monday as a fresh research and development initiative supporting the Ethereum ecosystem. The organization was established by five former senior-level EF researchers and has secured backing from BitMine, SharpLink, and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin.

Ethereum Price Faces Technical Headwinds

ETH is presently changing hands near $1,660. The cryptocurrency is trading beneath its 20-day, 50-day, and 100-day exponential moving averages, positioned at $1,753, $1,901, and $2,064 respectively.

Ethereum (ETH) Price

The digital asset has experienced $157 million in liquidations over the previous 24-hour period, with long positions accounting for $140 million of that total, based on data from Coinglass.

ETH is now testing the $1,611 support zone following rejection at both the descending trendline and the 20-day EMA. Should this level fail to hold, the next downside target sits at $1,524, with subsequent support zones identified at $1,404 and $1,155.