Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation on June 18, marking the second time the foundation’s top leadership has turned over in roughly four months. Her departure leaves Bastian Aue, who stepped into the interim co-ED role after Tomasz Stańczak left in February 2026, as the sole executive director.
Another co-ED walks
Wang’s exit isn’t an isolated event. Former EF contributor Trent Van Epps, who left the foundation in April after five years, has been sounding the alarm about a slow-burning funding crisis. In internal discussions he described an estimated $30 million annual gap — money needed for client teams, researchers, and the coordination groups that keep Ethereum’s protocol upgrades on track.
That gap is getting harder to ignore. The Client Incentive Program (CIP), which gave structured funding to client teams like Geth and Erigon, expired in April with no replacement announced. The EF’s Q1 2026 grants still covered Geth, Erigon, Lighthouse, validator security tooling, cryptography research, and core infrastructure — but the clock is ticking.
The $30 million question
Van Epps flagged quantum-security research and Layer 1 scaling work as long-horizon projects that could suffer if funding visibility shrinks further. The foundation is running a deliberate treasury drawdown policy, aiming to cut annual spending from 15% of its treasury to just 5% by 2030. That’s a long runway, but it means the EF is actively pulling back, not growing.
Total departures in 2026 now sit at roughly 19 people. At least eight senior figures have left in the past five months alone, including Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes. That level of turnover in a small, specialized organization doesn’t inspire confidence.
Client teams feel the pinch
Without a replacement for the CIP, client teams are left guessing about next year’s funding. The $30 million gap covers not just the core client implementations but also the researchers and coordinators who organize network upgrades. Van Epps, who worked on core development coordination and Protocol Guild funding from May 2021 to April 2026, warned that the window to address the shortfall is three to nine months.
ETH was trading near $1,690 at the time of publication, down about 3.3% on the day. The sell-off probably has more to do with macro conditions than internal foundation drama, but the timing doesn’t help.
A leaner foundation?
Bastian Aue is now effectively the foundation’s sole executive director. Whether he’ll hire a new co-ED or restructure the leadership is unclear. The EF hasn’t announced any replacement for the expired CIP, and no new grant cycle has been publicized since Q1.
The drawdown plan buys time, but it also signals that the foundation expects to operate with less — not more — in the years ahead. For the teams building the network’s next upgrade, that’s a question without an answer yet.
