Five senior contributors have left their full-time roles at the Ethereum Foundation between mid-February and mid-May 2026 — four of them within a roughly four-week window. The departures include researchers, engineers, and a co-executive director, marking one of the biggest leadership shakeups at the EF in recent memory. The exodus comes as the foundation tries to re-anchor its mission with a 38-page Mandate released in March.
The Timeline of Exits
Tomasz Stańczak announced his step-down as co-Executive Director on February 13, after just 11 months in the role. Bastian Aue was named interim co-ED. In the same period, Alex Stokes started an open-ended sabbatical, and Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko moved out of the Protocol Cluster. Dankrad Feist had already shifted to a part-time advisor role in October 2025; he recently left full-time to join Tempo, a Layer-1 backed by Stripe and Paradigm, while staying on as an EF advisor.
On April 16, Josh Stark and Trent Van Epps both announced their exits. Van Epps' last day was April 10, and he remains in the ecosystem via Protocol Guild. He publicly described EF leadership's association with the Milady NFT collection as 'baffling and sad' — a rare public criticism from a departing insider.
The Mandate and Its Reception
The EF released its 38-page Mandate in March, intended to re-anchor the foundation around cypherpunk principles. It establishes the CROPS framework: Ethereum must remain censorship resistant, open source, private, and secure. The document also includes a 'Source Seppuku License' illustration — a pre-existing satirical license — and references a 'walkaway test' and the concept of Ethereum as 'sanctuary technology', though those exact phrases aren't in the public version.
Some claims circulating on X about the departures aren't supported by any primary EF document. But the timing of the exits — right after the Mandate's release — has fueled speculation about internal tensions.
New Faces in Key Roles
Three new co-leads have stepped in: Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik. Their appointments signal a generational shift at the foundation, as the old guard of researchers and protocol specialists moves on. The departures of Feist, Stark, Van Epps, and Stańczak leave significant gaps in both technical and governance expertise.
The foundation hasn't explained why so many exits clustered together. Interim co-ED Bastian Aue faces the immediate challenge of stabilizing the team while the Glamsterdam fork — currently mid-devnet as of May 18 — continues development.
The next concrete milestone is the Glamsterdam fork, which is still in devnet. No hard mainnet date has been set. Meanwhile, the foundation's new co-leads will have to prove they can retain remaining talent and execute on the Mandate's lofty principles — without the people who helped write them.
