Ethereum Foundation Shrinks While ETH’s Biggest Holders Fund Their Own Lab

By Isaac • June 24, 2026 5:07 pm •

The Ethereum Foundation is getting smaller. On June 23, 2026, CoinDesk reported the foundation announced a roughly 40% budget cut and laid off about 20% of its workforce.

That 20% reduction eliminated 54 positions.

It landed in a week that started on a very different note. Days earlier, five former Ethereum Foundation researchers launched an independent nonprofit called EthLabs, funded by some of the biggest names holding ETH.

So the network’s core foundation is contracting at the exact moment outside research groups are stepping up. That is the real story here.

This is crisis for EF. First thing companies do for crisis management is cutting down costs.

EF is reducing its annual budget by roughly