tl;dr
I’m stepping down from my co-ED function on the EF on the finish of February 2026. Bastian Aue is taking up the co-ED function alongside Hsiao-Wei. The long run is shiny for builders, for Ethereum, for the EF, and for me.
Way forward for Ethereum
As competing concepts emerge and fail and the markets leap up and down, now we have by no means been given an excessive amount of certainty. The conviction about Ethereum that comes from a deep understanding of its know-how, its governance, its that means for the longer term, and the values we share will at all times make us converge intermittently, even when our curiosities drive our explorations very removed from the canonical paths.
For a very long time, I’ve been exploring what the way forward for Ethereum seems to be like. We’re witnessing the transition of monetary infrastructure to Ethereum, and the emergence of automated, agentic interactions. Very quickly, we are going to witness robots, new types of governance, and AI healthcare and training. I consider that Ethereum will stay a pure infrastructure layer for coordination of all these applied sciences interacting.
Open-source LLM fashions should not doing badly and can hopefully do higher and higher. Open-source agentic staff have gotten essentially the most thrilling toys for builders and creators since early Ethereum. Vital privateness and safety questions emerge across the new paradigms; the world is altering quick, and among the many modifications, Ethereum is changing into the underlying infrastructure for verification and monetary transactions. The cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum stays intact, with the very best of the privateness builders and safety specialists making certain that the community helps folks protect privateness and entry to important infrastructure.
Ethereum emerged because the clear institutional choice in 2025. Dashboards present Ethereum’s rising market share in stablecoins and RWA exercise. Ethereum is seen because the lowest-risk chain. Credible neutrality, decentralization, and no downtime since genesis all current establishments with an infrastructure with uniquely low counterparty, know-how, and jurisdiction threat. I’m trying ahead to Ethereum exhibiting up on the monetary facilities of the world, with the main institutional Ethereum convention coming to New York this 12 months.
With the development of AI and progressing integration into the world monetary techniques, there has not often been a extra thrilling time to construct on Ethereum.
Way forward for the EF
It has been vital for me, during the last 12 months, to current the function of the EF co-ED as impactful and fascinating, a place the place one could make a significant distinction by empowering folks of extraordinary expertise and dedication, each on the EF and extra broadly within the Ethereum ecosystem.
We’ve got managed to ship change on the EF quick; now we have nice expertise that learns shortly and has an amazing path for 2026. The co-ED place was extraordinarily rewarding, strategically difficult, and introduced me quite a lot of pleasure and inspiration. The help that I obtained from the neighborhood was large. I’m proud of the present state of issues; the roadmap is clearer; the targets are set; the leaders on the EF grew extra assured about making selections by themselves and proudly owning extra. A very powerful targets: accelerating decision-making, chatting with youthful generations, bringing new pleasure to the builders’ neighborhood, speaking extra overtly on social media and podcasts, changing into extra open to establishments, supporting founders, establishing treasury insurance policies, strengthening native hubs and communities, introducing compensation coverage, bringing extra readability to the L1–L2 relationship, creating extra inner and exterior transparency round budgets and construction have both been accomplished or are constantly enhancing. Individuals who delivered these modifications proceed engaged on Ethereum. Increasingly folks see ETH clearly as a retailer of worth. Among the modifications can solely occur abruptly. Whereas my capability to execute independently on the EF diminishes over time, my time on the group in 2026 would really feel increasingly more like simply staying round to move the baton. The EF is in a wholesome state of a company that may steadiness long-term targets and the necessity for change. The EF is exclusive, removed from boring, very resilient, and led by very smart folks.
The start of 2026 makes me very excited in regards to the function the EF can play in the way forward for Ethereum. Very quickly, we plan to launch a proposal for a merged LEAN Ethereum and core improvement roadmap, highlighting the long-term path ahead for the Ethereum protocol that the EF Protocol workforce believes in. It ought to present clear steerage and a setup for coordination in 2026 and past. After delivering two community upgrades in 2025 and with the help of coordination groups from the EF, core devs are nicely positioned to maintain transport important enhancements on time.
We’ve got a really clear quantum technique, with the highest quantum safety researchers finalizing the specs and the very best engineers engaged on implementations. Publish-quantum safety has a transparent place within the EF Protocol roadmap.
We’ve got a devoted decentralized AI workforce delivering requirements, experiments, and options for the agentic financial system ([1], [2]).
We’ve got the ecosystem improvement EcoDev workforce specializing in the success of founders, establishments, and governments constructing on Ethereum. We’ve got a devoted World Coverage Help workforce. We’re automating increasingly more of our efforts through the use of AI for coordination. Communication in regards to the roadmaps, use circumstances, and purposes is far clearer, with incredible work from the groups at ethereum.org and forkcast.org.
One of many main dialogue factors and challenges for the final 12 months was across the L1–L2 relationship. Vitalik’s current posts search to supply extra readability in regards to the scenario that has been noticed for a very long time. L2s prolong or construct on high of Ethereum with numerous safety and decentralization trade-offs. L2s select to construct their worth proposition by selecting between dangers and improved UX throughout parameters comparable to scaling, decentralization, historic state availability, privateness, and so forth. We’ve got created the Platform workforce on the EF and introduced over 20 Ethereum L2s to debate the way forward for scaling, differentiation, and interoperability on the Community College. Groups constructing based mostly rollups, native rollups, and synchronous composability are beginning this 12 months with clearer visions and a extra targeted method. Not too long ago, main Ethereum rollups have began increasingly more constantly overtaking all AltL1s within the stablecoin and TPS metrics, a development that I’m satisfied will proceed.
Whereas we turned extra open to purposes and institutional area, we remained centered round cypherpunk values with teams like Vitalik’s Silviculture Society advising senior leaders on rising dangers and warning in opposition to false steps. With a collection of tweets in the beginning of 2026, Vitalik set a tone for respecting the significance of what’s elementary to the EF’s existence. The work of PSE and Kohaku focuses these days on utilized privateness. The Protocol workforce dedicates extra effort than ever to safety and censorship resistance with FOCIL and the Trillion Greenback Safety program.
I’m extraordinarily enthusiastic about Devcon Mumbai bringing the world’s blockchain thought leaders and founders to work collectively on Ethereum. The Indian neighborhood has deserved this occasion for years, and I’m very proud that the workforce brings Devcon to India in 2026.
In 2026, the EF can be a lot better at chatting with the brand new technology of builders. The work of the brand new voices on the EF, and all of the proficient folks working with founders and media behind the scenes reveals the brand new power on the EF and it’ll maintain the neighborhood excited in 2026, particularly with the motion round agentic AI and Ethereum changing into its go-to belief infrastructure.
The Ethereum In all places efforts already help the hubs in San Francisco, Lagos, London, Berlin, and Hong Kong. The Educational Secretariat workforce plans many new college occasions this 12 months; the pop-up cities concept maintains momentum and the scene will get higher and higher organized; new builders and long-term thought leaders meet and construct all over the world.
Within the coming weeks, the DeFi coordination workforce on the EF will publish a weblog put up with their plans and roadmap. I’m extraordinarily excited in regards to the expertise that we delivered to the EF to assist with the DeFi coordination. There may very well be no higher folks to assist us help the DeFi ecosystem.
Hsiao-Wei stays and continues the trail. Bastian Aue takes on an expanded management function alongside Hsiao-Wei. No matter path they take, they’ll have the help of the very best expertise in crypto. All the EcoDev transformation on the builders, founders, and institutional facet was delivered to the EF by James Smith, who continues on his mission. Coverage help and long-term work proceed beneath the nice management of Bastian Aue and Tju Liang. Josh Stark has an distinctive expertise for executing operational modifications quick and likewise led all the main communication modifications on social media that occurred in 2025. Engineers and the researchers within the Protocol cluster work extra intently collectively and confidently set roadmaps for the longer term and deal with the hardest technological challenges. The EF is the place the place issues transfer quick, and modifications can occur inside days or perhaps weeks.
My future
My DMs keep open for all of you who want help in connecting with folks on the EF or discussing the imaginative and prescient and technique of Ethereum. I’ll stay out there for the EF management, ought to they ever really feel they want recommendation (though I’m positive that most of the time I’ve obtained worthwhile recommendation from them up to now). I plan to at all times put strain on the Ethereum ecosystem to maneuver at tempo.
I’ll proceed touring and dealing with native communities and serving to companies construct on Ethereum. I plan to behave extra as a core dev, a hands-on product builder and amongst different issues, work on the agentic core improvement and agentic governance. I really feel a lot the identical as I felt after I began Nethermind in 2017. I felt very strongly on the time {that a} huge change was taking place. I knew that Ethereum was going to interchange the monetary techniques and I knew that I had an vital expertise within the monetary business to make it extra of an evolution relatively than a revolution. I do know now that agentic techniques and AI-assisted discovery are reshaping the world. I’m nicely conscious of the impermanence and even uselessness of among the agentic concepts, however it’s the playful experimentation that outlined a lot of the early Ethereum innovation.
I plan to proceed working immediately with founders in frontier tech and Ethereum. I need to see and help the conclusion of the imaginative and prescient that I’ve talked about during the last years. It is among the most enjoyable occasions to be a builder on Ethereum.
Thank You
It’s unattainable to checklist everybody who helped me, the EF, and Ethereum in 2025. Throughout my time on the EF, I visited over 20 nations for work and spent a lot time with native communities. I met 1000’s of individuals: builders, financiers, educators, policymakers, creators, researchers, lecturers. I liked all of the phrases of help, powerful questions, and critique coming from you.
I’d like to wholeheartedly thank the EF board for taking the daring step of bringing me on to affix Hsiao-Wei as a co-ED. I wish to thank Hsiao-Wei and the administration workforce for shifting quick collectively. Large because of Bastian Aue, Josh Stark, and Tju Liang for bringing a lot emotional intelligence and facilitating considerate discussions when going through essentially the most troublesome issues. Thanks, Joe Schweitzer, for reviewing numerous podcasts and serving to us all attain a broad viewers when speaking about the way forward for Ethereum.
Large because of a whole bunch of Ethereum leaders reaching out to me in March and April 2025, telling me about each single factor that wanted consideration and sharing their views on what the EF technique ought to be. Thanks a lot; I’d by no means have discovered the proper paths with out you.
Thanks to each single particular person on the EF for executing in your beliefs and abilities.
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Tomasz
