Ethereum (ETH) News: Foundation cuts and departures aren’t a crisis, Joe Lubin says
Ethereum (ETH) News: Foundation cuts and departures aren’t a crisis, Joe Lubin says
Publish Date: 2026-06-07 14:03:00
Source Domain: www.coindesk.com
Ethereum Foundation budget cuts, staff departures and leadership changes have fueled weeks of criticism from parts of the blockchain’s community, but Joe Lubin, who was involved in its creation and is now CEO of software developer Consensys, said the moves are a necessary evolution, not a crisis.
Lubin, who has no role at the foundation, told CoinDesk that the organization’s role should be narrower, more focused on stewarding the network’s core technology and values, while other organizations take responsibility for adoption, institutional engagement and ecosystem growth.
“It is important that the Ethereum Foundation be credibly neutral above reproach,” Lubin said in an interview. “The opportunity for conflicts of interest between the business side and the builders is just not a credibly neutral way to run your decentralized protocol ecosystem.”
The comments come after weeks of debate over the foundation’s direction. Critics have questioned whether the organization, often known by its initials, has moved quickly enough to address competitive threats and improve Ethereum’s market position, while others have raised concerns about staff departures and restructuring.
Lubin said many of those concerns stem from a misunderstanding of what the foundation is supposed to do for the blockchain, which handles about 2 million transactions a day, according to Etherscan data.
“What’s happening at the EF is cleaning that up,” he said, referring to efforts to separate protocol stewardship from commercialization and business development.
According to Lubin, Ethereum’s future will be shaped by multiple organizations rather than a single dominant institution.
“I think it’ll be clear that there’ll be a handful of major nodes that are stewards of the Ethereum ecosystem and leading in different niches or different specialties in the Ethereum ecosystem,” he said.
That model differs from other blockchains, where protocol development and commercial strategy are often housed under the same…
