tl;dr
I’m stepping down from my co-ED position on the EF on the finish of February 2026. Bastian Aue is taking on the co-ED position 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 soar up and down, we’ve by no means been given an excessive amount of certainty. The conviction about Ethereum that comes from a deep understanding of its expertise, 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 appears 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 imagine that Ethereum will stay a pure infrastructure layer for coordination of all these applied sciences interacting.
Open-source LLM fashions usually are not doing badly and can hopefully do higher and higher. Open-source agentic employees have gotten essentially the most thrilling toys for builders and creators since early Ethereum. Essential privateness and safety questions emerge across the new paradigms; the world is altering quick, and among the many adjustments, Ethereum is changing into the underlying infrastructure for verification and monetary transactions. The cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum stays intact, with one of the best of the privateness builders and safety specialists making certain that the community helps individuals protect privateness and entry to important infrastructure.
Ethereum emerged because the clear institutional desire 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, expertise, and jurisdiction danger. I’m wanting ahead to Ethereum exhibiting up on the monetary facilities of the world, with the main institutional Ethereum convention coming to New York this yr.
With the development of AI and progressing integration into the world monetary techniques, there has hardly ever been a extra thrilling time to construct on Ethereum.
Way forward for the EF
It has been necessary for me, over the past yr, to current the position of the EF co-ED as impactful and fascinating, a place the place one could make a significant distinction by empowering individuals 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; we’ve nice expertise that learns shortly and has an important course for 2026. The co-ED place was extraordinarily rewarding, strategically difficult, and introduced me numerous pleasure and inspiration. The help that I acquired from the group was super. I’m pleased with the present state of issues; the roadmap is clearer; the objectives are set; the leaders on the EF grew extra assured about making choices by themselves and proudly owning extra. A very powerful objectives: accelerating decision-making, chatting with youthful generations, bringing new pleasure to the builders’ group, 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 inside and exterior transparency round budgets and construction have both been accomplished or are constantly bettering. Individuals who delivered these adjustments proceed engaged on Ethereum. Increasingly individuals see ETH clearly as a retailer of worth. A few of the adjustments can solely occur unexpectedly. Whereas my capacity 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 corporation that may steadiness long-term objectives and the necessity for change. The EF is exclusive, removed from boring, very resilient, and led by extremely smart individuals.
The start of 2026 makes me very excited in regards to the position 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 growth roadmap, highlighting the long-term path ahead for the Ethereum protocol that the EF Protocol group believes in. It ought to present clear steering 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 effectively 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 one of the best engineers engaged on implementations. Publish-quantum safety has a transparent place within the EF Protocol roadmap.
We’ve got a devoted decentralized AI group delivering requirements, experiments, and options for the agentic financial system ([1], [2]).
We’ve got the ecosystem growth EcoDev group specializing in the success of founders, establishments, and governments constructing on Ethereum. We’ve got a devoted International Coverage Help group. 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 unbelievable work from the groups at ethereum.org and forkcast.org.
One of many main dialogue factors and challenges for the final yr was across the L1–L2 relationship. Vitalik’s current posts search to offer extra readability in regards to the state of affairs that has been noticed for a very long time. L2s prolong or construct on high of Ethereum with varied safety and decentralization trade-offs. L2s select to construct their worth proposition by selecting between dangers and improved UX throughout parameters equivalent to scaling, decentralization, historic state availability, privateness, and many others. We’ve got created the Platform group on the EF and introduced over 20 Ethereum L2s to debate the way forward for scaling, differentiation, and interoperability on the Community Faculty. Groups constructing based mostly rollups, native rollups, and synchronous composability are beginning this yr with clearer visions and a extra targeted method. Lately, main Ethereum rollups have began increasingly more constantly overtaking all AltL1s within the stablecoin and TPS metrics, a pattern that I’m satisfied will proceed.
Whereas we grew to become 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 towards false steps. With a collection of tweets at the start 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 group 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 group has deserved this occasion for years, and I’m very proud that the group brings Devcon to India in 2026.
In 2026, the EF can be significantly better at chatting with the brand new technology of builders. The work of the brand new voices on the EF, and all of the gifted individuals working with founders and media behind the scenes exhibits the brand new power on the EF and it’ll preserve the group excited in 2026, particularly with the motion round agentic AI and Ethereum changing into its go-to belief infrastructure.
The Ethereum All over the place efforts already help the hubs in San Francisco, Lagos, London, Berlin, and Hong Kong. The Educational Secretariat group plans many new college occasions this yr; 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 world wide.
Within the coming weeks, the DeFi coordination group on the EF will publish a weblog submit 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 could possibly be no higher individuals to assist us help the DeFi ecosystem.
Hsiao-Wei stays and continues the trail. Bastian Aue takes on an expanded management position alongside Hsiao-Wei. No matter course they take, they are going to have the help of one of the best expertise in crypto. Your complete EcoDev transformation on the builders, founders, and institutional aspect 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 adjustments quick and in addition led all the main communication adjustments 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 adjustments can occur inside days or even weeks.
My future
My DMs keep open for all of you who want help in connecting with individuals 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 certain that as a rule I’ve acquired worthwhile recommendation from them up to now). I plan to at all times put stress 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 growth and agentic governance. I really feel a lot the identical as I felt once I began Nethermind in 2017. I felt very strongly on the time {that a} massive change was occurring. I knew that Ethereum was going to interchange the monetary techniques and I knew that I had an necessary expertise within the monetary business to make it extra of an evolution moderately than a revolution. I do know now that agentic techniques and AI-assisted discovery are reshaping the world. I’m effectively conscious of the impermanence and even uselessness of a few of the agentic concepts, however it’s the playful experimentation that outlined a lot of the early Ethereum innovation.
I plan to proceed working instantly with founders in frontier tech and Ethereum. I wish to see and help the belief of the imaginative and prescient that I’ve talked about over the past years. It is likely one of the most enjoyable occasions to be a builder on Ethereum.
Thank You
It’s unimaginable to record everybody who helped me, the EF, and Ethereum in 2025. Throughout my time on the EF, I visited over 20 international locations for work and spent a lot time with native communities. I met 1000’s of individuals: builders, financiers, educators, policymakers, creators, researchers, teachers. I cherished all of the phrases of help, powerful questions, and critique coming from you.
I might 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 want to thank Hsiao-Wei and the administration group for shifting quick collectively. Huge due to 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 due to a whole lot 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 needs to be. Thanks a lot; I might by no means have discovered the correct paths with out you.
Thanks to each single particular person on the EF for executing in your beliefs and skills.
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Tomasz
