Ethereum enters its second decade after a year of upheaval at the foundation

Ethereum marked its 11th year with significant organizational changes at the Ethereum Foundation, reflecting mounting concerns from developers, investors, and community members about the foundation’s pace and approach. This period saw nine senior members, including both co-executive directors, depart the foundation, alongside a 20% workforce reduction. In March 2026, the foundation formalized a new mandate codified in the CROPS framework—Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security—intended to guide all future decisions. A notable aspect of this mandate is the commitment to reduce the foundation’s own influence, facilitating greater decentralization in Ethereum’s ecosystem governance.

As part of this effort, the foundation enabled the spinout of new independent entities—EthLabs, EthereumSystems, and Ethereum Institutional—each targeting distinct areas of ecosystem growth and development. While the foundation continues to steward core protocol research and public goods funding, these spinouts illustrate a deliberate shift toward distributing responsibilities that were formerly centralized. This institutional decentralization mirrors Ethereum’s long-standing protocol-level commitment to eliminating single points of failure, highlighting an evolving governance philosophy as the network ages.

Despite internal upheaval, Ethereum made steady technical progress, notably rolling out the Fusaka upgrade, which introduced PeerDAS, an improvement aimed at enhancing data availability to support layer-2 scalability. Although less prominent than past upgrades like the Merge, Fusaka signals the continued resilience of Ethereum’s development process and its focus on scaling solutions.

Externally, Ethereum’s role within the financial sector expanded substantially over the past year. Traditional financial institutions like BlackRock and JPMorgan deepened their engagement with Ethereum’s ecosystem. BlackRock moved beyond DeFi into products such as staked ether ETFs, and JPMorgan increased its blockchain settlement initiatives. Meanwhile, U.S. spot Ethereum ETFs, available since 2024, attracted more than $11.23 billion in cumulative inflows, underscoring growing institutional demand for Ethereum exposure. This trend demonstrates Ethereum's dual identity as both a decentralized finance platform and increasingly as infrastructure integrated with traditional finance.

In summary, Ethereum’s eleventh year was marked by profound organizational restructuring aimed at decentralizing governance, steady technical advancement, and a deepening integration with conventional financial markets. These developments reflect the foundation’s recognition that its long-term success relies on encouraging a diverse and distributed ecosystem, even as Ethereum solidifies its position as a foundational layer for a new generation of tokenized assets and financial products.