Ethereum Foundation Leadership Reshuffle: Strategic Game Between Idealism and Market Reality

In March 2025, the Ethereum Foundation announced significant leadership changes: Aya Miyagotchi stepped down as Executive Director to assume the role of Chair, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak were appointed as the new Co-Executive Directors, and former researcher Danny Ryan joined Etherealize.

This reform is not only a personnel adjustment but also a strategic game surrounding the future of Ethereum. For a long time, Aya has been promoting the idealized vision of "Infinite Garden." However, as competition intensifies and network issues emerge, the community is questioning its conservative strategy.

EF is trying to strike a balance between idealism and market realities by adjusting its leadership. This article will explore the effectiveness of its strategic transformation from three dimensions: EF's organizational structure changes, Etherealize's positioning, and EF's recent adjustments and outlook.

Dual Leadership: New Pattern of Rights and Responsibilities

Aya term

Since 2018, Aya Miyaguchi has served as the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, coinciding with Ethereum's transition from proof of work to proof of stake.

Strategically, Aya advocates for a "subtraction philosophy", avoiding EF from becoming a centralized power agency, and distributing opportunities and responsibilities to the community. EF upholds the values of openness, neutrality, and decentralization, avoiding the pursuit of profit or aggressive marketing.

Internally, Aya has led the establishment of multiple new teams and projects. For example, the EF Fellowship program launched in 2022 supports emerging community builders and promotes the "next billion" vision. New conference formats like Devconnect, which started in 2021, reflect EF's new attempts in community building.

EF architecture and recent changes

The Ethereum Foundation, as a non-profit organization, has an internal "team community" structure. The foundation supports numerous semi-autonomous teams that operate independently while collaborating under shared values.

The EF organizational structure is divided into four major sections: protocol research and development, ecosystem development, operational support, and privacy and scalability exploration. Each section operates independently while coordinating with the Protocol Guild and Protocol Support teams, collaborating with external communities, research institutions, and development teams.

The foundation plays a bridging role in cross-team collaboration, such as organizing client interoperability workshops, promoting network upgrades, and hosting global events. The EF management avoids micromanagement and encourages each team to "take responsibility independently."

The research team will undergo significant changes from the end of 2024 to the beginning of 2025. The EF research department is reorganized into five dedicated teams: applied research, consensus development, cryptography, protocol security, and incentive mechanisms, to enhance research and development efficiency and transparency. Alex Stokes and Barnabé Monnot will serve as co-heads of research.

The PSE team focuses on research in zero-knowledge proofs and privacy technologies, having independently established an interdisciplinary "team community" model. They promote the evolution of the Ethereum network with a balance of "privacy and scalability" through workshops, summer camps, and testnets. In 2024, the team underwent a significant reorganization, essentially "restarting".

After the latest personnel changes, the EF management structure is as follows: Aya is appointed as Chairman to promote strategic cooperation and maintain relationships; Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz serve as Co-Executive Directors to jointly manage; Barnabé Monnot and Alex Stokes are Co-Heads of Research; Tju Liang Chua is the General Counsel; Bastian and Josh Stark are responsible for management and operations.

Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz: The Dual Engines of Technology and Management

EF introduces a dual leadership structure, appointing two executive directors with strong technical backgrounds and rich practical experience:

Hsiao-Wei Wang (王筱薇) joined EF in 2017 as a core researcher, focusing on sharding and beacon chain technology. She is now responsible for leading research and development direction and promoting community building, and is seen as a key figure in Ethereum's revival of technological innovation and grassroots spirit.

Tomasz Stańczak is well known for leading Nethermind. Nethermind has a market share of about 35% in the Execution client market, second only to Geth. Tomasz's experience in client development, MEV, and PBS injects management experience and strategic vision into EF.

The new architecture aims to decentralize decision-making responsibilities and achieve a complementarity between technology and management advantages.

Aya has been appointed as the chairperson, and Vitalik returns to research.

Former Executive Director Aya Miyagotchi has been appointed as Chairperson, focusing on external strategic cooperation and relationship maintenance. Daily operations management is fully overseen by Wang Xiaowei and Tomasz.

One of the goals of this transition is to allow Vitalik to focus more on research and exploration, rather than daily coordination or crisis management. Vitalik's recent articles on RISC-V and zkVMs open up new research directions, and his discussions on privacy help the community realign with the core values of EF.

Community Response

The community welcomes Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz. It is generally believed that Hsiao-Wei's in-depth understanding of the protocol ensures that the foundation's technological direction is in the hands of professionals. Many builders are optimistic that the partnership between the research field and the leadership of the engineering and client teams will help achieve balance at the governance level.

Some community members were surprised that Danny Ryan did not take on a major leadership role at EF. However, Danny Ryan announced his joining of Etherealize as a co-founder. Overall, the community discussions eventually converged into a constructive consensus, recognizing Aya's contributions while also looking forward to the new leadership structure addressing past shortcomings.

Ecological Reconstruction: The Rise of Etherealize

Danny Ryan has not returned to EF, but has instead returned to the Ethereum ecosystem as a co-founder of Etherealize. This suggests the formation of a new type of organization similar to EF, aimed at addressing the shortcomings of EF and focusing on the practical implementation of Ethereum's technology and commercial potential.

Danny Ryan stated: "Rather than talking about the vision of Ethereum, it's better to show how institutions can practically utilize Ethereum." Guided by this philosophy, he chose to focus on the Etherealize platform for the expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem and marketing.

Core Mission

Etherealize is a multidimensional platform, with its core mission reflected in four aspects:

1. Institutional access and productization: Providing traditional financial institutions with "full support from concept design to on-chain deployment", reducing trial and error costs.

2. Integration of technology and market: Connect R&D with BD, quickly iterate zero-knowledge proofs, privacy modules, and cross-Rollup bridging solutions, and validate optimization in real customer environments.

3. Policy Advocacy and Regulatory Dialogue: Participate in policy roundtables and blockchain hearings, publish regulatory policy interpretation reports, analyze topics such as stablecoin legislation. Promote the "Regulatory Sandbox Certification Program".

4. Feedback and Transparency: The data dashboard tracks on-chain core metrics and off-chain institutional dynamics in real-time. The "Institutional Insights" report is published monthly to convert customer pain points into protocol layer optimization needs.

dual-track architecture

Etherealize is divided into a dual legal entity structure, promoting market delivery and ecological governance simultaneously.

The profit-making entity Etherealize Inc. focuses on providing tokenization services, Layer 2 deployment solutions, and compliance toolchains for institutions, reducing the on-chain threshold for traditional financial institutions.

The non-profit entity Etherealize Foundation focuses on open-source research and development, privacy tool development, and policy advocacy to maintain the trustworthy neutrality and regulatory compatibility of Ethereum.

This dual-track model has propelled Etherealize to achieve leapfrog development within the first three months of operation: the profit sector has launched on-chain mutual fund projects with BlackRock and Franklin Templeton; the non-profit sector has conducted regulatory roundtable discussions, piloting zero-knowledge proof privacy protection solutions.

Etherealize Origin

Etherealize originated from the launch of the Ethereum ETF in July 2024, when Grant Hummer observed that the actual adoption effects were lower than expected. This prompted him to seek out leaders with both Wall Street experience and knowledge of Ethereum, targeting Vivek Raman.

After receiving funding from Vitalik and the EF, the team was officially established in January 2025. Vivek brought in Zach Obront to restructure the technical foundation. Finally, Danny Ryan joined as Chief Strategy Officer.

2025 Strategic Blueprint

Etherealize 2025 Core Roadmap:

• In Q2, launch an institutional-level SDK, integrating custody interfaces, compliance review, and Gas fee optimization modules.
• Q3 launched a pilot for the enterprise wallet based on the Noir zero-knowledge compiler.
• Entering the Asia-Pacific and European markets in Q4, customizing regulatory adaptation solutions through collaboration.

Ethereum VS Solana: Institutional Power Struggle

The traditional finance sector has long focused on Ethereum and its layer two ecosystem, which, compared to Solana, has had its technology applications launched earlier and has a higher market acceptance. According to data, Ethereum and its layer two ecosystem account for over 50% of the RWA value.

The Ethereum ecosystem has established numerous cooperation cases:

• Fidelity: Established Fidelity Digital Assets in 2018 to布局 digital assets, launching an Ether spot ETF in 2024.
• JPMorgan: Launched Quorum based on Ethereum technology in 2016, completed its first DeFi cross-coin transaction using Polygon in 2022.
• Goldman Sachs: In 2021, participated in the EIB's issuance of digital bonds, utilizing Ethereum smart contracts to achieve the tokenization of securities and cash.
• HSBC: Supports bond issuance, digital gold, and custody services through the HSBC Orion platform, achieving interoperability between private and public blockchains.
• UBS: The first tokenized investment fund issued on the Ethereum network will be launched in November 2024, showcasing results based on zkSync in 2025.

In contrast, Solana collaborates less with traditional financial institutions. RWA on Solana mainly focuses on stablecoins, with a lower proportion of non-stablecoin assets compared to Ethereum. The number and amount of mainstream government bonds and fund projects are both relatively few, with a limited variety.

Currently, the Ethereum platform leads in the value of RWA assets, and its second-layer ecosystem also supports a large number of assets. Although six Ethereum ETFs have been approved, Solana-related ETFs have not yet been approved. However, BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have already launched on Solana, making competition increasingly fierce. EF has established a strategic layout to respond to challenges, and the establishment of Etheralize demonstrates Ethereum's proactive attitude in seeking institutional cooperation.

Summary

Etherealize marks a critical political moment in the history of Ethereum, where cultural differences begin to emerge. The future of Ethereum L0 will place more emphasis on social decentralization, with various competing top-level strategic visions emerging in the market.

Etherealize adopts a dual-layer architecture, encompassing profit entities and non-profit organizations, providing greater operational flexibility. It is technology-driven, focusing on the product itself, becoming a platform that efficiently connects with traditional financial institutions.

Recent Adjustments and Outlook of EF

EF Silviculture Society: Diverse Consultation and Internal Innovation

EF has launched the Silviculture Society think tank, which provides cross-disciplinary advice from external experts. Members participate voluntarily for a year, submit confidential opinions to the board, and explore a flexible and diverse internal feedback mechanism.

Financial Strategy and Budget Management

EF has launched a budget strategy of "spending 15% of remaining funds each year" to ensure long-term sustainable operations. According to data, EF's treasury fiat assets have decreased from $1.294 billion on March 12, 2022, to $784 million in October 2024, with ETH holdings declining by approximately 11%. Annual expenditures have risen from $48 million in 2021 to $135 million in 2023.

stepping into DeFi and ecological innovation

EF announced an investment of 50,000 ETH to participate in DeFi projects, entering the DeFi ecosystem through the establishment of a new multi-signature wallet. At the same time, asset management tools such as EtherStrategy and discussions on the new governance model "Second Foundation" have emerged, showcasing diversified innovative exploration.

Social Media and Marketing

EF strengthens investment across major platforms, reactivates multiple official accounts, and conveys internal reforms and strategic initiatives through original content and dynamic forwarding. Core personnel