Less than a year into their tenure and already leaving, why is a core figure of the Ethereum Foundation departing again??

Title: EF Changes Leadership Again? E Guard: Just Used to It

Author: bootly

Source:

Reprint: Mars Finance

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is once again at a crossroads of personnel upheaval.

Tomasz Stańczak, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, announced he will step down at the end of this month. Just 11 months after he and Hsiao-Wei Wang jointly succeeded the long-time leader Aya Miyaguchi in March last year, forming a new leadership core.

His successor will be Bastian Aue. Very little public information is available about him; his X account was registered only eight months ago, with almost no record of public statements. He will continue to co-lead the organization that controls core resources and direction of the Ethereum ecosystem alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.

This seemingly sudden personnel change is actually the inevitable result of internal conflicts within the Ethereum Foundation, external pressures, and strategic shifts intertwined.

Taking on the Role in a Year of Turmoil

To understand Stańczak’s departure, we must first look back at the context when he took office.

Early 2025, the Ethereum community was in a state of anxiety. At that time, following the US elections, the crypto market was generally bullish, Bitcoin repeatedly hit new highs, and competitors like Solana were gaining momentum. Meanwhile, Ethereum’s price performance was relatively weak, and the Foundation itself became a target of criticism.

Criticism was primarily directed at then-Executive Director Miyaguchi. Developers complained that the Foundation was seriously out of touch with frontline builders, had conflicting interests in strategic direction, and was insufficiently promoting Ethereum. Some questioned whether the Foundation was too “laid-back,” and in its mild stance as a “coordinator” rather than a “leader,” Ethereum was losing its first-mover advantage.

As Ethereum’s “central bank,” the Foundation was expected to act decisively rather than remain passive.

Amid this public storm, Miyaguchi stepped back into the board, and Stańczak and Wang were suddenly thrust into leadership roles.

Stańczak was not an outsider. He is the founder of Nethermind, one of the core execution clients in the Ethereum ecosystem, a key player in infrastructure development. He is technically skilled, has entrepreneurial experience, and understands community pain points firsthand.

He described his initial instructions upon taking office as very clear: “The community was calling out — you’re too chaotic — you need to be more centralized, and accelerate, to cope with this critical period.”

What did he do in that year?

The combination of Stańczak and Wang indeed brought visible changes.

First, organizational efficiency. The Foundation cut 19 staff members, streamlined its structure, and tried to shed its bureaucratic image. The strategic focus shifted back to Layer 1, explicitly prioritizing mainnet scaling over Layer 2 solutions developing independently. The upgrade pace accelerated, with more decisive progress on EIPs.

Second, attitude adjustment. The Foundation began releasing a series of videos on social media, proactively explaining Ethereum’s technical roadmap and development direction. This “outreach” approach contrasted with the previous relatively closed, mysterious image.

Strategically, Stańczak pushed exploration into new areas: privacy protection, responses to quantum computing threats, integration of artificial intelligence with Ethereum. Especially on AI, he clearly saw the trend of “agent-based systems” and “AI-assisted discovery” reshaping the world.

Financially, the Foundation started discussing more transparent budget management and fund allocation strategies, attempting to address external concerns about the efficiency of treasury use.

Vitalik Buterin commented on Stańczak: “He has greatly improved the efficiency of several departments within the Foundation, making the organization more agile in responding to the outside world.”

The Subtext of the Departure Statement

Less than a year later, why leave?

Stańczak’s resignation statement was quite candid and somewhat thought-provoking. He provided several key points:

First, he believed the Ethereum Foundation and the entire ecosystem are “in a healthy state.” The time had come for a handover.

Second, he wanted to return to “hands-on product building,” focusing on the integration of AI and Ethereum. He said his current mindset is similar to when he founded Nethermind in 2017.

Third—and most intriguingly—he stated: “The Foundation’s leadership is increasingly confident in making decisions and controlling more affairs on their own. Over time, my ability to independently execute within the Foundation has diminished. If I stay longer, by 2026 I will mostly just be ‘waiting to hand over the baton.’”

This reveals two implications: one, the new leadership team has already developed self-motivation and no longer needs his constant involvement; two, his actual influence may be shrinking—something that doesn’t sit well with someone used to direct action and with a strong entrepreneurial temperament.

He also mentioned, “I know many ideas about agent-based AI are still immature or even useless, but it’s through these experimental games that the early Ethereum’s spirit of innovation was defined.”

This somewhat hints at a subtle criticism of the current state: as organizations become more “mature” and decision-making more “steady,” does that wild, experimental spirit risk being lost?

Stańczak’s departure appears to be a personal choice, but it also reflects the long-standing dilemma faced by the Ethereum Foundation.

Since its inception, the organization has been in an awkward position. In theory, Ethereum is decentralized, and the Foundation shouldn’t be a central authority issuing commands. But in reality, it controls substantial funds, key developer resources, and ecosystem coordination discourse, objectively playing a dual role of “central bank” and “regulatory body.”

This identity paradox has long placed the Foundation in a dilemma: doing too much invites accusations of centralization; doing too little invites criticism of inaction. Miyaguchi’s era leaned toward a “coordinator” role, which was criticized as weak; Stańczak’s attempt to shift toward an “executor” role indeed increased efficiency, but naturally concentrated organizational power.

His resignation exposes this tension: as the organization becomes more efficient and decisive, the personal space for founding team members shrinks. For an ecosystem that must balance “decentralization” with “market efficiency,” this internal friction is almost unavoidable.

Who is Bastian Aue, the successor?

Very little public info. He described himself on X as responsible for “hard-to-quantify but critical work” at the Foundation: assisting management decisions, communicating with team leads, budget considerations, strategic planning, setting priorities. His low-profile style contrasts sharply with Stańczak’s entrepreneurial image.

Aue stated upon his appointment: “My decision-making is based on certain principled adherence to the attributes of what we are building. The Foundation’s mission is to ensure that truly permissionless infrastructure—centered on the cypherpunk spirit—can be established.”

This sounds more like Miyaguchi’s style: emphasizing principles, spirit, and coordination rather than dominance.

Does this mean the Foundation will shift back from “aggressive execution” to “principled coordination”? We’ll see.

Ethereum’s Uncertainty

Stańczak’s departure comes at a critical moment when Ethereum is discussing several major proposals. He revealed that the Foundation is about to release key documents, including the “Lean Ethereum” plan, future development roadmap, and DeFi coordination mechanisms.

The “Lean Ethereum” proposal has been jokingly called “Ethereum’s weight-loss era”—aiming to simplify the protocol, reduce burdens, and make the mainnet more efficient.

These strategic documents will profoundly influence Ethereum’s development path in the coming years. The change in core leadership adds uncertainty to the implementation of these proposals.

On a broader scale, Ethereum faces multiple challenges: competition from high-performance chains like Solana, Layer 2 fragmentation, new narratives around AI and blockchain integration, and the overall market sentiment affecting ecosystem funding and attention.

On the day Stańczak announced his departure, ETH briefly fell below $1,800. If it drops further, a stark fact emerges: the total return for ETH holders may fall below the interest rate of cash holdings in USD.

To put it more painfully: in January 2018, ETH first hit $1,400. Adjusted for US CPI inflation, that amount would be roughly equivalent to $1,806 in February 2026.

In other words, if an investor bought ETH in 2018 and held it without staking, after eight years, they would not only have made no profit but would have underperformed simply holding USD in a bank account.

For the “E Guard” who has believed in ETH all along, the real question may not be “who won the ideological battle,” but “how much longer can this last?”

The only certainty is that this core organization, which controls one of the most important ecosystems in crypto, is still searching for its position in a rapidly changing industry—and that this path will certainly not be smooth.