tl;dr
I’m stepping down from my co-ED position on the EF on the finish of February 2026. Bastian Aue is taking up the co-ED position alongside Hsiao-Wei. The long run is vivid for builders, for Ethereum, for the EF, and for me.
Way forward for Ethereum
As competing concepts emerge and fail and the markets bounce up and down, we now have 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 long run, 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 seems to be like. We’re witnessing the transition of monetary infrastructure to Ethereum, and the emergence of automated, agentic interactions. Very quickly, we’ll witness robots, new types of governance, and AI healthcare and schooling. I consider that Ethereum will stay a pure infrastructure layer for coordination of all these applied sciences interacting.
Open-source LLM fashions should not doing badly and can hopefully do higher and higher. Open-source agentic staff have gotten essentially the most thrilling toys for builders and creators since early Ethereum. Vital privateness and safety questions emerge across the new paradigms; the world is altering quick, and among the many modifications, Ethereum is changing into the underlying infrastructure for verification and monetary transactions. The cypherpunk ethos of Ethereum stays intact, with the perfect of the privateness builders and safety consultants guaranteeing that the community helps folks 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 threat. 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 12 months.
With the development of AI and progressing integration into the world monetary methods, there has hardly ever been a extra thrilling time to construct on Ethereum.
Way forward for the EF
It has been vital for me, over the past 12 months, 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 folks of extraordinary expertise and dedication, each on the EF and extra broadly within the Ethereum ecosystem.
We now have managed to ship change on the EF quick; we now have nice expertise that learns rapidly and has a terrific path for 2026. The co-ED place was extraordinarily rewarding, strategically difficult, and introduced me a number of pleasure and inspiration. The help that I obtained from the group was super. I’m proud of the present state of issues; the roadmap is clearer; the objectives are set; the leaders on the EF grew extra assured about making selections by themselves and proudly owning extra. An important 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 inner and exterior transparency round budgets and construction have both been accomplished or are constantly enhancing. Individuals who delivered these modifications proceed engaged on Ethereum. Increasingly more folks see ETH clearly as a retailer of worth. A number of the modifications can solely occur without warning. Whereas my capacity to execute independently on the EF diminishes over time, my time on the group in 2026 would really feel an increasing number of like simply staying round to go the baton. The EF is in a wholesome state of a company that may steadiness long-term objectives and the necessity for change. The EF is exclusive, removed from boring, very resilient, and led by very smart folks.
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 improvement roadmap, highlighting the long-term path ahead for the Ethereum protocol that the EF Protocol workforce believes in. It ought to present clear steerage 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 properly positioned to maintain delivery important enhancements on time.
We now have a really clear quantum technique, with the highest quantum safety researchers finalizing the specs and the perfect engineers engaged on implementations. Submit-quantum safety has a transparent place within the EF Protocol roadmap.
We now have a devoted decentralized AI workforce delivering requirements, experiments, and options for the agentic financial system ([1], [2]).
We now have the ecosystem improvement EcoDev workforce specializing in the success of founders, establishments, and governments constructing on Ethereum. We now have a devoted World Coverage Assist workforce. We’re automating an increasing number of of our efforts by utilizing AI for coordination. Communication in regards to the roadmaps, use instances, and purposes is far clearer, with implausible work from the groups at ethereum.org and forkcast.org.
One of many main dialogue factors and challenges for the final 12 months was across the L1–L2 relationship. Vitalik’s latest posts search to supply extra readability in regards to the state of affairs that has been noticed for a very long time. L2s prolong or construct on prime of Ethereum with numerous safety and decentralization trade-offs. L2s select to construct their worth proposition by selecting between dangers and improved UX throughout parameters comparable to scaling, decentralization, historic state availability, privateness, and many others. We now have created the Platform workforce 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 12 months with clearer visions and a extra centered strategy. Just lately, main Ethereum rollups have began an increasing number of constantly overtaking all AltL1s within the stablecoin and TPS metrics, a pattern that I’m satisfied will proceed.
Whereas we turned 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 in opposition to false steps. With a sequence of tweets firstly 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 workforce 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 workforce 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 folks working with founders and media behind the scenes exhibits the brand new power on the EF and it’ll maintain 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 workforce plans many new college occasions this 12 months; the pop-up cities thought 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 workforce on the EF will publish a weblog submit with their plans and roadmap. I’m extraordinarily excited in regards to the expertise that we dropped at the EF to assist with the DeFi coordination. There may very well be no higher folks 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 path they take, they’ll have the help of the perfect expertise in crypto. Your complete EcoDev transformation on the builders, founders, and institutional facet was dropped at the EF by James Smith, who continues on his mission. Coverage help and long-term work proceed underneath the good management of Bastian Aue and Tju Liang. Josh Stark has an distinctive expertise for executing operational modifications quick and in addition led all the main communication modifications on social media that occurred in 2025. Engineers and the researchers within the Protocol cluster work extra carefully collectively and confidently set roadmaps for the long run and sort out the hardest technological challenges. The EF is the place the place issues transfer quick, and modifications can occur inside days or perhaps weeks.
My future
My DMs keep open for all of you who want help in connecting with folks on the EF or discussing the imaginative and prescient and technique of Ethereum. I’ll stay obtainable for the EF management, ought to they ever really feel they want recommendation (though I’m certain that most of the time I’ve obtained priceless recommendation from them up to now). I plan to at all times put strain 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 improvement 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} large change was occurring. I knew that Ethereum was going to switch the monetary methods and I knew that I had an vital expertise within the monetary trade to make it extra of an evolution moderately than a revolution. I do know now that agentic methods and…
