Key conclusions
- Ethereum Foundation co-director Hsiao-Wei Wang recently resigned, marking the eighth resignation in the past five months.
- About 19 employees left in 2026 due to a backlog of airtime and a $30 million annual funding shortfall.
- Board member Bastian Aue steps in as the fund looks for stable leadership in 2026.
The second co-director is coming
Xiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-CEO and board member of Ethereum The fund, effective immediately, the organization confirmed. Afterward, Wang posted a note of his own, in which he wrote:
“I felt this was the right moment for me to step back. Ethereum has always been bigger than any single role, any organization or any moment.”
Her departure leaves the foundation without a permanent co-executive director for the second time this year, following the departure of a colleague previously co-executive director Tomasz Stanczak. For now, board member Bastian Aue has stepped in to help oversee the transition.
Wang is the latest in a steady stream of senior departures, at least eight senior figures remain Ethereum Foundation for the past five months. The scheme is part of a wider exodus that saw around 19 layoffs and redundancies at the organization in 2026. Five of those senior fellows left in May alone, a concentration that has intensified the focus on the foundation’s priorities and focus.
The exit unfolds as Ethereum faces increasing competition from a rival blockchain and as its native token, Ether, lags far behind. Bitcoin.com This was recently reported by the News ETH traded in exactly nine years and is well below its inflation-adjusted 2017 high, amid heightened community questions about whether the fund is effectively managing the network.
The funding clock is ticking in the background
The change in leadership faces a separate concern related to funding and the foundation’s rapidly dwindling cash reserves. Trent Van Epps, who coordinated funding for Ethereum’s core developers, left in April and warned that core developers may not have enough funding from three to nine monthsciting cost-cutting and winding down of the fund’s client incentive program. He estimated that maintaining the core Ethereum development ecosystem costs approx 30 million dollars a year.
The warning leaves management with tougher stakes as the people responsible for paying and coordinating the engineers who support Ethereum leave, increasing the risk that institutional knowledge will go out the door along with organizational charts.
Why departures are important
The Ethereum Foundation is not a company in the usual sense, but rather a non-profit organization dedicated to funding research, supporting client teams, and protecting network neutrality. This makes his leadership less about quarterly earnings and more about continuity and authority.
Revolving doors at the top can stop long-term research, make grant decisions more difficult, and will upset the community of developers who are doing the real work of modernizing the chain. Through it all, Wang, a long-serving figure who took a sabbatical before deciding to leave, tried to frame his exit as a personal decision rather than a crisis in the foundation.
For now, Bastian Aue and the rest of the board must stabilize the organization while it searches for solid leadership. The foundation has indicated it wants to slim down and refocus, and supporters say a leaner structure could ultimately sharpen its mission.
What’s more, if the fund can find credible replacements and shore up funding for core developers before the three-to-nine-month window closes, the turnaround could register as a painful but survivable reset. Failing that, the departure could mark the start of a deeper governance crisis at the world’s second-largest hub crypto networks.