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 longer term is brilliant 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 have now by no means been given an excessive amount of certainty. The conviction about Ethereum that comes from a deep understanding of its know-how, its governance, its that means for the long run, and the values we share will all the time 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 appears like. We’re witnessing the transition of monetary infrastructure to Ethereum, and the emergence of automated, agentic interactions. Very quickly, we are going to 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. Essential 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 one of the best of the privateness builders and safety specialists making certain 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, know-how, and jurisdiction threat. I’m trying ahead to Ethereum exhibiting up on the monetary facilities of the world, with the key institutional Ethereum convention coming to New York this yr.
With the development of AI and progressing integration into the world monetary techniques, there has hardly ever been a extra thrilling time to construct on Ethereum.
Way forward for the EF
It has been necessary for me, during the last yr, 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 have now managed to ship change on the EF quick; we have now nice expertise that learns rapidly and has an ideal path for 2026. The co-ED place was extraordinarily rewarding, strategically difficult, and introduced me loads of pleasure and inspiration. The help that I acquired from the group was large. I’m proud of the present state of issues; the roadmap is clearer; the targets are set; the leaders on the EF grew extra assured about making choices by themselves and proudly owning extra. A very powerful targets: accelerating decision-making, talking to 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 few of the modifications can solely occur unexpectedly. Whereas my capability to execute independently on the EF diminishes over time, my time on the group in 2026 would really feel increasingly more like simply staying round to cross the baton. The EF is in a wholesome state of a company that may stability long-term targets and the necessity for change. The EF is exclusive, removed from boring, very resilient, and led by extremely smart folks.
The start of 2026 makes me very excited concerning 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 growth roadmap, highlighting the long-term path ahead for the Ethereum protocol that the EF Protocol staff 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 effectively positioned to maintain transport important enhancements on time.
We have now a really clear quantum technique, with the highest quantum safety researchers finalizing the specs and one of the best engineers engaged on implementations. Publish-quantum safety has a transparent place within the EF Protocol roadmap.
We have now a devoted decentralized AI staff delivering requirements, experiments, and options for the agentic economic system ([1], [2]).
We have now the ecosystem growth EcoDev staff specializing in the success of founders, establishments, and governments constructing on Ethereum. We have now a devoted International Coverage Help staff. We’re automating increasingly more of our efforts through the use of AI for coordination. Communication concerning the roadmaps, use circumstances, and functions is way clearer, with incredible work from the groups at ethereum.org and forkcast.org.
One of many main dialogue factors and challenges for the final yr was across the L1–L2 relationship. Vitalik’s current posts search to offer extra readability concerning the state of affairs that has been noticed for a very long time. L2s lengthen or construct on high of Ethereum with varied 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 so forth. We have now created the Platform staff on the EF and introduced over 20 Ethereum L2s to debate the way forward for scaling, differentiation, and interoperability on the Community College. Groups constructing primarily based rollups, native rollups, and synchronous composability are beginning this yr with clearer visions and a extra centered method. Just lately, main Ethereum rollups have began increasingly more constantly overtaking all AltL1s within the stablecoin and TPS metrics, a development that I’m satisfied will proceed.
Whereas we turned extra open to functions 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 initially 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 staff 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 staff brings Devcon to India in 2026.
In 2026, the EF can also be a lot better at talking to 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 reveals 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 Tutorial Secretariat staff plans many new college occasions this yr; 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 staff on the EF will publish a weblog put up with their plans and roadmap. I’m extraordinarily excited concerning the expertise that we dropped at the EF to assist with the DeFi coordination. There might 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 may have the help of one of the best expertise in crypto. All the EcoDev transformation on the builders, founders, and institutional aspect was dropped at the EF by James Smith, who continues on his mission. Coverage help and long-term work proceed below 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 key communication modifications on social media that occurred in 2025. Engineers and the researchers within the Protocol cluster work extra intently collectively and confidently set roadmaps for the long run and deal with the hardest technological challenges. The EF is the place the place issues transfer quick, and modifications can occur inside days or even 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 accessible for the EF management, ought to they ever really feel they want recommendation (though I’m positive that as a rule I’ve acquired priceless recommendation from them prior to now). I plan to all the time put stress 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 growth and agentic governance. I really feel a lot the identical as I felt after I began Nethermind in 2017. I felt very strongly on the time {that a} huge change was occurring. I knew that Ethereum was going to exchange the monetary techniques and I knew that I had an necessary expertise within the monetary trade to make it extra of an evolution moderately than a revolution. I do know now that agentic techniques and AI-assisted discovery are reshaping the world. I’m effectively conscious of the impermanence and even uselessness of among the agentic concepts, however it’s the playful experimentation that outlined a lot of the early Ethereum innovation.
I plan to proceed working instantly with founders in frontier tech and Ethereum. I need to see and help the belief of the imaginative and prescient that I’ve talked about during the last years. It is likely one of the most enjoyable instances to be a builder on Ethereum.
Thank You
It’s unimaginable to checklist everybody who helped me, the EF, and Ethereum in 2025. Throughout my time on the EF, I visited over 20 nations for work and spent a lot time with native communities. I met hundreds of individuals: builders, financiers, educators, policymakers, creators, researchers, lecturers. I cherished all of the phrases of help, robust questions, and critique coming from you.
I might like to wholeheartedly thank the EF board for taking the daring step of bringing me on to hitch Hsiao-Wei as a co-ED. I want to thank Hsiao-Wei and the administration staff for transferring quick collectively. Huge due to Bastian Aue, Josh Stark, and Tju Liang for bringing a lot emotional intelligence and facilitating considerate discussions when going through essentially the most tough issues. Thanks, Joe Schweitzer, for reviewing numerous podcasts and serving to us all attain a broad viewers when speaking about the way forward for Ethereum.
Enormous due to a whole bunch of Ethereum leaders reaching out to me in March and April 2025, telling me about each single factor that wanted consideration and sharing their views on what the EF technique ought to be. Thanks a lot; I might by no means have discovered the proper paths with out you.
Thanks to each single particular person on the EF for executing in your beliefs and abilities.
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Tomasz
