Ethereum Price Forecast: EF cuts 20% of workforce, reduces annual spend by 40% after restructuring

Ethereum price today: $1,660

• The Ethereum Foundation has reduced its workforce by 20% following the completion of a major reorganization.
• Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin notes that the EF will reduce its spending by 40% this year, aiming to maintain a 5% annual spend of its remaining funds post-2030.
• ETH approaches the $1,611 support after a rejection at the convergence of a key descending trendline and the 20-day EMA.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced that it has completed a reorganization and restructuring process, which involves cutting roughly 20% of its workforce, comprising 54 individuals across different teams.

"Today, the EF is changing shape, concluding a months-long process of reorganization as part of the implementation of the Mandate and the Treasury Management Policy," the EF wrote in a blog post on Tuesday.

The new structure comprises five clusters, including the protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer and institutional layer. Meanwhile, two additional clusters will focus on operations and management.

"Each domain of work requires a different approach, is held accountable for different kinds of results, and has a different internal structure tailored to the work that needs to be done," the EF stated.

EF reduces 2026 budget by 40%

In an X post on Tuesday, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin noted that the downsizing follows the EF's decision to reduce its annual spending from roughly 15% of its remaining funds pre-2026 to a post-2030 target of 5%. In line, he stated that the EF is reducing its budget by about 40% this year.

"Often, when an organization goes through something like this, people try to pretend that nothing of great value was lost, that it is an efficiency increase, that the only people cut are unproductive dead weight, and everyone else stopped partying, studied the blade, entered cracked S-tier beast mode, and this was sufficient to make up for the downside," Buterin wrote. "I will not try to pretend this. I respect my EF colleagues far too much to pretend that there was not much that is lost."

According to the EF, it will provide severance and transition support to those departing the Foundation, as it did to former team members who left in recent months.

The EF has come under criticism recently following the departure of several senior researchers and executives, including former executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, Protocol Cluster lead Tim Beiko and Operations and Writing Lead Josh Stark.

Many have criticized the EF's direction and called for alternative stewards of Ethereum, arguing that the Foundation has hampered ETH's performance as an asset through its earlier L2-centric roadmap and ideologies of top executives.

On Monday, Ethlabs launched as a parallel research and development steward for the Ethereum ecosystem to push the protocol toward increased institutional adoption.

Co-founded by five former senior EF researchers and funded by BitMine, SharpLink and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Ethlabs will focus on building the core infrastructure institutions need to scale onchain, including delivering faster settlement, native asset issuance and secure cross-chain movement. Additionally, the team will expand mainnet capacity and provide research to strengthen ETH's monetary properties.

Ethereum Price Forecast: ETH could drop to $1,524 if it breaks $1,611 support

Ethereum has recorded $157 million in liquidations over the past 24 hours, driven by $140 million in long liquidations, per Coinglass data.

On the daily chart, ETH is extending a bearish bias as price holds below the 20-, 50- and 100-day Exponential Moving Averages (EMAs) at roughly $1,753, $1,901 and $2,064. The top altcoin also remains below the broken descending trendline trigger near $1,729 and the horizontal cap at $1,741, reinforcing the view that the market remains constrained within a broader downside phase.

ETH is approaching the $1,611 support after facing a rejection at the convergence of the descending trendline and the 20-day EMA. A decline below $1,611 brings the horizontal floor at $1,524 into focus, with additional cushions at $1,404 and then $1,155 if bears regain traction and extend the current slide.

(The technical analysis of this story was written with the help of an AI tool.)