Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin Steps Away From The Frontlines

The Ethereum Foundation has initiated a leadership realignment designed to unshackle Vitalik Buterin from routine coordination and crisis triage, allowing the network’s co‑founder to devote his time almost exclusively to deep‑cycle research. The shift was disclosed by Tomasz K. Stańczak, recently appointed Co‑Executive Director of the Foundation, in a post on X that outlines an aggressive acceleration of Ethereum’s technical roadmap.

Ethereum Foundation Reshapes Leadership

“Our discussions about the Layer 1 scaling roadmap have been extensive, and the feedback so far suggests that the community appreciates our ambition,” Stańczak wrote. “Turning that ambition into reality now depends on the focus of the core development teams and researchers.” He added that, following the “recent changes in leadership at the Ethereum Foundation, we aimed, among other things, to free more of Vitalik’s time for research and exploration, rather than day‑to‑day coordination or crisis response.”

Stańczak emphasized that Buterin’s voice will “always carry weight,” but that his proposals are meant to “start conversations and encourage progress in difficult research areas,” subject to rigorous community review. “Each time Vitalik shares insights or communicates a direction, he accelerates major long‑term breakthroughs,” he noted, citing Buterin’s recent essays on RISC‑V–based virtual machines and zero‑knowledge execution environments, as well as his writings on privacy, which Stańczak said have “helped realign the community around the Ethereum Foundation’s core values.”

Under Stańczak’s stewardship, the Foundation is concentrating near‑term research firepower on Layer 1 scaling, Layer 2 support, and thorny user‑experience issues—including interoperability—within the upcoming Pectra, Fusaka and Glamsterdam protocol upgrades. “Within the EF we will shift much of our research effort toward near‑term goals, aiming to address user experience and scaling challenges in the next two protocol upgrades,” he wrote. In parallel, teams are “exploring ways to bring forward projects that currently look three to five years away,” citing next‑generation execution and consensus layers as targets that could be compressed into a one‑ to two‑year horizon.

Buterin’s most headline‑grabbing recent idea—replacing the Ethereum Virtual Machine with a RISC‑V architecture—illustrates the latitude he will now enjoy. The proposal envisions rebuilding the platform’s execution layer atop the open‑hardware instruction set, an overhaul that he argues could deliver “significant efficiency gains, potentially up to 100 percent,” in transaction processing and smart‑contract execution. While still early‑stage and subject to the Foundation’s culture of rigorous vetting, the plan aligns with Ethereum’s intensified focus on raw Layer 1 throughput even as Layer 2 ecosystems mature in parallel.

The leadership recalibration also aims to embolden other senior researchers. Stańczak singled out Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist, urging the community to grant them the same latitude Buterin enjoys to publish exploratory ideas that may later be refined—or rejected—through open review. “Ethereum researchers often ask that readers recognize the exploratory nature of their posts and proposals,” he wrote, underscoring the Foundation’s conviction that high‑risk inquiry is a prerequisite for breakthroughs.

At press time, ETH traded at $1,577.