Five former Ethereum Foundation researchers launch Ethlabs with backing from Lubin, Bitmine, and Sharplink

Five former Ethereum Foundation researchers have launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research and development firm backed by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and major ETH treasury firms.

The launch shows that some Ethereum core research is now moving into independently funded structures outside the Ethereum Foundation. That shift could reshape how the network evolves as institutional capital moves further on-chain.

On June 22, Ethlabs said it plans to prepare Ethereum’s infrastructure for large-scale institutional use, according to PR Newswire. Funding will come from Bitmine Immersion Technologies, SharpLink, Lubin, and other ecosystem backers, including Anchorage, Octant, and SNZ. More than 50 community partners have also pledged support, according to Decrypt.

Ethlabs did not disclose how much money it raised, but the backers show how institutional funding is becoming more involved in Ethereum research. Bitmine has disclosed more than 5.4 million ETH, making it one of the largest publicly known Ether treasury holders. SharpLink is also one of the major publicly traded ETH treasury firms.

Ethereum protocol research gets a new home

Ethlabs was launched by five former Ethereum Foundation researchers: Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma.

The team has worked on major parts of Ethereum’s technical design, including finality, scaling, data availability, the Ethereum Virtual Machine, and protocol economics. These are the components that determine how Ethereum processes transactions, secures activity, and supports applications across the network.

Dietrichs, who will serve as Ethlabs’ executive director, said the organization is launching at a time when blockchain technology is moving toward broader adoption. He said Ethereum is “uniquely positioned to become the shared base layer” of the emerging on-chain economy and described it as “the neutral foundation the broader on-chain ecosystem is built on.”

He said Ethlabs was created to help Ethereum realize that vision.

“As longtime contributors to the core protocol, we are establishing an independent non-profit organization to advance Ethereum’s core technology and the shared standards and infrastructure builders depend on,” Dietrichs said, adding that the team is excited to continue that work “at the moment it matters most.”

Former EF researchers lead the new lab

Ethlabs is launching shortly after Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive director at the Ethereum Foundation, stepped down on June 18 after a sabbatical. Wang was the second co-executive director to leave the foundation this year, after Tomasz Stańczak resigned earlier in 2026.

The departures have added to wider questions about the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership, strategy, and research structure. Several senior researchers and executives have left or changed roles over the past year, as Cryptopolitan earlier reported, creating a period of transition for the organization.

Ethlabs represents one answer to those concerns: critical protocol research can continue through an independent structure with its own funding, leadership, and technical mandate.

That does not mean Ethereum research is leaving the Ethereum Foundation entirely. But it does show that the ecosystem is no longer relying on one central foundation to fund and coordinate every major research track.

Ethlabs targets institutional-scale Ethereum

Ethlabs’ early agenda focuses on infrastructure problems that could slow institutional adoption of Ethereum.

According to the press release, the lab will work on faster settlement, native asset issuance, cross-chain transactions, mainnet capacity, and the monetary properties of ETH.

Those areas align with the direction Ethereum is already moving. Stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, on-chain investment portfolios, and AI-driven commercial transactions are becoming more common on Ethereum. All of those use cases need faster settlement, better interoperability, and more predictable infrastructure.

Tom Lee, chairman of Bitmine, said the ecosystem needs to “dramatically expand its investment in talent and research” to support expected growth from institutions and AI agents.

SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom framed the launch as “the beginning of an institutional supercycle on Ethereum.”

That language is promotional, but it captures why treasury firms are backing the lab. If Ethereum becomes the main settlement layer for institutional finance, faster finality, larger capacity, and better cross-chain infrastructure would directly support the value of ETH and the companies holding it.

Arm’s-length funding becomes the credibility test

Ethlabs says its funding model is designed to preserve research independence.

Funds will be distributed by an external grants administrator, which will screen, evaluate, and allocate capital. Funders will receive accountability through quarterly reporting and an annual independent audit, but they will not control the research agenda or technical direction. Final decisions will remain with Ethlabs leadership.

That separation matters because some of the backers have large financial exposure to ETH. Bitmine and SharpLink both hold ETH as major treasury assets, giving them a clear interest in Ethereum’s long-term success.

An arm’s-length structure is meant to prevent that financial interest from steering technical research.

The credibility of Ethlabs will depend on whether the lab can maintain that separation in practice. If it does, it could become a model for how open-source blockchain research is funded without giving large capital holders direct control over protocol direction.

The launch widens Ethereum’s governance map

Lubin, who also co-founded Consensys, described Ethlabs as part of Ethereum’s transition toward a wider set of steward nodes that can help evolve and protect the network.

That framing matters because Ethereum remains the dominant settlement layer for DeFi and tokenized assets. Any research that improves settlement speed, cross-chain execution, mainnet capacity, or ETH’s monetary role could have effects well beyond Ethereum itself.

If Ethlabs delivers on faster finality and better interoperability, it could reduce barriers for institutions that still view Ethereum as too slow, too fragmented, or too technically complex for large-scale financial use.

The launch also reflects a broader shift in how open-source blockchain ecosystems fund themselves. Instead of relying only on a central foundation, Ethereum research is spreading across independent organizations with separate missions and funding sources.

The question now is whether that structure will make Ethereum research more resilient or more fragmented. Ethlabs will be one of the first major tests.

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