In May, prominent Ethereum community figure David Hoffman dramatically announced his complete liquidation of ETH, expressing strong dissatisfaction with the current management of the Ethereum ecosystem. This move appeared to catalyze organizational change within the community. On June 22, five former Ethereum Foundation researchers—Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma—formally launched Ethlabs, an independent non-profit research and development laboratory. Ethlabs currently accepts donations in ETH, stablecoins, and ERC-20 tokens.
Ethlabs’ Mission: Building the Bridge to Ethereum as a Global Settlement Layer
According to the official website, Ethlabs’ mission is “to make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy.” The team argues that just as the internet achieved globalization through universal protocols, the financial industry is now at a similar turning point: with value, assets, and markets fully digitized, the world needs a shared, co-built settlement infrastructure. Ethereum, with its decade-long stable operation, minimal counterparty risk, and decentralized nature, possesses three key advantages: credible neutrality, ETH as a programmable store of value with deep liquidity, and a rich developer and DeFi ecosystem.
Ethlabs positions itself as a bridge between front-line developers and the underlying protocol. It engages with users, dApps, wallets, layer-2 networks, infrastructure teams, institutions, ETH holders, core developers, and researchers, translating their real needs into protocol iterations, standards, supporting infrastructure, and deliverable products. “We remain independent; Ethereum is a public project for all contributors. Ethlabs is just one node in the vast governance network of the ecosystem.”
Team Strength and Investor Lineup
Among the core members, Ansgar Dietrichs and Barnabé Monnot are among the most cited researchers in Ethereum protocol studies over the past decade. Dietrichs has long worked on Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) research, while Monnot is renowned for his work on MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) and cryptoeconomic mechanism design through the EF’s Robust Incentives Group. Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma bring expertise in economic modeling, consensus research, and applied cryptography.
Disclosed backers include: Bitmine, the largest corporate ETH treasury holder with over 5.67 million ETH, which also operates its own validator node network MAVAN launched in March; Sharplink, which co-launched a $125 million DeFi fund “Galaxy SharpLink Onchain Yield Fund” in May; Joe Lubin, Consensys founder and Ethereum co-founder, contributing as a core personal investor; and David Hoffman, who has publicly pledged support. Other institutional supporters include SNZ, Octant, Anchorage Digital, and investor Konstantin Lomashuk. The community donor list features over 50 individuals, including Uniswap’s Hayden Adams, Base’s Jesse Pollak, Etherealize’s Danny Ryan, Ethereum Foundation’s Justin Drake and Tim Beiko, Dragonfly’s Haseeb Qureshi, and many more.
Ethlabs and the Ethereum Foundation: Collaboration, Not Competition
According to Aerugo’s criteria for spinning out projects—whether the work is core to the EF’s mission, whether the EF would do it internally if resources allowed, whether a more suitable home exists, and whether an external team can execute without adding risk—Ethlabs’ focus on eliminating MEV aligns with the EF’s own core protocol research priorities. Thus, Ethlabs does not represent direct competition but rather an evolution from a single-coordination model to a multi-R&D-entity collaboration model. The key question going forward is not whether Ethlabs will replace the Ethereum Foundation, but whether multiple research organizations can synergize to push Ethereum toward becoming a more competitive global on-chain settlement infrastructure.
