In May, prominent crypto commentator David Hoffman publicly sold all his ETH, expressing strong dissatisfaction with Ethereum's ecosystem management. The move appears to have catalyzed change: on June 22, five former Ethereum Foundation members — Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma — announced the launch of Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit research and development laboratory. Ethlabs currently accepts donations in ETH, stablecoins, and ERC-20 tokens.
Mission: Settlement Layer for the Global Economy
According to its website, Ethlabs aims to make Ethereum the settlement layer for the global economy. The team draws an analogy to the internet: just as universal protocols enabled global connectivity, the financial sector now needs a shared settlement infrastructure as value, assets, and markets go fully digital. They argue Ethereum is uniquely positioned due to its decade-long stable operation, minimal counterparty risk, ETH's mature programmability and widespread distribution, and a rich DeFi ecosystem.
Ethlabs positions itself as a "bridge" between front-line developers and the underlying protocol, translating the real needs of users, applications, wallets, Layer-2 networks, infrastructure teams, institutions, and core developers into protocol improvements, standards, and shippable products.
Core Team: Veteran Researchers
The five founders bring deep expertise. Dietrichs and Monnot are among the most cited researchers in Ethereum protocol studies; Dietrichs has long worked on Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS), while Monnot is known for MEV research and cryptoeconomic design via the Ethereum Foundation's Robust Incentives Group. Schwarz-Schilling, Rudolf, and Ma have backgrounds in economic modeling, consensus research, and applied cryptography.
Investors and Community Backing
Disclosed backers include Bitmine (the largest corporate ETH treasury, holding over 5.67 million ETH), Sharplink (which co-launched a $125 million DeFi fund with Galaxy), and Consensys founder Joe Lubin as a core personal backer. David Hoffman has also publicly pledged support. Other institutional investors include SNZ, Octant, Anchorage Digital, and investor Konstantin Lomashuk. The community supporter list includes about 50 donors, such as Uniswap's Hayden Adams, Base's Jesse Pollak, Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake and Tim Beiko, and Dragonfly's Haseeb Qureshi.
Future: Collaboration, Not Replacement
Ethlabs' emergence raises questions about potential competition with the Ethereum Foundation. The two share overlapping research directions, such as MEV elimination, which Aerugo identifies as "the next key battle in the cypherpunk war." However, Ethlabs' independence more likely signals a shift from a single-core coordination model to a multi-entity collaboration. As Ethlabs states, it is "a node in the broader governance network" of Ethereum. The key question is not whether Ethlabs will replace the Foundation, but whether multiple R&D teams can work synergistically to strengthen Ethereum as a global on-chain settlement infrastructure.
