According to Odaily, several former senior researchers from the Ethereum Foundation have officially announced the establishment of Ethlabs, a non-profit organization dedicated to propelling Ethereum into its next stage of growth and laying the groundwork for institutional-scale adoption. The organization has secured financial and strategic backing from Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, as well as two major ETH treasury companies: Bitmine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink.
Ethlabs stated that as stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets, funds, and autonomous AI commercial activities gradually migrate on-chain, these diverse demands are converging on the Ethereum ecosystem, placing higher requirements on the network's scalability and security. The organization plans to focus on enhancing the performance indicators necessary for Ethereum to absorb these demands at scale, including transaction throughput, cross-chain credible interoperability, neutrality, system resilience, privacy, and security.
The formation of Ethlabs signals a shift in the ecosystem, where significant contributions to Ethereum's long-term development no longer rely solely on the Ethereum Foundation. Instead, independent entities composed of core ecosystem contributors and large ETH holders are emerging to actively shape the network's future direction.
Ethlabs was co-founded by five former senior researchers of the Ethereum Foundation, all of whom participated in several key upgrades of Ethereum over the past decade, gaining extensive experience in areas such as consensus mechanisms, smart contract execution environments, and layer-2 scaling solutions. Their departure and reorganization reflect an ongoing structural adjustment within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Notably, the launch of Ethlabs comes at a time when the Ethereum Foundation has recently faced criticism and personnel changes. Over the past period, some ETH holders and community members have criticized the Foundation for failing to maintain sufficient competitiveness. At the same time, several senior executives and key research team members have left the Foundation, raising external concerns about its organizational stability and strategic direction. Ethlabs can be seen as an attempt by the community to supplement or even replace certain functions of the Foundation, aiming to consolidate Ethereum's leading position in the global crypto ecosystem through diversified governance and research efforts.