Ethereum Foundation core member Josh Stark will resign, who led major upgrades such as The Merge

April 16th — Ethereum Foundation (EF) senior leader Josh Stark has announced his resignation after five years with the organization, set to officially step down at the end of April. Stark joined the EF in 2019, starting on the Special Projects team before advancing to a leadership role. He worked closely with EF Chair Aya Miyaguchi, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, and Co-Executive Directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Bastian Aue. A prominent external face of the Foundation, he led key Ethereum milestones including *The Merge* (the Proof-of-Work to Proof-of-Stake upgrade) and subsequent upgrades Dencun, Fusaka, and Pectra. Last year, amid a senior leadership reshuffle at the EF, Stark was appointed Co-Managing Director of the EF Board. Most recently, he took on the role of Co-Chair of the "Trillion-Dollar Security" initiative. Just last month, he co-authored a strategic Ethereum blog post with Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma, outlining the network’s latest scalability direction and its ties to the Layer 2 ecosystem. Stark noted: “I haven’t planned for the future yet — I just want to take a good rest first and spend time with family and friends.” His departure comes amid ongoing changes at the EF. Following last year’s major senior leadership overhaul, the Foundation has refocused its strategic priorities on Ethereum mainnet scalability and core cypherpunk values. Tomasz K. Stańczak stepped down as Co-Executive Director at the end of February this year after less than a year in the role. On the same day, Trent Van Epps announced his departure from the EF to fully dedicate himself to the Protocol Guild — an independent funding organization he co-founded to support Ethereum core developers.