Vitalik: Ethereum Foundation (EF) to slash roughly 40% of its budget this year, shifting to a long-term endowment model and streamlined operational structure

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a post noting that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a roughly 40% budget cut this year as part of its financial transition plan. Per the fund management policy released last year, EF is gradually shifting from a "spending organization" to an endowment-based model, aiming to lower its annual expenditure ratio from the previous ~15% to around 5% after 2030. The foundation emphasized that unavoidable staff and resource adjustments are part of this process, acknowledging the loss of some capabilities and expertise. In this round of restructuring, EF has cut about 54 employees, accounting for roughly 20% of its total team. Vitalik added that many of these departing members may still contribute to the Ethereum ecosystem externally in the future. Meanwhile, the foundation is refocusing its strategy on a more "lightweight" approach to protocol governance and development, including advancing the long-term "Strawmap" roadmap covering core protocol upgrades such as consensus mechanisms, privacy technology, account models, and state structures, and pushing Ethereum toward its third phase of evolution. In specific structural adjustments, EF will downplay its "multi-client redundancy first" model, moving toward more specialized division of labor and AI-assisted formal verification development methods; the Privacy and Scaling Exploration (PSE) research team will be restructured, shifting from exploratory R&D to focused engineering implementation; and the scale of ecosystem events like Devcon will be gradually reduced. Additionally, EF will reduce investment in large cross-domain projects going forward, placing more emphasis on protocol security and high-value improvements, while encouraging more innovation to be driven by external ecosystem participants. Despite the streamlined path, Ethereum will continue to reinforce its core positioning as a highly censorship-resistant, long-term stable protocol.