Harvard and other institutions are liquidating their assets, and six core talents have left in a month. What is happening with Ethereum?

Author: Zhou, ChainCatcher

Recently, the Ethereum Foundation has once again faced personnel upheaval, with core researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma officially announcing their departures.

This year, at least 7 core members or senior contributors have left in succession, from co-executive directors to protocol researchers, from upgrade coordinators to cryptography experts, raising significant concerns within the community about the foundation's stability and execution capability.

Meanwhile, institutional holding data has been released. Goldman Sachs has reduced its BlackRock ETHA position by about 70%, Harvard University's endowment fund has completely liquidated its nearly $87 million Ethereum ETF position, and South Korea's seventh-largest pension relief company has recorded a loss of about $32.73 million due to investments in leveraged Ethereum ETFs.

Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation recently unstaked 21,271 ETH from Lido and has repeatedly sold ETH on-chain for treasury rebalancing.

With core team members leaving, large external funds exiting, and the foundation itself reducing its holdings, Ethereum is being simultaneously voted against by different types of participants.

The Trigger for the Resignation Wave: Controversy Over the Mission Statement Signature

The direct trigger for this wave of resignations was the foundation's release of a 38-page new mission statement in March this year.

The statement clearly states that the foundation is not the owner or central authority of Ethereum, but merely one of many supporters. It proposes to gradually reduce its influence and introduces the concept of a walkaway test, meaning that even if the foundation completely withdraws, the Ethereum ecosystem can operate independently and healthily.

The statement also emphasizes the CROPS principles, which include resistance to censorship and capture, open source, privacy, and security.

Vitalik Buterin subsequently publicly expressed his support, stating that he would invest more in Ethereum and position it as a "technological safe haven"—maintaining user self-sovereignty and ensuring that no individual, organization, or ideology can achieve absolute control in cyberspace.

However, the implementation of the statement has sparked controversy. It is reported that the foundation required internal employees to sign to acknowledge the contents of the statement, or they might face resignation or compensation adjustments. The foundation even created a "SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE" meme to express its determination to "self-terminate" if it fails to fulfill its commitments.

This contradictory practice of "announcing a desire to step back while forcing loyalty signatures" has become an important catalyst for this round of resignations.

In just four months, 7 core members or senior contributors have left in succession:

• In February, co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak stepped down after only 11 months in office;
• In April, Josh Stark, who was deeply involved in upgrades like The Merge and Dencun, and Protocol Guild coordinator Trent Van Epps resigned;
• In May, Protocol co-leads Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Alex Stokes (on leave), and researchers Carl Beek (7 years of experience, led the KZG ceremony and early design of Beacon Chain) and Julian Ma (4 years of experience, led FOCIL and Fast Confirmation Rule) left one after another.

List of resigned members from the Ethereum Foundation Source: RootData

These individuals took away not just their positions, but also a wealth of tacit knowledge and intuition that is difficult to document, including what trade-offs and considerations were made during historical upgrades, the trust relationships between different teams, how to handle disputes in EIP proposals during the advancement process, and those "only understood" coordination skills in All Core Devs meetings.

Protocol Guild contributor cheeky-gorilla stated at the EthCC[9] conference that the salaries of Ethereum L1 core developers are 50% to 60% lower than similar positions in the market, while high-performance new chains like Monad and leading L2 projects are precisely poaching with salary packages over 10 times higher. He pointed out that once senior researchers familiar with the underlying protocol logic leave, key roadmaps like PeerDAS and Verkle trees will face substantial risks of stagnation.

This risk may have already begun to materialize. The Glamsterdam upgrade, originally planned for June 2026, has been delayed. Based on the latest testnet progress and feedback from the Interop meeting, the actual mainnet launch time is more likely to be postponed until the third quarter. The core goal of Glamsterdam is to increase the gas limit from the current approximately 60 million to 200 million, which is a key step for Ethereum to enhance its mainnet competitiveness.

Recently, the EF has appointed three new co-leads, Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik Svantes, to take over the Protocol team, with their tenure at EF ranging from 2 to 7 years. However, building trust takes time, and rebuilding coordination networks requires time, while Ethereum's upgrade pace seems to be running out of time.

Meanwhile, the EF recently unstaked 21,271 ETH from Lido and has repeatedly sold ETH on-chain for treasury rebalancing. Against the backdrop of personnel turmoil already raising external concerns, this series of on-chain operations has further amplified market unease.

Dual Pressure of External Competition and Institutional Confidence

Internal turbulence coincides with the most intense external competition.

According to DefiLlama data, as of early May, Ethereum's share of the total locked value in DeFi has dropped from 63.5% at the beginning of 2025 to about 54%, hitting a near one-year low. Ethereum's DeFi TVL is approximately $45.4 billion, still significantly ahead, but public chains like Solana (6.66%), BNB Chain (6.60%), Bitcoin (6.35%), Tron (6.17%), Base (5.44%), and Hyperliquid (1.81%) are gradually eating into its share.

In terms of fee revenue, in the first week of May, Hyperliquid captured about 43% of the market share with approximately $11 million in fee revenue, leading all public chains; in contrast, Ethereum's fee revenue was about $3 million, accounting for only about 13%; Solana's fee revenue was about $2 million, accounting for about 10%.

In the RWA market, as traditional asset management institutions accelerate the push for asset tokenization, public chains are competing around institutional issuers. Currently, the on-chain RWA market capitalization has exceeded $65 billion, growing about 44% from approximately $45 billion at the beginning of the year. Among them, Ethereum currently holds about 33% market share, remaining the primary deployment network for institutional tokenized assets; Provenance Blockchain accounts for about 27%, while BNB Chain, XRP Ledger, and Solana each account for about 6%.

At the same time, a new trend is emerging. Crypto KOL Kaylin (@kaylyn_0x) pointed out that as the costs and technical barriers for launching chains continue to decrease,** Wall Street institutions are actively exploring building their own public chains or hybrid architectures to gain stronger compliance control and predictable performance**. The Arc public chain launched by Circle is a typical example, having processed over 150 million transactions on its testnet and secured $222 million in funding from institutions like BlackRock, with the mainnet set to launch soon. The future threat to Ethereum's position as an institutional settlement network should not be underestimated.

In terms of secondary market operations, Q1 holding reports show that Goldman Sachs significantly reduced its Ethereum exposure in the first quarter, with its holdings in BlackRock iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) shrinking by about 70%, leaving approximately $114 million. Harvard University's endowment fund completely liquidated its previously purchased nearly $87 million Ethereum ETF position.

Additionally, South Korea's seventh-largest pension relief company Bumo Sarang invested 59.5 billion won of operational funds in a leveraged ETF for Ethereum-themed stocks Bitmine last year, incurring a loss of 49.3 billion won (about $32.73 million).

These operations may reflect that some traditional institutions have lost patience with Ethereum's short-term returns and long-term stability.

Conclusion

Multiple signals point to Ethereum's current core challenge: a dual lag in execution capability and narrative appeal regarding its positioning as an institution-level mature infrastructure.

Vitalik Buterin clearly stated in a speech at the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival that Ethereum does not compete on speed but aims to be the safest and most decentralized "world computer" and "technological safe haven." His latest lengthy article further elaborates that formal verification assisted by AI is the core of Ethereum's next stage, aiming to make Ethereum a "security core" that can be mathematically proven safe.

This vision is clear, and the technical path is credible. However, the realization of the vision requires stable coordination capabilities and continuous experience accumulation—yet, unfortunately, during this most critical window, both of these elements are rapidly depleting.