[technology]
The Ethereum Foundation lost two more senior researchers on Monday when Carl Beekhuizen and Julian Ma announced their departures on X, bringing the total number of high-profile exits in 2026 to at least eight, with five occurring in May alone.
Beekhuizen, who went by Carl Beek, spent seven years at the EF. He contributed to the early architecture of the Beacon Chain and participated in the KZG ceremony, a cryptographic ceremony underlying Ethereum's data availability roadmap. His final day is May 29. "The strength of Ethereum lies and will always lie in the people behind it, striving to make it what it is," he wrote on X. Ma spent four years at the foundation, shifting in his later years from market design research into product and growth work. He said he wants to continue in that direction outside the EF.
The two announcements are the latest in a sequence that began in February. Tomasz Stańczak, who joined as co-executive director in March 2025 during a leadership restructuring meant to address community criticism, announced his step-down on February 13 via the EF blog, after roughly eleven months in the role. Three Protocol Cluster departures — Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, who led protocol coordination, and Alex Stokes, the former co-lead of the Protocol initiative — were announced in the EF's Protocol Cluster Updates in May 2026. Trent Van Epps, who organized Protocol Guild before it became independent, also departed earlier this year. The May 19 announcements from Beekhuizen and Ma bring the count to at least eight.
The 'Lean Ethereum' argument. The EF published a 38-page Mandate in March 2026 that reanchored the organization in cypherpunk principles and explicitly framed it as a steward rather than an owner of the network. Under Vitalik Buterin's 2025 reorganization, protocol execution was pushed outward to independent client teams. From this vantage point, some of the exits are structurally intended: if the EF is shrinking its footprint and routing work to external teams, headcount reduction follows.
Community commentator Ryan Berckmans made that argument plainly after the Monday announcements. "The time for new blood is here," he wrote on X, framing the departures as a healthy generational handoff and arguing that the EF remains focused on its core priorities of post-quantum security and long-term scaling.
The counter-question. The concern is whether the transition is occurring faster than the receiving end can absorb. The Glamsterdam fork is currently mid-devnet, and several of those departing — including researchers with Beacon Chain roots — held roles directly relevant to Ethereum's near-term upgrade roadmap. Pseudonymous DeFi researcher Ignas captured the community's unease on X: "What's happening at the EF? How many not public? And why? Stopped believing in Ethereum? Pay is low and competitors paying more? Or just tired? Would love to know the REAL reasons."
The departures also arrive against a backdrop of organizational friction. KuCoin, citing Odaily Planet Daily, noted that the EF recently drew controversy over requiring employees to sign loyalty oaths, adding to a picture of internal strain that predates the current wave of exits.
What is not in dispute is the pace. Eight high-profile departures in under five months — including a co-executive director, the two co-leads of the Protocol Cluster, and two veteran Beacon Chain researchers — represents meaningful institutional change at the core research layer of the world's second-largest blockchain, at a moment when the network is mid-fork and navigating sustained competition from other L1s. Whether the EF's Mandate has planned for this pace of transition, or whether it is ahead of the plan, is a question the foundation has not publicly answered.
Primary sources: Carl Beekhuizen's announcement on X, May 19, 2026; Julian Ma's announcement on X, May 19, 2026; Tomasz Stańczak departure, EF blog, February 13, 2026; Monnot, Beiko, and Stokes departures, EF Protocol Cluster Updates, May 2026; EF Mandate, March 2026; Ryan Berckmans on X; Ignas (DefiIgnas) on X; KuCoin/Odaily Planet Daily on loyalty oath controversy.