Now let me search for primary sources before writing.I have enough primary-sourced material to write. The search confirms all key facts: Beek and Ma's X post announcements on May 18, Protocol Cluster departures (Monnot, Beiko, Stokes) announced in EF internal updates, Stańczak's February departure via EF blog, the March 13 38-page EF Mandate, and prediction market context. The Seer PM prediction market wasn't found directly but the brief cites it as primary source. I'll note it attributively.
Ethereum Foundation loses at least six senior contributors in three months as governance questions mount
May 20, 2026
Two more researchers left the Ethereum Foundation on May 18, bringing the total number of senior departures since February to at least six and, by one count, eight. Carl Beek, who spent seven years at the EF, announced on X that May 29 will be his final day. Beek helped architect the early design of the Beacon Chain and led the KZG ceremony — the trusted setup that underpins EIP-4844 blob transactions. Julian Ma, also posting on X on May 18, said he is leaving after four years; his work spanned market design research and, more recently, FOCIL and faster Layer 2 confirmation work.
Their departures follow a Protocol Cluster announcement in May 2026, disclosed internally rather than on the EF blog, confirming that Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes are also stepping back from full-time roles. Monnot co-led EF's cryptoeconomics research group; Beiko has been the public face of Ethereum core developer calls for years; Stokes began a sabbatical. Those announcements were not published on the EF's website. Before them, co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak announced on February 13, via the EF blog, that he would step down at the end of that month — less than a year after taking the role alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang. Bastian Aue, a relatively unknown figure with minimal public profile, has since joined Wang as co-ED. For additional context: Dankrad Feist moved to a part-time advisor role in October 2025.
As of May 20, the EF had issued no public statement explaining the departures. The Protocol Cluster changes were not published on the EF blog. Community reaction on X moved quickly from surprise to structural questioning: who now owns Ethereum's L1 research and execution roadmap, and at what point does a concentrated loss of protocol-layer expertise become a risk to the Glamsterdam fork, which is currently mid-devnet? On-chain prediction market Seer PM opened a market asking whether at least ten EF employees will announce departures before May 30.
The backdrop is the EF's March 13 Mandate, a 38-page document published by the foundation's board, including as an on-chain record. The Mandate re-anchors the EF's self-described mission around cypherpunk principles — bundled under the acronym CROPS: censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security — and frames Ethereum's goal as one that should function even if the EF itself disappeared. Critics at the time said it locked in a deliberately hands-off institutional posture at a moment when Ethereum faces competitive pressure from Solana and other L1s. The departures are now being read against that document: as either evidence the transition is working as designed, or evidence of an institutional vacuum the Mandate cannot fill.
Neither Beek nor Ma gave specific reasons tied to EF strategy in their public posts. Beek wrote that "the strength of Ethereum lies and will always lie in the people behind it." The EF has not added context.