Hsiao-Wei Wang stepped down as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation on June 18, 2026, the second person to vacate that role this year. Board member Bastian Aue has assumed interim management; the foundation now operates without a co-executive leadership structure.

Wang said the decision followed a sabbatical that clarified her thinking. "I've come to feel that this is the right moment for me to step back," she said, per CoinDesk. Her exit follows Tomasz Stańczak, who announced on February 13, 2026 that he was leaving the co-executive director role at the end of that month to work more directly with founders building on Ethereum. No succession timeline has been announced.

Former EF researchers launch independent Ethlabs

Four days later, on June 22, five former Ethereum Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, a nonprofit research and development organization explicitly independent of the foundation. The founding team is led by executive director Ansgar Dietrichs and includes Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma. The group is backed by Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), SharpLink Gaming (NASDAQ: SBET), Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Anchorage Digital, Octant, and SNZ, per the launch announcement. Funders receive quarterly transparency reports but hold no influence over the research agenda.

Ethlabs describes its mandate as "readying Ethereum for the next phase of institutional adoption," with initial work targeting faster settlement, expanded capacity, and on-chain infrastructure for tokenized assets and stablecoins. The announcement positions the group as part of "a multi-node future" in which independent organizations advance the network alongside the foundation.

Glamsterdam upgrade delayed to Q3 2026

The leadership exits coincide with a protocol delay. Glamsterdam, Ethereum's next scheduled upgrade, was pushed from June 2026 to Q3 2026, per CoinMarketCap. The Ethereum Foundation's Checkpoint #9 development brief identified ePBS (the in-protocol component that would separate block proposing from block building) as "a major sticking point of Glamsterdam progress," noting the implementation is "proving to be trickier than anticipated."

The Ethereum Foundation has not announced a replacement governance structure or a process to fill either co-executive director vacancy.