Altcoins News
By Dan Saada
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The $30 Million Gap Nobody Planned For. Trent Van Epps, who spent five years working with the Ethereum Foundation, put the funding…
2 / 15
19 Departures and Counting. Wang and Stańczak aren't outliers. Approximately 19 significant figures have left the Foundation…
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Hsiao-Wei Wang is out. The Ethereum Foundation's co-executive director and board member resigned on June 18, the second co-director to leave in just four months — and the timing…
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Wang's exit came after a sabbatical, and she didn't come back. That leaves Bastian Aue as the sole executive director, a role he'd already been holding in interim capacity after…
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The root cause is pretty clear. The Client Incentive Program, which had been the main funding mechanism for execution and consensus clients, expired in April.
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And there's a second pressure layered on top of that. The Foundation is actively drawing down its treasury spending, cutting annual outlays from 15% to a 5% baseline by 2030.
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Wang and Stańczak aren't outliers. Approximately 19 significant figures have left the Foundation in 2026 alone, several of them tied to key transition moments.
8 / 15
More context: Strategys STRC Preferred Stock Closes at $88.59 for Second Straight Day Below $90
9 / 15
Vitalik Buterin acknowledged Wang's contributions publicly, citing her work in research and community building. But acknowledgment doesn't fill an org chart.
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The exits, especially during a major upgrade cycle, raise real questions about governance and resource allocation inside an organization sitting on a multi-billion-dollar ETH…
11 / 15
Without the Client Incentive Program, the development teams carrying Ethereum's upgrade work don't have a stable floor.
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Van Epps's warning carries weight precisely because he was inside the Foundation for five years. He's not guessing.
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Read also: Strategy Loses 40 Years of Dividend Coverage as STRC Crashes to Record Low
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What the Foundation does next — whether it replaces the Client Incentive Program with something comparable, finds another mechanism, or leans harder on grant funding — will shape…
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Ethereum's network kept running at $1,690. But the organization behind it is navigating a leadership vacuum and a funding crunch at the same time, with roughly 19 senior…
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