The Ethereum Foundation has dissolved its Protocol Support team as part of a broader restructuring that recently cut about 20% of the nonprofit’s workforce.
Summary
- Ethereum Foundation dissolved Protocol Support after five years coordinating upgrades, developer meetings and fellowship programs worldwide.
- Several team members lost their roles following the Foundation’s broader 20% workforce reduction announced recently.
- Core protocol work continues under Ethereum Foundation’s new structure, but some support programs face uncertainty.
Protocol Support coordinated several parts of Ethereum’s development process. Its work covered core developer meetings, network upgrade tracking, Ethereum Improvement Proposal support and programs that trained new protocol contributors.
The Protocol Support account confirmed the team’s closure on X. It also invited Ethereum organizations seeking experienced developers to contact former team members.
Mario Havel, who worked with Protocol Support for more than five years, said he remains at the Ethereum Foundation. However, he confirmed that the rest of his team had been dissolved and that several colleagues had lost their roles.
“I am still part of EF, continuing my work and figuring out what’s most needed in the future,” Havel wrote on X. “However, all of my team, Protocol Support, that I have been part of for 5+ years, has been dissolved.”
Havel described the closure as the “bitter end” of a team that had supported Ethereum’s core development process through several forms and leadership changes.
Team managed key Ethereum developer programs
Protocol Support helped organize All Core Developers meetings, where client teams and researchers discuss proposed upgrades. It also supported breakout calls, tracked network fork readiness and helped contributors understand Ethereum’s technical roadmap.
The team maintained Forkcast, a public platform that tracks Ethereum upgrades, proposed EIPs, testnet launches and mainnet activation plans. Former team lead William Morriss said the restructuring had ended his Ethereum Foundation role.
Protocol Support also ran the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship. The program trained developers seeking to contribute to Ethereum’s core protocol and connected participants with client teams, researchers and other technical groups.
Havel said he and former colleague Josh Davis built the fellowship over four years. The program has since brought dozens of new developers into Ethereum’s core development community.
The Foundation had opened applications for the seventh Ethereum Protocol Fellowship cohort in April. The available statements did not explain whether the current cohort will continue under another team.
Closure follows wider Foundation layoffs
The team’s dissolution follows the Ethereum Foundation’s new organizational structure, announced on June 23. The Foundation cut 54 positions, equal to roughly 20% of its workforce, after a months-long review of its activities and spending.
As previously reported by crypto.news, the Foundation reorganized its work into five main areas: protocol, access, user, community and institutional layers. Separate groups handle operations and management.
The Foundation said affected workers would receive severance, career transition support and grants for related expenses. It described the changes as necessary to focus its staff and resources on work that the organization must perform over the coming years.
The latest closure also follows earlier changes to Ethereum’s research and development structure. The Foundation reduced its Protocol Research and Development team in 2025 and renamed the remaining group Protocol.
Core protocol work remains active
The new protocol cluster remains responsible for Ethereum’s underlying technology. Its stated tasks include shipping upgrades safely, reducing technical complexity and improving privacy, security and censorship resistance.
Ethereum developers are also working on the Glamsterdam upgrade. The planned update includes changes to block construction, data access and network performance, as crypto.news previously reported.
However, the Foundation has not publicly detailed where every Protocol Support responsibility will move. The future management of developer meetings, Forkcast, fellowship programs and EIP support therefore remains unclear.
Protocol development does not depend on one Foundation team because Ethereum client developers, researchers and independent contributors work across several organizations. Still, Protocol Support provided coordination services that connected many of those groups during network upgrades.
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