The Ethereum Foundation is facing another round of high-profile departures after Carl Beek said May 29 will be his final day at EF following seven years with the organization. Julian Ma, a researcher tied closely to Ethereum’s cryptoeconomic and protocol-design work, has also been listed among the latest EF departures after roughly four years at the foundation.
The timing adds weight because these exits are not happening in isolation. Earlier this month, the Ethereum Foundation confirmed that Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko are moving on from the foundation while Alex Stokes takes a sabbatical, with Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn and Fredrik stepping in as the new Protocol Cluster leads. Trent Van Epps, who worked across network upgrades and funding, also left EF after five years and said he would continue supporting Protocol Guild and Ethereum political-economy work if funding allowed.
The departures have sparked the obvious question: why now? Public statements do not point to one confirmed trigger. The stronger reading is a wider reset inside EF after a demanding stretch of roadmap execution, leadership restructuring and pressure to make Ethereum’s base layer more competitive. That is different from saying the protocol is losing direction. Ethereum’s upgrade work is still moving, but the people coordinating it are changing.
Protocol Leadership Is Being Handed To A New Team
The clearest explanation sits inside the Protocol Cluster transition. The May 11 update came after a Svalbard interop event focused on Glamsterdam, Ethereum’s next major upgrade, where developers worked on ePBS, EIP-8037 repricing, Hegotá planning and a post-Glamsterdam gas-limit target around 200 million. EF framed the leadership handoff around continuity, with the new leads already involved in zkVM proving, zkEVM work, protocol security and cross-team coordination.
That matters because Beiko, Monnot and Stokes were not ordinary contributors. Beiko has been one of Ethereum’s most recognizable upgrade coordinators, Monnot helped shape economic and mechanism-design work, and Stokes sat inside the protocol leadership structure during a period that included Fusaka, PeerDAS and higher gas-limit work. Their exit or sabbatical changes the coordination layer around Ethereum research even if client teams, researchers and independent contributors continue building.
The recent Glamsterdam upgrade path already showed that the foundation wants a tighter execution structure around base-layer scaling, block-building, security and Hegotá planning. The latest resignations make that transition more visible because EF is losing familiar names while asking the market to trust the new operating model.
Why The Exits Are Drawing Attention
Ethereum has been under pressure to prove that its roadmap can move faster without losing decentralization, security or research depth. Solana, Bitcoin layer projects, high-throughput chains and Ethereum’s own Layer 2 ecosystem are all competing for developer attention and liquidity. Inside that environment, EF departures matter because the foundation still plays a major role in research funding, upgrade coordination and roadmap signaling, even though it does not control Ethereum itself.
The resignations also follow a broader period of organizational change. Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director in February, Josh Stark moved to leave after five years, and the foundation has spent the past year reorganizing teams and protocol priorities. Some departures look like natural post-cycle turnover after long service. Others land against a backdrop of community debate over EF culture, priorities and how aggressively Ethereum should compete at the base layer.
The important point is that none of the latest public statements proves a single internal rupture behind the exits. Beek’s post reads like a long-tenure departure. EF’s Protocol update presents Beiko, Monnot and Stokes as part of a planned leadership transition. Van Epps pointed toward continued Protocol Guild and political-economy work outside EF. Together, the pattern still shows real turnover, but the public record supports a mix of transition, burnout risk, role changes and ecosystem work moving outside the foundation rather than one clean explanation.
Ethereum’s Roadmap Now Has To Absorb The Turnover
The next market concern is execution. Ethereum’s protocol roadmap is still packed with high-stakes work, including Glamsterdam, Hegotá, ePBS, inclusion-list work, faster confirmations, scaling improvements and security hardening. Those projects require coordination across independent client teams, researchers, application developers, Layer 2s, validators and the broader community. Losing experienced EF figures can create friction if knowledge transfer is weak or if the new leadership team struggles to align competing priorities.
The opposite outcome is also possible. A leadership reset can give EF a cleaner structure if the new Protocol Cluster leads keep upgrade work on schedule, reduce coordination bottlenecks and make Ethereum’s technical priorities easier for the ecosystem to follow. The foundation’s May update already placed Corcoran, Wedderburn and Fredrik directly around the next upgrades, so the test is not whether EF can name replacements. It is whether those replacements can keep protocol work moving while preserving the research culture that made Ethereum difficult to copy.
Ethereum now has a personnel story running alongside its roadmap story. Carl Beek and Julian Ma deepen the latest exit wave, while Beiko, Monnot, Stokes, Van Epps and Stark show how much senior experience has moved or is moving out of EF roles this year. The next few months will be judged by practical output: Glamsterdam devnets, Hegotá scoping, client-team alignment, Protocol Guild continuity and whether Ethereum can keep shipping major base-layer changes without the familiar coordinators who helped carry the last cycle.
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