Ethereum Co-Founder Lubin Says Foundation Overhaul Is Evolution, Not Crisis

Joseph Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, described the Ethereum Foundation's changes as a necessary evolution, not a crisis, as the organization faces criticism over budget cuts, staff departures and restructuring.

Lubin told CoinDesk in an interview published June 7 that the Ethereum Foundation should concentrate on safeguarding the network's core technology and values. Expanding adoption, working with institutions and driving ecosystem growth should fall to other organizations.

"The Ethereum Foundation must maintain neutrality that no one can question," Lubin said. Combining business operations with protocol development can create conflicts of interest, he added, and is not an appropriate way to run a decentralized protocol ecosystem.

The Ethereum community has recently raised concerns that the foundation has been slower than rival blockchains in responding to the market. It has also voiced worries about the restructuring and employee departures.

Lubin said much of the criticism reflects a misunderstanding of the foundation's original role. The current work at the Ethereum Foundation is aimed at separating protocol stewardship from business development and defining those responsibilities more clearly.

He said the Ethereum ecosystem will likely develop into a structure in which multiple organizations split responsibilities rather than leaving them to a single institution.

Several core organizations in the Ethereum ecosystem will take charge in their own areas of expertise, Lubin said. He described that as a model that better fits Ethereum's decentralized philosophy.

Lubin also pushed back on claims that Ethereum is in decline.

"Ethereum is absolutely not declining," he said. Artificial intelligence has recently captured investors' attention, leaving the crypto market relatively overlooked, but he called that a temporary phenomenon.

He said scalability improvements completed so far could provide the foundation for a new phase of growth. Lubin identified agentic commerce, in which AI agents autonomously conduct transactions on-chain, and broader institutional adoption of blockchain as key growth drivers.

"The next wave of growth will be a hybrid economy where humans and AI participate in economic activity together," Lubin said. "Ethereum's infrastructure will play a central role in that shift."