SKN | Ethereum Foundation Leadership Shake-Up as Tomasz Stańczak Steps Down

Key Points:

• Tomasz Stańczak will step down as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation at the end of February 2026.
• Bastian Aue will assume the co-executive director role alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.
• Stańczak’s tenure began during a period of community criticism and strategic restructuring within the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Ethereum Foundation is undergoing another leadership transition as Tomasz Stańczak announced he will step down from his role as co-executive director at the end of February 2026. The move marks a new chapter for the organization responsible for stewarding the development of the Ethereum protocol.

Stańczak has co-led the foundation alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang since early 2025. In a blog post, he said he believes the Ethereum ecosystem is now in a “healthy state” and expressed confidence in the leadership team that will carry the foundation forward. Bastian Aue will replace Stańczak as co-executive director, continuing the shared leadership structure with Wang.

A Turbulent Entry Into Leadership

Stańczak joined the foundation during a period of internal and community scrutiny. His appointment followed the transition of longtime executive director Aya Miyaguchi into a new leadership role after mounting criticism that the foundation was not aggressively advancing Ethereum’s growth and competitive positioning.

At the time, some developers and community members voiced concerns about perceived strategic drift, internal conflicts and what they viewed as insufficient ecosystem coordination. ETH’s price underperformance relative to certain competitors further amplified dissatisfaction among segments of the community.

The leadership restructuring that brought Stańczak onboard was widely seen as an attempt to modernize governance and strengthen execution at a time when Ethereum faced increasing competition from alternative layer-1 networks.

Stabilization and Strategic Realignment

During Stańczak’s tenure, Ethereum continued advancing its roadmap, focusing on scalability, layer-2 ecosystem expansion and zero-knowledge technologies. The foundation also worked to rebalance its relationship with independent developers and external ecosystem stakeholders.

In his departure note, Stańczak indicated that the organizational transition period had achieved its objective of stabilization. He emphasized that he intends to remain active within the ecosystem, particularly by supporting founders building on Ethereum and in frontier technology sectors. His comments suggest that the leadership shift is not driven by crisis but by a belief that the current structure is well-positioned to continue without him.

Governance Evolution Continues

The appointment of Bastian Aue alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang maintains the foundation’s dual executive model, a structure intended to distribute leadership responsibilities and reduce reliance on a single figurehead.

The Ethereum Foundation’s governance has evolved significantly over the past several years as the network itself has matured from a developer-centric experiment into foundational infrastructure for decentralized finance, tokenization and Web3 applications. As Ethereum’s role expands, the foundation’s leadership must balance decentralization principles with the practical demands of coordination, funding allocation and ecosystem signaling.

Strategic Outlook

Leadership changes at the Ethereum Foundation carry symbolic weight given the organization’s influence over research priorities, funding decisions and narrative direction within the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

Stańczak’s exit closes a transitional chapter that began amid criticism and uncertainty. The focus now shifts to execution under the revised leadership team, particularly as Ethereum competes for developer mindshare and institutional adoption in an increasingly crowded blockchain landscape. For the ecosystem, the question is less about personalities and more about continuity: whether governance reforms and strategic adjustments implemented during the past year can translate into sustained innovation and network growth.