Hassan Maishera
TL;DR
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Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin rejected criticism of the blockchain foundation's recent budget cuts, staff departures, and restructuring.
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The Consensys CEO argued that the changes are meant to keep the foundation focused on Ethereum's core technology and neutrality rather than commercialization.
Consensys CEO Says Ethereum Foundation Should Narrow Its Focus
Joe Lubin has pushed back against growing criticism of the Ethereum Foundation, arguing that recent budget cuts, staff departures, and leadership changes represent a structural evolution rather than signs of instability.
Lubin, who helped create Ethereum but holds no formal role in the foundation today, said the organization should focus more narrowly on protocol stewardship while leaving ecosystem expansion, institutional engagement, and commercialization to other entities.
While speaking to CoinDesk, Lubin stated that the foundation’s primary responsibility is maintaining trust in Ethereum’s neutrality as a decentralized protocol.
“It is important that the Ethereum Foundation be credibly neutral above reproach,” he said. “The opportunity for conflicts of interest between the business side and the builders is just not a credibly neutral way to run your decentralized protocol ecosystem.”
His comments come amid weeks of debate within the Ethereum community over whether the foundation has adapted quickly enough to rising competition and shifting market dynamics.
Some critics have raised concerns about the organization’s recent restructuring and leadership turnover, questioning whether Ethereum has lost momentum relative to competing blockchain ecosystems.
However, Lubin argued that many of these criticisms stem from a misunderstanding of the foundation’s intended role.
He described the changes as a process of “cleaning up” organizational boundaries between protocol development and business-oriented activities, rather than a sign of internal dysfunction.
Ethereum, according to Etherscan data, processes roughly 2 million transactions per day, underscoring the scale of the network the foundation supports.
A More Distributed Ethereum Ecosystem
Lubin also outlined a future in which Ethereum is supported by multiple major organizations rather than a single central authority.
“I think it'll be clear that there'll be a handful of major nodes that are stewards of the Ethereum ecosystem,” he said, describing a model where different entities specialize in different layers of development and adoption.
This structure, he argued, aligns more closely with Ethereum’s decentralized design than vertically integrated models seen in other blockchain ecosystems.
Lubin rejected the idea that Ethereum is in decline, but acknowledged that the broader crypto industry has lost some of its cultural and investment dominance in recent years.
“We were the cool kids… We are not front and center right now in terms of capital inflows,” he said, pointing to artificial intelligence as the dominant technology narrative attracting global investment.
Still, he suggested that Ethereum’s long-term positioning remains strong as infrastructure scaling progresses and new use cases emerge.
Among the emerging trends Lubin highlighted is what he called “agentic commerce,” where autonomous AI systems interact directly with blockchain networks to execute transactions and manage economic activity.
He also pointed to increasing institutional adoption of Ethereum-based infrastructure as a key driver of future growth.
“A next major wave is agentic commerce, where the hybrid human-machine economy starts to make use of our rails,” he said.
Lubin argued that the Ethereum Foundation’s narrowing focus is intentional and necessary to support this next phase of growth.
As new organizations take on responsibilities for adoption and commercialization, he said the foundation must remain focused on ensuring the underlying protocol remains secure, neutral, and capable of supporting future applications built on top of Ethereum.
