Ethereum Foundation officially announces new leadership
The change to the Ethereum Foundation followed months of complaints from the community that the project was headed in the wrong direction.
The Ethereum Foundation has announced a new leadership structure consisting of two co-directors of the Foundation, Hsiao-Wei Wang — a core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and Tomasz Stańczak, the CEO of Nethermind — one of the largest execution clients on Ethereum.
According to the March 1 announcement, Wang has seven years of experience as a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, and Stańczak has proven leadership in scaling an organization from an early-stage project to a global company.
Wang and Stańczak will assume their roles as co-directors of the Foundation on March 17. The Ethereum Foundation added:
“Over the next few years, the Ethereum ecosystem needs to navigate the challenging transition from being an early-stage project serving a small number of enthusiasts to being a robust, permissionless, censorship-resistant base layer of the global finance and software stack.”
These new leadership changes come at a challenging time for the Ethereum ecosystem as Ether (ETH) prices struggle to reclaim previous highs, fears that the network’s layer-2 scaling solutions are cannibalizing Ethereum, and competition from new, high-throughput chains all erode investor confidence.
Wang pictured left and Stańczak pictured right. Source: The Ethereum Foundation
Related: Ethereum devs agree to stop forking around and accelerate the roadmap
Ethereum Foundation changes gears amid complaints
Vitalik Buterin outlined a strategy to strengthen Ethereum in a Jan. 23 blog post, which included increasing the blob count, thereby increasing transaction capacity and encouraging layer-2 solutions to pay a percentage of their fees to the base layer.
On Feb. 13, the Ethereum Foundation deposited 45,000 ETH, worth roughly $120 million at the time, into the Aave, Compound, and Spark decentralized finance protocols to earn yield.
The Ethereum community celebrated the move as it signaled that the Foundation had another source of revenue other than selling ETH into the market and suppressing prices.
Ethereum Foundation breakdown of funds deposited in decentralized finance protocols. Source: The Ethereum Foundation
Social media presence and marketing have become a top priority for the Foundation in recent weeks, with the advent of the Etherealize organization, which is responsible for marketing Ethereum to institutional investors.
Longtime Ethereum developer Danny Ryan joined Etherealize as a co-founder for the initiative on March 1 alongside Vivek Raman.
The Ethereum Foundation also sought a social media manager last month to overhaul its social media operations and bolster the network’s online presence.
Magazine: Proposed change could save Ethereum from L2 ‘roadmap to hell’
