On June 22, five former Ethereum Foundation (EF) researchers announced the founding of Ethlabs, an independent, non-profit R&D organization focused on research into Ethereum’s core protocol; Ansgar Dietrichs will serve as Executive Director. Funding sources include Joe Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, and Bitmine Immersion Technologies.
Ethlabs’ Five Founding Members and Legal Structure
According to Ethlabs’ official announcement, all five founding members are former Ethereum Foundation researchers:
· Ansgar Dietrichs (will serve as Executive Director)
· Barnabé Monnot
· Caspar Schwarz-Schilling
· Josh Rudolf
· Julian Ma
Ethlabs is positioned as an independent non-profit organization, separate from the Ethereum Foundation. In the statement, Dietrichs said: “As long-term contributors to the core protocol, we are building an independent non-profit organization to advance Ethereum’s core technology and to develop the shared standards and infrastructure that builders rely on.”
Funding Structure and Independence Mechanism: External Grant Management Design
According to Ethlabs’ description, the known funding structure is as follows:
External Grant Management: Funds are issued by an external grant management body, which is responsible for screening, evaluating, and allocating; grantors obtain accountability through quarterly reports and annual independent audits, but do not have control over the research agenda or technical direction; final decision-making power rests with Ethlabs’ leadership.
Grantors’ ETH Holdings Background: Bitmine disclosed that it holds more than 5.4 million ETH, which is among the largest treasury holders of Ethereum in publicly available data; SharpLink is also one of the major listed Ethereum treasury companies. The purpose of this independence mechanism design is to prevent the supporters holding large amounts of ETH from influencing the direction of technical research; the actual effectiveness of the mechanism cannot be independently verified from the existing announcements.
Research Focus Areas and Background on Leadership Changes at the Ethereum Foundation
According to Ethlabs’ press release, the lab’s early research focus includes: accelerating settlement speed, native asset issuance, cross-chain transactions, mainnet capacity, and Ethereum’s monetary characteristics. Specific research plans and timelines were not provided in this announcement.
Ethereum Foundation leadership changes (background facts): Tomasz Stańczak resigned in early 2026; after Wang Xiaowei ended his leave on June 18, 2026, he left the position, becoming the second co-executive director to step down this year.
Commentary from various parties (all individual viewpoints): Bitmine Chairman Tom Lee said that the ecosystem needs to “significantly increase investment in talent and research”; SharpLink CEO Joseph Chalom described this release as “the start of Ethereum’s institutional super-cycle” (this is a promotional statement by a SharpLink executive, not an industry consensus).
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the relationship between Ethlabs and the Ethereum Foundation?
According to the official description, Ethlabs is an independent non-profit R&D organization separate from the Ethereum Foundation. Ethlabs states that part of the founding represents a transfer of work related to Ethereum core protocol research, but it did not indicate that the research would be completely separated from the Ethereum Foundation; the details of the division of labor between the two were not explained in the announcement.
How does Ethlabs’ independence mechanism prevent grantors holding large amounts of ETH from influencing research direction?
According to Ethlabs’ description, the funds are managed centrally by an external grant management body; grantors can only obtain accountability through quarterly reports and annual audits, and explicitly do not have control over the research agenda or technical direction. Ethlabs says this architecture is intended to maintain research independence. The actual effect of this mechanism cannot be independently verified from the existing announcement.
How much funding did Ethlabs raise?
Ethlabs did not disclose the amount raised in this announcement. Known funding sources include Joe Lubin, Bitmine, SharpLink, Anchorage, Octant, SNZ, and more than 50 community partner organizations (according to a Decrypt report).
