Ethereum Foundation shifts focus to user experience, layer-1 scaling

The Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization developing the Ethereum ecosystem, is shifting its focus to user experience and layer-1 scaling challenges following its March leadership reshuffle. 

On April 21, the Ethereum Foundation co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak shared an X post detailing how the organization has changed since its change in leadership structure.

Stańczak said the change aims to give Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin more time for research and exploration rather than dealing with day-to-day tasks and crisis management.

“Each time Vitalik shares insights or communicates a direction, he accelerates major long‑term breakthroughs,” he wrote.

Stańczak added that Buterin’s recent posts had advanced promising avenues and helped realign the community around the organization’s core values. 

On March 1, the Ethereum Foundation announced that its core researcher Hsiao-Wei Wang and Stańczak, the CEO of Nethermind, would become the co-directors of the organization from March 17. 

Since the changes in the organization’s leadership structure, Buterin has stepped back from daily operations. He has since published proposals addressing the Ethereum network’s privacy and performance limitations.

On April 11, the Ethereum co-founder unveiled a privacy roadmap for the network. In the post, Buterin proposed having features that anonymize user transactions. Buterin said the features should be “ideally turned on by default.” 

Besides the privacy of transactions, Buterin also shared a post addressing Ethereum’s speed and efficiency. On April 20, Buterin proposed a change in the Ethereum Virtual Machine’s (EVM) contract language to improve the efficiency and speed of the blockchain’s execution layer. 

Stańczak said that while Buterin’s proposals will “always carry weight,” they are supposed to start conversations and encourage progress in different research areas. The executive said the community can either refine or reject the ideas. 

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The Ethereum Foundation will shift much of its research to “near-term” goals, including addressing user experience and scaling challenges in upcoming protocol upgrades, Stańczak said.

Stańczak added that the foundation will concentrate on layer-1 scaling, support for layer-2 scaling, and user experience improvements such as interoperability in the Pectra, Fusaka and Glamsterdam upgrades. 

While the focus shifted to near-term results, the executive said the team is also looking into ways to bring in more long-term projects.

“Posts from our top researchers help some of them to ship within one or two years through initiatives such as next‑generation execution and consensus layers,” Stańczak said. 

Cointelegraph contacted the Ethereum Foundation for comment but did not receive a response by publication.

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