In a move signalling a strategic shift towards greater institutional engagement, the Ethereum Foundation has appointed two new co-executive directors following a period of internal debate and community pressure over its direction.
The appointments of Tomasz Stańczak, a former vice-president at Citi, and veteran engineer Hsiao-Wei Wang on 1 March represent a balance between the blockchain’s competing ideological strands, according to an Ethereum scholar. According to The Guardian, the pair were brought on with a specific mandate to be more open and responsible to the business world.
Political Catalyst and a Proposal for Change
The leadership shakeup was catalysed by a proposal from US crypto developer Danny Ryan last November. Ryan, a former seven-year employee of the foundation, suggested to Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin that the organisation should “exercise a stronger voice” to capitalise on a new political landscape without compromising its decentralised ethos. He expressed openness to leading that charge as executive director.
Ryan told The Guardian his thesis was informed by shifting “political tides”. He cited the dropping of a Securities and Exchange Commission case against him in March 2024, which he suspected was a pragmatic move during President Biden’s re-election campaign. By November, with Donald Trump poised to return to the White House as the self-styled “crypto president”, Ryan identified “a massive American-shaped opportunity”.
The sector had heavily bankrolled Trump’s re-election and expected policy changes favouring its expansion into traditional finance, a shift seen as likely to buoy Ethereum’s prospects.
Internal Tensions and Community Pressure
Discussions between Ryan, Buterin, and other foundation leaders, including then-executive director Aya Miyaguchi, were initially described as “positive”. However, a public leak of the talks triggered a toxic social media campaign. Some users lobbied for Ryan’s appointment and Miyaguchi’s ouster, with a veteran developer suggesting “it’s revolt time” if Ryan was not installed. Some posts contained death threats against Miyaguchi.
This online fury amplified existing discontent. Throughout 2024, some in the Ethereum community, particularly a “pragmatist” faction motivated by the price of its cryptocurrency, ether (ETH), had called for more proactive leadership to grow institutional adoption. Others blamed the foundation for ETH’s static price, which had not risen like other cryptocurrencies amid Trump’s political ascent.
In January 2025, Buterin responded to the community pressure, calling the threats against Miyaguchi “pure evil” and stating that the person deciding the new leadership was him. A former foundation employee said this public post was a “turning point”, as Buterin typically “pretended that [Ethereum] was in the hands of the community”.
Internal dissatisfaction reportedly grew. Two former employees, speaking anonymously, suggested Buterin was initially reluctant to replace Miyaguchi, with whom he has a close relationship. One claimed Buterin dismissed Ryan’s backers as a vocal American subset and was “resolutely” against foundation staff talking to US politicians, a disfavour they suspected counted against Ryan. They alleged Buterin only acted once he realised the extent of internal unhappiness.
A New Direction and Linguing Challenges
The newly appointed co-director Stańczak said there is now “much more green light for institutions to adopt Ethereum”. The foundation has launched a landing page for institutions and, according to the former employees, has moved from a “defensive posture” worried about the SEC. They said the foundation had previously used opacity to avoid legal action, only publishing an anonymised organisational chart last summer.
This new clarity and growth mark a departure from the foundation’s longstanding decentralised ethos; Miyaguchi had previously called for it to “subtract” in size and power. An Ethereum scholar observed the foundation is now seen as directing “Ethereum the protocol” and its culture, becoming “more important than ever”.
Despite the political tailwinds and new leadership, the value of ether is down 20% from a year ago, part of a wider crypto slump, and its price has remained almost unchanged since November 2024. Paul Brody of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance noted that with crypto prices falling, people are no longer discussing leadership the way they did 18 months ago.
Ryan, who amicably ended discussions with the foundation by January 2025 citing differences in opinion, has since co-founded Etherealize, an organisation aligned with the foundation that builds Ethereum-based products for traditional finance. A co-founder there said sales cycles with large institutions are accelerating, with major firms like JP Morgan seeking to offer tokenized products—a process of issuing financial products on blockchains—predicting a wave of them after launches in December 2025.
