Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Francesco D’Amato has officially joined Ethlabs, continuing a growing trend of Ethereum developers moving into independent organizations that support the network’s long-term development outside the Ethereum Foundation.
D’Amato announced the move on X, revealing that he has left the Ethereum Foundation after five years of research and protocol development work.
During his time at the Foundation, D’Amato contributed to several important areas of Ethereum research, including maximal extractable value (MEV), consensus systems, data availability sampling, and execution-layer economics. He described leaving the Foundation as a difficult decision but said the current period of change within the Ethereum ecosystem made it the right time for a new chapter.
According to D’Amato, this is the first time he feels there is a realistic opportunity for major Ethereum protocol research to thrive outside the Ethereum Foundation itself.
At Ethlabs, he plans to continue working on Ethereum’s core technology while helping the organization expand its research team and attract new talent to the ecosystem.
One of his main goals will be improving Ethereum’s transaction finality speed. D’Amato said he intends to focus heavily on efforts to help Ethereum finalize transactions much faster, an area many developers believe is critical for future scalability and user experience.
Ethlabs was launched in June by a group of former Ethereum Foundation researchers, including Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma. The nonprofit organization was created to advance Ethereum protocol research while providing an independent home for researchers working on the network’s future.
The group is focused on several key areas, including settlement speed, network scalability, asset issuance, cross-chain interoperability, and Ethereum’s monetary design.
Ethlabs has received support from a number of major Ethereum ecosystem participants, including Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, as well as Bitmine, SharpLink, Anchorage, Octant, and SNZ. The organization says its research priorities are closely tied to the growing use of Ethereum for stablecoins, tokenized assets, investment products, and AI-powered financial applications.
Despite receiving funding from corporate and industry partners, Ethlabs has emphasized that its research remains independent and that funding decisions are managed through an external grants process.
D’Amato’s departure comes during a period of significant change for the Ethereum Foundation.
In June, the Foundation reduced its workforce by approximately 20%, eliminating 54 positions after reviewing its structure and long-term responsibilities. It later dissolved its Protocol Support team and reorganized its remaining operations into specialized divisions focused on protocol development, users, community, access, and institutional engagement.
These changes have encouraged the growth of independent Ethereum-focused organizations.
Earlier this month, former Ethereum Foundation employees also launched EthSystems, a company focused on building privacy and confidentiality tools for financial institutions using Ethereum. Like Ethlabs, the project has received backing from Joe Lubin, Bitmine, and SharpLink.
The emergence of organizations such as Ethlabs and EthSystems reflects a broader shift within the Ethereum ecosystem. Rather than relying solely on the Ethereum Foundation, protocol research, infrastructure development, and institutional adoption efforts are increasingly being carried out by independent groups.
For Ethereum supporters, this growing network of organizations may help strengthen the ecosystem by spreading development across multiple teams while maintaining a shared focus on improving the network’s technology and expanding its real-world use cases.
As Ethereum continues to evolve, researchers like D’Amato are betting that some of the platform’s most important future innovations can now come from outside the Foundation itself.
