Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin said the foundation's cuts and departures are a necessary evolution, not a crisis, as the network targets AI-driven growth.
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Ethereum Foundation cuts aren't a crisis, Lubin says as ETH trades at $1,617
Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin said the foundation's cuts and departures are a necessary evolution, not a crisis, as the network targets AI-driven growth.
Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin defended the Ethereum Foundation's budget cuts and restructuring on June 7, arguing the changes are a necessary evolution for a network processing about 2 million transactions a day.
"It is important that the Ethereum Foundation be credibly neutral above reproach," Lubin, CEO of software developer Consensys, said in an interview with CoinDesk. "The opportunity for conflicts of interest between the business side and the builders is just not a credibly neutral way to run your decentralized protocol ecosystem."
The foundation has faced weeks of criticism after a wave of high-profile departures and budget reductions. Lubin said many concerns stem from a misunderstanding of the EF's mandate, which he argued should be limited to stewarding Ethereum's core technology and values rather than commercialization. "What's happening at the EF is cleaning that up," he said.
Lubin said Ethereum's future will be shaped by multiple organizations rather than a single dominant institution, with emerging trends such as autonomous AI agents conducting on-chain transactions — what he called "agentic commerce" — driving the next wave of growth. ETH traded at $1,616.83 as of publication, up 3.87% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinDesk data.
Lubin pushed back on the narrative that Ethereum itself is in decline. "Ethereum is not on the decline, not at all," he said, while acknowledging that artificial intelligence has displaced crypto as the dominant technology narrative for capital inflows. "We were the cool kids, the edgy bringers of the new excitement in the economy and society. We are not front and center right now in terms of capital inflows, investments."
The Consensys CEO argued that Ethereum's years-long focus on scaling infrastructure is beginning to position the network for renewed adoption. He pointed to growing institutional use of Ethereum-based infrastructure and the rise of autonomous AI agents as key catalysts. "A next major wave is agentic commerce, where the hybrid human-machine economy starts to make use of our rails," Lubin said.
According to Lubin, the Ethereum ecosystem will evolve toward a distributed institutional structure with "a handful of major nodes that are stewards of the Ethereum ecosystem and leading in different niches." This model differs from other blockchains where protocol development and commercial strategy are housed under the same umbrella, he said.
The restructuring comes as Ethereum faces increased competition from rival layer-1 networks and a shifting market landscape where AI has overtaken crypto as the primary technology narrative among investors. Bitcoin traded at $61,843.28, up 1.75%, while SOL traded at $64.18, up 2.87%, according to CoinDesk data.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
