Key Takeaways:
Francesco D'Amato, a five-year veteran of the Ethereum Foundation's research team, has joined Ethlabs, a nonprofit protocol laboratory founded by former colleagues, as the Foundation's restructuring pushes core development work into independent organizations.
"Leaving that behind is hard, but after 5 years this time of great change seems right for a new beginning," D'Amato said in a post on X on July 16. He added that he believes there is now "a credible shot" for core protocol research to advance outside the Foundation.
At Ethlabs, D'Amato will focus on reducing Ethereum's transaction finality time, which currently sits at roughly 12 minutes under normal conditions. During his tenure at EF Research, he worked on maximal extractable value, consensus mechanisms, data availability sampling, and execution layer pricing — areas central to Ethereum's upcoming upgrades.
D'Amato's move is the latest in a wave of departures from the Foundation, which cut 54 positions — about 20% of its staff — last month and dissolved its Protocol Support team. Earlier in July, former Foundation employees launched EthSystems, a for-profit company building confidential infrastructure for regulated financial institutions on Ethereum. Ethlabs itself was founded in June by five former EF researchers and is backed by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Bitmine, SharpLink, Anchorage, and Octant.
Ethlabs' research priorities span settlement speed, network capacity, native asset issuance, cross-chain interoperability, and Ethereum's monetary design, according to the organization. Executive director Ansgar Dietrichs has said the group was created to advance Ethereum's core technology while providing a long-term home for protocol researchers outside the Foundation. The organization operates as an independent nonprofit, with contributions managed through an external grants administrator to prevent backers from steering the technical agenda.
The group has tied its research priorities to growing institutional use of Ethereum for stablecoins, tokenized assets, investment products, and AI-driven commerce. Faster finality — D'Amato's primary focus — would make Ethereum more competitive with newer layer-1 chains that settle transactions in seconds rather than minutes.
The Foundation's restructuring has reorganized remaining staff into divisions covering protocol development, users, community, access, and institutional activity. Two independent research organizations have now emerged from the same talent pool within weeks, backed by overlapping investors — a pattern that amounts to a deliberate decentralization of Ethereum's research layer.
Whether spreading protocol work across independent shops strengthens the network or fragments its technical direction remains an open question for the Ethereum ecosystem.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
