The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a major leadership transition within its Protocol Cluster, appointing Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as the new co-leads. The change follows the departures of long-time contributors Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, while Alex Stokes will take a sabbatical.
The incoming leaders, who have already played pivotal roles in recent milestones like the Fusaka upgrade, PeerDAS (a data availability sampling protocol), and raising the mainnet gas limit, will now steer Ethereum’s Protocol division through a critical development phase. They will focus on delivering the next major upgrades, tentatively named “Glamsterdam” and “Hegotá”, as part of Ethereum’s long-term roadmap emphasizing scalability, security, and decentralization.
According to the foundation, Glamsterdam aims to increase the gas limit floor to 200 million and introduce Enshrined Proposer-Builder Separation (ePBS). Meanwhile, Hegotá will prioritize censorship resistance improvements, including the rollout of FOCIL prototypes to strengthen the network’s decentralized architecture.
The restructuring arrives amid a broader internal overhaul that began last year, with the EF expanding investments in mainnet scaling, privacy technologies, and developer infrastructure. However, the leadership changes have drawn community scrutiny; earlier rumors suggested that some employees faced pressure to sign loyalty pledges, and notable contributors like Josh Stark and Tomasz K. Stańczak have recently exited. Monnot indicated his future interests may shift toward product-focused Ethereum development, aiming to make the network’s features more accessible to users and builders.
The transition marks a significant moment for Ethereum’s core development, as the Protocol Cluster oversees AllCoreDevs operations, research, cryptography, and security. The community will be closely watching how the new team executes the upcoming upgrades in a competitive blockchain landscape.
