- Why StaÅczak is leaving Ethereum Basis
- Roadmap for 2026
Tomasz Stańczak, co-executive director of the Ethereum Basis, will step down on the finish of February 2026, concluding a one-year time period that overlapped with one of many basis’s most debated intervals. Management will transition to Bastian Aue, alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.
His mandate targeted on operational reform, clearer treasury construction and stronger institutional positioning as Ethereum confronted aggressive strain from faster-moving networks.
Stańczak joined in March 2025 amid governance criticism, compensation disputes and conflict-of-interest fallout after senior researchers disclosed paid advisory roles tied to exterior protocols. The muse additionally confronted accusations of opaque ETH gross sales, used to fund operations, with critics questioning treasury transparency and centralized affect inside a small resolution circle.
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Why Stańczak is leaving Ethereum Basis
The departure seems preplanned. Stańczak said that core restructuring aims set in early 2025 — quicker resolution cycles, clearer roadmaps, compensation insurance policies and institutional engagement — are both accomplished or structurally embedded. Remaining via 2026, he advised, would quantity to stewardship reasonably than execution.
He’s pivoting again to hands-on technical work. After leaving his CEO function at Nethermind to affix the inspiration, he now intends to give attention to protocol growth, AI-integrated governance and agentic methods interacting with Ethereum. The transition displays his builder profile greater than a profession administrator and follows the inspiration’s formal separation of operational administration from board-level oversight in 2025.
Roadmap for 2026
In his be aware, Stańczak described Ethereum as a coordination layer for finance, tokenized property and automatic AI brokers, citing rising stablecoin and real-world asset exercise. Institutional choice for Ethereum (ETH), he argued, rests on decentralization, credible neutrality and uninterrupted uptime since launch.
As Stańczak steps down, the inspiration is making ready a merged LEAN Ethereum and core growth roadmap for 2026, alongside an outlined post-quantum safety observe and expanded rollup coordination.

