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Tomasz Stanczak, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), has announced he is stepping down from the role. In a post for the community on his X page, Stanczak stated that, effective end of February 2026, he would cease to function in his capacity as co-executive director.
According to Stanczak, he is not leaving the Ethereum ecosystem but simply moving into a more technical and builder role. Stanczak clarified that his stepping down will not affect the Ethereum Foundation, as leadership will continue under Hsiao-Wei and Bastian Aue.
Notably, Hsiao-Wei is an existing co-executive director, while Aue is a new one taking a leadership position at the Ethereum Foundation. This blend of old and new would likely ensure a smooth leadership transition at EF.
Stanczak assured community members that the Ethereum Foundation is in good hands. He maintained that there was enough talent to ensure progress from where he left off. The soon-to-be former co-executive director dismissed insinuations that the foundation was a mess.
A user appreciated Stanczak’s contributions to the EF, noting that within a very short time, he was able to transform the Ethereum Foundation. He noted that Stanczak’s transformation gives credence to his skills as a builder in the Ethereum space.
It is worth noting that Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, in April 2025, also quit his leadership role with the Ethereum Foundation. At the time, Stanczak had stated that Buterin left to focus on performing research and exploration for the network.
Stanczak said he would now focus on building in the agentic Ethereum technologies ecosystem.
He believes that the Ethereum blockchain will be the coordination layer for the future of the agentic economy. Many are preparing for an autonomous financial future, and Ethereum appears prepared to set the pace where AI does the thinking, while Ethereum completes settlement and trust.
The co-executive director, who will exit the role in about two weeks’ time, is bullish on open-source LLMs and open-source AI agents. Stanczak considers Ethereum the identity, payment and verification layer for those agents.
He maintains that Ethereum will handle privacy and security in AI systems. Stanczak is now actively pushing a “decentralized AI on Ethereum” narrative to ensure the success of this new frontier of the financial economy.
This signals a shift for Ethereum from a smart contracts platform to a global coordination layer for the AI, finance and autonomous systems.
