I'll be honest, I've been keeping a quiet count of departures from the Ethereum Foundation this year, and the number is starting to feel less like coincidence and more like a pattern that deserves a real conversation.
Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, has resigned from her role effective immediately. She shared the news on X on Thursday, saying a recent sabbatical gave her space to reflect on her priorities, and that she came away from it feeling ready to step back.
Her words were measured and warm. But the timing and context are harder to read as simply personal.
Who Wang Is and Why This Matters
Wang isn't a peripheral figure. She was one of two co-executive directors jointly steering the Ethereum Foundation, the Swiss nonprofit that has been central to supporting Ethereum's ecosystem, funding research, coordinating protocol development, and representing Ethereum's values publicly.
Before taking on the co-executive director role, she spent years deeply embedded in Ethereum's technical core. Her departure isn't someone exiting from the edges of the organisation. It's the top of the leadership structure losing another key person.
This Is the Second Co-ED to Leave This Year
Wang's exit follows the resignation of Tomasz Stańczak, the other co-executive director, who announced his departure earlier this year after helping navigate a leadership transition at the foundation. At the time, Stańczak's exit was framed as a planned handover. Wang's departure now means both co-executive director positions are simultaneously vacant.
Board member Bastian Aue stepped in during Wang's sabbatical to help manage the leadership transition and has taken on a broader interim role following both departures. Exactly what the governance structure looks like from here, and who leads next, has not been publicly clarified.
Eight Senior Departures in Five Months
The count I've been keeping reaches eight now. At least eight senior figures have left the Ethereum Foundation over the past five months. That volume of exits, compressed into such a short window, has fuelled genuine community concern about what is actually happening inside the organisation.
The criticism from the Ethereum community has been pointed and public. Questions about the EF's priorities, its communication style, its apparent slowness in responding to competitive pressure from Solana and other chains, and its governance approach have all been raised loudly over the past year. The departures have done nothing to quiet that conversation, if anything, each one amplifies it.
What Wang Said on Her Way Out
Wang's statement on X was gracious rather than revealing. She reflected on Ethereum's mission and the community behind it, writing that Ethereum has always been bigger than any one role, any one organisation, or any one moment. That's a generous exit note, and I take it at face value.
But it also tells me very little about what actually drove her decision to step away now, at this specific moment, after returning from a sabbatical that was presumably meant to help her re-engage.
What the Ethereum Community Needs to Hear
The foundation has talented people, important ongoing work, and a legitimate claim to being the most consequential organisation in Ethereum's development history. None of that disappears with Wang's exit.
But eight senior departures in five months, including both co-executive directors, is not business as usual. The community deserves a clear, honest account of what is happening structurally inside the EF, and the sooner that comes, the better for everyone who has a stake in Ethereum's future.
Right now the silence is louder than any statement.