Former Ethereum Foundation researcher Francesco D’Amato has left the Foundation after five years to join Ethlabs, the independent nonprofit protocol research group formed by ex-Foundation researchers. The move underscores a growing trend: core Ethereum development talent is increasingly organizing research outside the Foundation’s walls.
In a post on X, D’Amato confirmed the transition and said he’s joining Ethlabs “to accelerate protocol work in the age of Ethereum adoption.” During his tenure at Ethereum Foundation Research, he worked on a broad swath of protocol topics — including maximal extractable value (MEV), consensus design, data availability sampling, and execution-layer pricing. He called the decision to leave “hard,” but said the current period of change presents “a new beginning,” and for the first time he sees “a credible shot” for major core research to advance outside the Foundation.
At Ethlabs, D’Amato will rejoin several former Foundation colleagues to scale the organization’s protocol research, recruit new researchers to the ecosystem, and continue contributing to Ethereum’s long-term roadmap. One of his stated priorities is reducing Ethereum’s transaction finality time; he said he will focus on helping Ethereum “finalize much faster, as soon as possible” — a capability that could materially improve Ethereum’s suitability for institutional use cases that require low-latency settlement.
Ethlabs launched in June as a nonprofit set up by former EF researchers Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma. The group’s research agenda covers settlement speed, network capacity, native asset issuance, cross‑chain interoperability, and monetary design. Ethlabs has positioned those priorities around growing institutional demand for Ethereum — including stablecoins, tokenized assets, investment products, and AI-driven commerce.
The organization counts several high-profile ecosystem players among its backers — including Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Bitmine, SharpLink, Anchorage, Octant, and SNZ — but says research decisions remain independent and that corporate contributions are managed through an external grants administrator.
D’Amato’s move comes amid a broader reorganization at the Ethereum Foundation. The Foundation recently announced a reduction of 54 positions (about 20% of its staff), dissolved its Protocol Support team, and restructured remaining work into divisions focused on protocol development, users, community, access, and institutional activity. That reshaping has coincided with the creation of new Ethereum-focused organizations: earlier this month, former Foundation employees Mo Jalil, Oskar Thorén, and Aaryamann Challani launched EthSystems, a for-profit venture building confidential infrastructure for regulated financial institutions on Ethereum, also backed by Bitmine, SharpLink, and Lubin.
Why it matters: As protocol research and engineering disperses into independent entities like Ethlabs and EthSystems, development on fundamental Ethereum primitives — from finality and consensus to MEV and data availability — may accelerate in more diverse, complementary forums. For institutions and developers watching Ethereum’s maturation, faster finality and focused research on settlement and capacity could be pivotal in broadening real-world adoption.
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