Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation on Thursday after a sabbatical, the second co-ED exit at the Switzerland-based nonprofit in four months and the latest in a five-month wave of senior departures.
Hsiao-Wei Wang resigned as co-executive director and board member of the Ethereum Foundation on Thursday, the second co-ED exit at the Switzerland-based nonprofit in four months. Her departure deepens a leadership turnover that has been running through the organization since the spring.
Wang announced the move in a post on X, saying a recent sabbatical “gave me space to reflect on my priorities and the kind of life I want to build next” and that the time had brought her to “the right moment for me to step back.” She framed the decision around staying closer to home while remaining part of the broader Ethereum community. Board member Bastian Aue, who oversaw the leadership transition during Wang’s sabbatical, has taken on a larger role guiding the organization in the interim.
Wang joined the foundation’s research team in 2017 and was elevated to co-executive director in early 2025. Across roughly nine years she contributed to consensus and protocol-coordination work spanning the Beacon Chain, The Merge, Shapella and Dencun Co-founder Vitalik Buterin called the co-ED slot “perhaps the most challenging position in the Ethereum Foundation, at one of the most challenging times for Ethereum.”
Leadership Reset
Wang’s exit follows fellow co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak, who announced his departure in February. At least eight senior figures have left the foundation over the past five months, a sequence Defiant has tracked through coverage of the Josh Stark and Trent Van Epps exits in April and the wider EF exodus reshaping the organization. Buterin in May outlined a smaller, more focused foundation as the response, framing the shrinkage as deliberate rather than reactive.
The departure lands alongside a separately reported funding warning. Former EF coordinator Trent Van Epps estimates a roughly $30 million annual gap covering client teams, researchers and protocol-coordination groups within a three-to-nine-month window. He attributes the gap to the Client Incentive Program having expired in April with no announced replacement, alongside the foundation’s revised treasury policy. That claim sits adjacent to the leadership news rather than inside it; the foundation has issued no public statement on Wang’s exit beyond her own post.