The Ethereum ecosystem experienced a brief recovery in 2025. As many major cryptocurrencies surged to all-time highs at the start of the year, Ethereum lagged behind. Some in the community are blaming the leadership of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), claiming that the organization is not doing enough to revive the network’s momentum.
This feature is part of CoinDesk The Most Influential List of 2025.
While EF does not control Ethereum’s technical roadmap, it remains a core force supporting developers and teams. So when the organization announced in February that they had appointed two new leaders, Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang, to lead EF into its next phase, the move had important consequences.
Wang is a veteran and core researcher with 7 years of EF experience and has contributed to multiple protocol upgrade paths. Stańczak, by contrast, comes from outside the foundation and built one of Ethereum’s main software client teams, Nethermind. Together, their appointments signal a hybrid leadership strategy: pairing a deeply embedded protocol researcher with an experienced builder as Ethereum moves from early experiments to global-scale infrastructure.
Some in the broader Ethereum community have grown more enthusiastic over time amid the leadership change, although Wang and Stańczak’s appointments coincided with ETH’s climb from a bottom of $1,554 in April to an all-time high of $4,886 in August. As of press time, it has fallen back to $2,806.
Since taking office, Stańczak has hosted open community calls, inviting anyone interested to participate in the direction of the network. EF also launched an updated roadmap outlining its approach to privacy, security and the emerging role of artificial intelligence. Stańczak also told CoinDesk that in addition to meeting with developers and blockchain leaders, he is also working to meet with traditional institutions as tokenization and ETFs have brought a new wave of interest to the ecosystem this year.
Stańczak recognizes that this year marks a critical turning point for Ethereum, with the appointment of these two new leaders marking the beginning of a new chapter for the ecosystem.