Five former Ethereum Foundation researchers have launched Ethlabs, an independent non-profit R&D lab for Ethereum, on the same day the EF's own Chief Strategy Advisor published a framework describing how spinouts from the foundation should be evaluated and funded.
The lab's founding team is Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma, all former EF researchers. Anchor funders listed on the site are Bitmine, Sharplink, and Consensys founder Joe Lubin. The lab accepts ETH, stablecoins, and ERC-20 tokens at eth-labs.eth (0xEa98...7d79).
Dietrichs and Monnot are among the most cited Ethereum protocol researchers of the past decade. Dietrichs has been a central figure in Ethereum's proposer-builder separation work; Monnot is known for research on MEV and cryptoeconomic mechanism design through the EF's robust incentives group. Their departure to form an independent lab is a concrete crystallization of the EF researcher exodus The Defiant has tracked since early this year.
At least eight senior EF researchers and leaders announced departures in 2026, with calls in the community for a new organization more tightly focused on Ethereum's protocol development and price competitiveness. That story followed the departure of Josh Stark and Trent Van Epps, two long-time EF contributors who announced they were leaving the foundation. Schwarz-Schilling, Rudolf, and Ma round out the Ethlabs founding team with backgrounds in economic modeling, consensus research, and applied cryptography.
