Ethlabs, a new Ethereum research lab backed by the network's two largest corporate holders, launched this week with a pitch to complement the Ethereum Foundation.
Its own funders concede it will also compete as Ethlabs is “playing to win.”
"I think they will be complementary," Joseph Chalom, chief executive of Sharplink and a former longtime BlackRock executive, said of Ethlabs and the Foundation on a livestream The Defiant hosted this week. He then added that the two would "over time" be "in some ways overlapping," with "the densest talent" concentrated at Ethlabs.
The overlap is visible in what each group says it will do. The Foundation reorganized this week into five units, including a protocol layer focused on scaling and hardening Ethereum's base layer and an institutional layer aimed at enterprise adoption. Ethlabs describes its own work in nearly the same terms: faster settlement, cross-chain interoperability and readiness for institutional and AI-driven activity. Both invoke credible neutrality and censorship resistance.
Victor Bunin, a protocol specialist at Coinbase who is listed as an Ethlabs contributor, said the rivalry is built into how Ethereum ships code.
