Vitalik: Ethereum Foundation Announces ~40% Budget Cut; PSE Department Dissolved and Multiple Strategic Contraction Measures Advanced

Vitalik Buterin (@VitalikButerin) announced that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will cut its 2026 budget by approximately 40%, aiming to gradually reduce its annual spending ratio from roughly 15% to about 5% post-2030 and transition toward a long-term endowment fund model. This adjustment entails several major changes: - The Privacy and Scaling Explorations (PSE) team is formally disbanded, with work refocused on building concrete, high-priority technologies already identified as critical; - The multi-client model shifts from redundancy-based security to specialized division of labor, incorporating AI-assisted formal verification; - Devcon’s scale will be progressively reduced; - EF’s involvement in large-scale projects outside Ethereum will decrease, with related work instead funded personally by Vitalik. Vitalik stated that once the Ethereum “Strawmap” is completed, EF’s efforts will center primarily on security fixes and small, high-value modifications, while imposing higher thresholds for new feature proposals—moving closer to Bitcoin’s lean, minimalist model.