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A cryptography expert advisory committee led by Coinbase released a report stating that Bitcoin should immediately begin preparing for potential quantum computing attacks. However, the committee did not take a clear stance on whether to freeze the millions of bitcoins potentially vulnerable to quantum-computing theft in the future. The committee includes several leading experts, such as Justin Drake, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation. They argue that the current debate is not about *how* to introduce quantum-resistant signature schemes, but rather *how to handle* bitcoins held in long-dormant addresses that fail to migrate. One camp advocates setting a final deadline after which Bitcoin’s existing ECDSA and Schnorr signature schemes would no longer be supported, and unmigrated funds would be frozen—thereby preventing future quantum attackers from seizing large amounts of BTC and destabilizing markets. The other camp contends that freezing funds would effectively amount to asset confiscation, violating Bitcoin’s core principles of immutability and full user control over assets—and could set a precedent for future regulatory-driven freezes. The Coinbase advisory committee notes that these approaches are not mutually exclusive and could be combined. Yet it declines to state a position on whether “legacy BTC” should be frozen, asserting that the ultimate decision rests with Bitcoin’s community governance. It emphasizes two key points: first, technical development of quantum-resistant signature migration must begin immediately—not wait for governance debates to conclude; second, users must receive clear, timely risk communication to prevent prolonged uncertainty from harming the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Vitalik Buterin stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is not the “center of Ethereum,” but rather “a node within the ecosystem,” and is currently transitioning toward a smaller, more opinionated, and more sustainability-focused organizational structure. He explained that the Foundation will prioritize allocating its limited resources to work essential for Ethereum’s viability as a censorship-resistant, control-resistant, open, private, and secure system—work that would be unlikely to happen without the Foundation’s involvement—while also reducing ETH sales. Vitalik further noted that Ethereum should not pursue only maximum throughput and low latency, but should instead aim to be “impressive” in areas such as formal verification, chain availability consensus, and reducing reliance on intermediaries. He emphasized that the Foundation’s new structure is expected to gradually stabilize over the coming months.
According to The Block, the Ethereum Foundation has recently experienced another wave of talent attrition: researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma announced their departures this Monday. Beek had worked at the Foundation for seven years and led the development of Ethereum’s Beacon Chain, making significant contributions to Ethereum’s transition to the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism; Ma had been with the Foundation for approximately four years, contributing to mechanism design, cryptoeconomics, and protocol scalability, and co-authored EIP-7805—a proposal aimed at enhancing Ethereum’s censorship resistance. Earlier this year, in February, Co-Executive Director Tomasz K. Stańczak resigned; multiple other senior figures—including Josh Stark, Barnabé Monnot, and Tim Beiko—have also departed in succession.
According to The Block, the Ethereum Foundation is restructuring its Protocol team, appointing Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik as the new co-leads of the Protocol cluster. This reorganization comes as Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko plan to depart the organization, and Alex Stokes begins a sabbatical. The Protocol team is the Ethereum Foundation’s core team responsible for the design, research, development, and coordination of Ethereum’s base layer, covering areas such as security, cryptography, zkEVM, and peer-to-peer networking. The team is currently advancing Ethereum’s next major scalability upgrade, Glamsterdam, which aims to raise the gas limit ceiling and floor to 200 million and introduce ePBS. Subsequently, the team will shift its R&D focus toward the Hegotá upgrade and the FOCIL prototype to enhance Ethereum’s censorship resistance.
the Ethereum Protocol Support Team has announced the launch of Ethereum Protocol Fellowship Cohort 7 (EPF7). The application channel is now open, with a deadline of May 13th.This program is designed to cultivate engineers capable of participating in Ethereum core protocol development, focusing on the network's core attributes including censorship resistance, open-source nature, privacy, and security. Key areas of focus include client implementations, protocol specifications, testing, and cutting-edge research.EPF7 will adopt a "small-scale, high-density" model, reducing participant numbers to enhance the depth of mentorship and the quality of project contributions, while strengthening collaboration opportunities with the core development team. The project runs from June to November. Selected participants will receive mentorship support from the Ethereum core developer community. Some participants will also receive monthly grants to focus on protocol development work. The program goals include nurturing long-term contributors for the Ethereum core research and development team, and driving participants towards producing substantive results in client development and protocol research.It is reported that the EPF team will host an online information session on May 6th at 15:00 UTC to further introduce project details and answer application-related questions.
According to the Ethereum Foundation’s official website, its Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) allocated a total of $9.856 million in Q1 2026, with funding concentrated on core infrastructure areas including cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security audits, and protocol research. Key funded projects this quarter include: - In the ZK domain: formal verification of zkVMs, GPU-accelerated R1CS witness generation, and intermediate representation optimization for LLZK; - In security: cryptanalysis of Poseidon, cross-platform canonical signing libraries for ERC-7730, and specification-compliance testing for ePBS; - In node and client development: Erigon zkEVM extensions, Besu HSM compliance integration, and the multi-node validator Vero; - Additionally, privacy tools (Kohaku SDK, Tor bridge extensions), continued operations of the Layer 2 transparency platform L2BEAT, and R&D for the Lighthouse client’s transition to the Fusaka fork. On ecosystem development, ESP simultaneously supported Ethereum developer events in Seoul, Hong Kong, Vancouver, and Buenos Aires, advanced updates to the Ethereum climate impact assessment, and backed policy research initiatives by the European Decentralization Institute (EDI).