Ethereum Foundation Replaces Its Top Protocol Bosses Ahead Of Major Upgrade

The Ethereum Foundation has named three new co-leads for its Protocol Cluster, confirming one of the most significant internal reshuffles at the organisation in recent memory. The changes arrive as the network approaches its Glamsterdam hard fork, the next major upgrade on its development roadmap.

New Leadership at the Protocol Cluster

Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik will serve as the new cluster co-leads. Each brings a distinct technical focus to the role. Corcoran is a Research Coordinator with cross-team visibility through his work on zkVM proving, post-quantum consensus, and the Fast Confirmation Rule. Wedderburn leads the zkEVM team and brings deep expertise at the intersection of research and engineering. Fredrik leads Protocol Security and the Trillion Dollar Security project, and has been deeply involved in cross-cluster work.

Over the last year, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, and Alex Stokes gave a tremendous amount to the ecosystem through their leadership. Monnot and Beiko are moving on from the Ethereum Foundation soon, while Alex Stokes will be on sabbatical. Monnot, who spent more than six years at the Foundation, noted a shift in his attention toward nearer-term product and user experience questions during his tenure.

The Protocol team, formerly known as Protocol R&D, is the core group at the Ethereum Foundation responsible for designing, researching, developing, and coordinating Ethereum's base protocol, scaling L2 data blobs, and improving UX. The reshuffle is part of a broader effort by the Foundation to put fresh leadership in place as protocol development accelerates.

Glamsterdam Devnets Live as Next Upgrade Takes Shape

The leadership transition coincides with active development on Glamsterdam, Ethereum's next hard fork. The immediate focus for the new co-leads is shipping Glamsterdam, continuing preparations for Hegota, and advancing the Strawmap. Glamsterdam devnets are now live, and scoping for Hegota is well underway with FOCIL scheduled for inclusion as a headliner on the consensus layer side.

The Glamsterdam upgrade centres on three main goals: speeding up processing through parallelisation, expanding capacity by splitting the heavy lifting of creating and verifying blocks, and preventing database bloat by adjusting network fees to reflect the long-term cost of storing new data.

The Glamsterdam mainnet activation is still targeted for the first half of 2026, with Q3 now seen as more realistic by some commentators after the Soldogn interop devnet wrapped up in early May. Core developers have agreed on setting a 200 million gas limit floor for the upgrade, marking a significant 3.3x increase from the current 60 million limit.

The Protocol Cluster reshuffle is the latest in a series of governance changes at the organisation over the past year. Several prominent figures have departed, including Josh Stark and Tomasz K. Stańczak, who left less than a year after being named co-executive director of the reorganised foundation.

Sources:
Ethereum Foundation Blog: Protocol Cluster Updates May 2026
The Block: Ethereum Foundation Names Three New Co-Leads
Crypto.news: Ethereum Glamsterdam Devnet Progress and Hegota Roadmap Shift