Key Takeaways:
Five former senior Ethereum Foundation researchers formed an independent nonprofit lab to prepare the network for what backers describe as a step-function wave of institutional, AI agent and DeFi adoption.
Five former Ethereum Foundation researchers launched Ethlabs, an independent nonprofit R&D lab, to ready the network for institutional-scale adoption.
"We are at the beginning of an institutional supercycle on Ethereum, and the researchers behind this organization are the people who will make the network ready to carry it," Joseph Chalom, chief executive officer of Sharplink, said.
The lab is funded by Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR), Sharplink (NASDAQ: SBET), Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin, Anchorage, Octant and SNZ. Contributions flow through an independent grants administrator, with quarterly reporting and an annual audit, rather than funder influence over the research agenda.
Ethlabs' early work will target faster settlement, native issuance and cross-chain movement on mainnet, plus research into ETH's monetary properties — areas that determine whether Ethereum can absorb the next wave of institutional capital.
The cofounders — Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma — are responsible for key contributions to finality, scaling, data availability, the virtual machine and protocol economics over the past decade. Dietrichs serves as executive director.
"As blockchain systems move rapidly into mainstream use, the coming years will define the shape of the onchain economy for decades," Dietrichs said. "Ethereum is uniquely positioned to become the shared base layer of that economy."
The launch reflects a broader shift in Ethereum's governance structure. As the Ethereum Foundation refocuses on its core mandate and embraces a multi-node future, Ethlabs becomes one of several independent organizations advancing the network in parallel. Joe Lubin described the model as "a number of steward nodes of Ethereum, each configured in their unique way to evolve and protect what is sacred about the network."
Stablecoins, tokenized real-world assets and autonomous AI commerce are converging on Ethereum as the neutral settlement layer for the global economy, according to the announcement. Ethlabs exists to ensure the network can absorb that demand at scale, advancing faster settlement with trustworthy interoperability.
Thomas "Tom" Lee, chairman of Bitmine, said the ecosystem needs to "dramatically expand its investment in talent and research" to support growth in institutional and AI agent adoption. Bitmine, a Bitcoin miner deploying excess capital into an Ethereum treasury strategy, launched its MAVAN validator network in 2026.
Sharplink, an institutional-grade Ethereum treasury platform, holds ETH as its primary reserve asset and generates yield through native protocol-level staking and decentralized finance mechanisms.
All of Ethlabs' research will be published openly, the organization said.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
