Ethereum nonprofit Ethlabs launches with industry support

A new nonprofit research organization, Ethlabs, launched on Monday, June 22, 2026, aiming to prepare the Ethereum network for large-scale institutional and artificial intelligence-driven commerce. The organization was founded by five former senior researchers from the Ethereum Foundation and is backed by a consortium of major industry players, including Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin and the two largest publicly traded Ethereum treasury firms, BitMine Immersion Technologies and SharpLink.

The founding researchers-Ansgar Dietrichs, Barnabé Monnot, Caspar Schwarz-Schilling, Josh Rudolf, and Julian Ma-have previously contributed to core Ethereum upgrades involving finality, scaling, data availability, and protocol economics. Dietrichs will serve as Ethlabs' executive director. The organization stated its mission is to ensure Ethereum can serve as a neutral, resilient, and secure settlement layer for the global economy as stablecoins, tokenized assets, and autonomous AI commerce increasingly move on-chain.

Initial research priorities will focus on enabling faster settlement, increasing mainnet capacity, improving cross-chain interoperability, and studying the monetary properties of...