This marks the most significant personnel change at the Ethereum Foundation in the past five to six years, occurring during ETH's most challenging price cycle.
Following community discontent over Aya Miyaguchi's promotion to Ethereum Foundation Chair, the organization has announced new leadership appointments. On March 1, the Ethereum Foundation revealed two new Co-Executive Directors to assume Aya's former role: Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak.
Unlike Aya, these new executive directors bring deep technical expertise. Let's explore their backgrounds in detail.
Hsiao-Wei Wang
At this pivotal moment of leadership transition, Hsiao-Wei Wang stands out as one of Ethereum's most technically accomplished developers. The Taiwanese blockchain pioneer has focused on Ethereum core research for seven years, making significant contributions to sharding and Beacon Chain development.
Originally a backend engineer, Hsiao-Wei discovered blockchain in 2016 and became captivated by its decentralized ideals. When Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin sought contributors for Ethereum research, she seized the opportunity and joined as a core developer.
Her most notable contribution involves sharding technology—a critical scalability solution that significantly improves Ethereum's transaction throughput. She has also deeply participated in Casper, Beacon Chain, and Sharding P2P network development while overseeing protocol reviews and proof-of-concept development for Ethereum 2.0.
Beyond coding, Hsiao-Wei actively fosters community growth. She frequently represents the Ethereum Foundation at technical conferences, particularly in Taiwan, where she organizes high-quality Ethereum events that connect local developers with the global ecosystem. For instance, at the 2018 Ethereum Sharding Workshop in Taipei, she facilitated discussions about Ethereum's future direction among international developers.
Describing herself as "unexpectedly brave, sincere, and bear-like," Hsiao-Wei brings this same tenacity to her new role as Co-Executive Director, where she'll balance technical leadership with organizational management.
Tomasz Stańczak
The other new Co-Executive Director, Tomasz Stańczak, brings equally impressive credentials. As founder of Nethermind (one of Ethereum's key execution clients) and an early Flashbots team member, he has pioneered research in MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) and PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation).
Before blockchain, Tomasz worked as a financial markets engineer. He joined Ethereum's core development team in 2017 and later founded Nethermind, which grew into one of Ethereum's five major execution clients alongside Geth, Besu, and Erigon.
Under Tomasz's leadership, Nethermind became renowned for its efficient architecture, customization flexibility, and enterprise support—though not without controversy. For example, Nethermind's decision (alongside Besu) to stop storing historical Ethereum data drew criticism from Geth developer Péter Szilágyi, who cited this as partial motivation for leaving Ethereum.
Now transitioning from Nethermind CEO to focus on his Ethereum Foundation role, Tomasz aims to uphold Ethereum's core values—open-source collaboration, global permissionless access, privacy, and security—while scaling the network.
A Defining Moment for Ethereum
Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko recently stated: "The past few months have been tumultuous. While Ethereum still needs many changes to succeed, this may be one of its most important historical moments."
Beiko praised Tomasz as uniquely capable of driving immediate change from within the Foundation, citing his success building Nethermind into one of Ethereum's most impactful independent organizations. Meanwhile, Hsiao-Wei's long-term perspective—from creating the first sharding diagrams to understanding Ethereum's research-to-production pipeline—complements Tomasz's strategic vision.
Though the full impact of these leadership changes may take time to materialize, they represent a positive step toward reform, with Vitalik increasingly receptive to community feedback.
FAQs
Q: What changes will Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak bring to Ethereum?
A: Expect stronger technical execution (particularly in scaling solutions like sharding) and improved ecosystem coordination. Their combined expertise bridges research and practical implementation.
Q: Why was Nethermind's historical data decision controversial?
A: By discontinuing old chain data storage, Nethermind and Besu arguably reduced network decentralization—a move critics felt compromised Ethereum's archival integrity.
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Q: How does this leadership shift affect Ethereum's price prospects?
A: While direct price impact is unpredictable, stronger technical leadership often boosts long-term investor confidence in a blockchain's roadmap.
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Q: What challenges do the new directors face?
A: Balancing decentralization ideals with scaling demands, improving developer experience, and maintaining community trust during rapid protocol evolution.
Q: Will Ethereum's culture change under this leadership?
A: Likely not—both directors have years of Ethereum experience and appear committed to its open-source, community-driven ethos while introducing more structured governance.