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Tomasz Stańczak announced he is stepping down as co-Executive Director of the 
Ethereum Foundation at the end of February, with Bastian Aue taking over the role alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.
What's the Scoop?
- The Departure: Stańczak, who joined as co-ED roughly a year ago, will leave the position at the end of February 2026. He cited completing key organizational goals and wanting to return to hands-on building, particularly around agentic AI systems.
- The Replacement: Bastian Aue will take on the co-ED role alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang. Aue has been working on policy support and long-term planning at the EF. His public profile is notably minimal — his Twitter account is roughly eight months old with little activity.
- Accomplishments Cited: Stańczak listed accelerated decision-making, clearer L1-L2 relationship guidance, treasury policies, institutional openness, improved social media communication, and internal transparency around budgets as completed or improving goals.
- Stańczak's Future: He plans to work on agentic core development and governance, support founders in frontier tech, and remain available to advise EF leadership. "I feel much the same as I felt when I started Nethermind in 2017," he wrote.
Bankless Take:
The EF's leadership musical chairs continues. Stańczak’s tenure has been short but sweet, with the EF seeing its most developmentally progressive year under his co-direction.
What stands out to me is the explicit mentions of agentic tech, especially given the context of a new treatise from Vitalik on Ethereum as AI infrastructure, laying out specific pillars for how the network can provide guardrails and constraints for autonomous systems. There’s certainly a lot of momentum around Ethereum and AI, and rightfully so, but Stańczak will be missed and Aue will certainly have some large shoes to fill.
