Key Takeaways
The Ethereum Foundation has announced the rebranding of its Research & Development team in an attempt to better address key strategic goals.
The upcoming Fusaka upgrade will introduce PeerDAS, a mechanism for efficient blob data availability verification.
The Ethereum Foundation has a new name for its core development team. On Monday, the foundation announced that the Protocol Research & Development would become the Protocol, and the EF would also be parting ways with certain members of the R&D team.
The EF stated that the restructuring comes as it re-orients its operations, targeting enhancing the Ethereum blockchain, scaling blobs to boost data capacity, and improving the user experience.
The EF’s key developers expect the organizational overhaul to transform the Protocol team into a more focused, collaborative, and efficient unit, moving away from what is described as a “messy” approach to protocol development.
“This means doubling down on areas where the EF has unique domain knowledge and deep expertise unmatched in our ecosystem: from writing mission-critical code, to publishing breakthrough research and coordinating large initiatives,” as per the announcement.
The goal is to create tighter collaboration and feedback loops between research, prototyping, and production phases, the EF stated, as Ethereum just activated Pectra, its largest upgrade after the Merge and Dencun, and is now gearing toward Fusaka.
Pectra has delivered improvements to institutional staking, wallet experience, and transaction performance. Fusaka, expected to arrive later this year, will focus on PeerDAS, or Peer Data Availability Sampling, a key infrastructure on Ethereum’s scaling roadmap.
Since earlier this year, the EF has been undergoing several changes in leadership and fund management, following feedback, as well as pushback from the crypto community.
One of the most remarkable is its increased involvement in decentralized finance (DeFi) in transitioning towards more sophisticated treasury management.
The foundation has deployed substantial funds in various DeFi protocols, such as Aave, Spark, and Compound, leveraging DeFi tools over ETH sales for generating sustainable yield and diversifying its treasury management.