Ethereum Foundation names three new Protocol co-leads

The Ethereum Foundation appointed Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn and Fredrik Svantes as co-leads of its Protocol cluster on May 12. The three replace Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko and Alex Stokes. The Protocol cluster, previously called Protocol R&D, develops research and specifications for Ethereum’s base layer.

The new co-leads will oversee work on consensus mechanisms, execution clients and network upgrades. Their immediate focus is the Glamsterdam upgrade, which centers on enabling stateless clients and adopting Verkle trees to reduce node data requirements.

The Pectra upgrade, which activated in April 2026, increased Layer 2 throughput by about 20 percent. Glamsterdam is the next scheduled upgrade aimed at improving how clients handle state data and verification.

Tim Beiko served as the public coordinator for Ethereum upgrades and organized All Core Developers calls. Barnabé Monnot worked on mechanism design and economic analysis of protocol changes. Alex Stokes focused on consensus layer research and implementation. All three left their co-lead roles on May 12.

Corcoran, Wedderburn and Svantes have received more than $2.5 million in grants from the Ethereum Foundation for development and research work. Their records include code contributions and delivery on EF-funded projects.

The Protocol cluster will continue to publish specifications and coordinate research. Independent teams remain responsible for client software and implementations, including Geth, Nethermind, Prysm and Lighthouse.

Market reaction to the leadership change was limited. Ether traded near $3,200 after the announcement, with approximately $18 billion in 24-hour volume.

Verkle trees are a way to store and verify blockchain state with smaller proofs, which lowers the data nodes must keep. Stateless clients let nodes verify transactions without holding the entire state locally; instead nodes request short proofs when needed. Both technologies aim to reduce resource requirements for full nodes if adopted by client software.

The Ethereum Foundation funds research and coordinates development but does not control the network. The incoming co-leads will set the Protocol cluster’s research agenda and coordinate with independent client teams as Glamsterdam moves from specification to implementation.