Ethereum Foundation co-steward Josh Stark to depart in April

Josh Stark announced on Thursday via X that he will step down from his role at the Ethereum Foundation after five years and will remain in the position through the end of April to assist with the transition.

Stark joined the foundation's special projects team in 2019 and later moved into a leadership role. He worked alongside EF President Aya Miyaguchi, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, and co-executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Bastian Aue.

At the foundation Stark handled communications and served as a visible public representative. He took stewardship responsibilities on protocol efforts including The Merge, which moved Ethereum to proof-of-stake, and the subsequent Dencun, Fusaka and Pectra upgrades. During a reorganization last year his title was listed as an EF board “co-steward” and he was later named co-chair of the foundation's Trillion Dollar Security initiative.

Stark co-wrote a strategic foundation blog post with Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma outlining updated scaling goals and the foundation's relationship with Layer 2 networks. He also wrote an essay on ETH's “hardness,” addressing long-term security and monetary properties.

In his post on X Stark wrote, “Working for Ethereum at the Ethereum Foundation has been a great honour. I'm proud to have worked with great people inside and outside of the EF, and proud of what our community has accomplished together.” He added he has “made no plans for the future, other than taking a long break to reset and spending time with my family & friends.” He will remain through the end of April to help with the handover.

Stark's departure occurs during an organizational transformation at the foundation that includes leadership changes and a renewed focus on scaling the Ethereum mainnet and on core cypherpunk values: Censorship resistance, Open source, Privacy and Security. Earlier this year Tomasz K. Stańczak stepped down as co-executive director at the end of February. Trent Van Epps also left the foundation to work full time on the Protocol Guild, an independent funding organization for Ethereum core developers.

Outside the foundation Stark founded ETHGlobal, an organizer of Ethereum-focused hackathons, and L4, an early-stage venture studio. Before joining the foundation he served as head of operations and legal at Ledger Labs.