Inside Ethereum’s Next Chapter: Tomasz Stańczak on the EF, L2s, & Institutional Adoption

In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski is joined by Tomasz Stańczak, Co-Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the development and long-term health of the Ethereum blockchain.

Stańczak discusses his path from traditional finance to Ethereum and how those experiences prepared him to help steward Ethereum during a period of rapid growth. The conversation explores Ethereum Foundation restructuring, builder support, L2 interoperability, and why multiple rollup designs are expected to coexist as the ecosystem scales.

They also examine institutional adoption, tokenization, ETH economics, privacy, and how the Foundation balances research, infrastructure, and application-level growth as it plans for the years ahead.

• How Ethereum Foundation leadership operates at scale
• Why L2 diversity and interoperability matter for Ethereum’s future
• How builder-focused teams are supporting applications and founders
• What institutions need to adopt Ethereum infrastructure
• How ETH economics tie into security and incentives
• Why privacy and censorship resistance remain core priorities
• What’s top of mind for the Foundation heading into 2026

Tomasz Stańczak is the Co-Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation and the founder of Nethermind, one of Ethereum’s leading client teams. Prior to building core blockchain infrastructure, Tomasz worked in traditional finance, including roles at Citi and CME Group, where he gained experience in market structure, risk, and large-scale systems. His background continues to inform his approach to Ethereum stewardship, with a focus on security, open-source development, privacy, and long-term protocol sustainability.

Watch on YouTube: YouTube: https://youtu.be/b_M_gqgHfVg

Previous guests include: Paul Neuner, Founder and CEO of Telcoin; Aryan Sheikhalian, Head of Research at CMT Digital; David Hoffman, co-Founder and host of Bankless; Fabian Gompf, Chief Executive Officer of the Web3 Foundation; Kurt Hemecker, CEO of the Mina Foundation; Sunny Lu, co-Founder and CEO of VeChain Foundation; Joe Doll, general counsel at Magic Eden; Philippe Schommers, the Head of Infrastructure at Gnosis; and many others.

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