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Bastian Aue
Bastian Aue is a leader within the Ethereum Foundation (EF), the non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Ethereum protocol and its ecosystem. In February 2026, he was appointed to serve as the interim co-Executive Director of the Foundation, working alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang.[1][2] On June 18, 2026, Wang stepped down from the role effective immediately. Contemporaneous reporting then described Aue as taking on a larger interim role guiding the Foundation after both co-Executive Directors had departed.[5] Prior to his executive appointment, Aue was a core member of the EF's management team and is noted for his strategic thinking and commitment to Ethereum's core principles.[3]
Career
Ethereum Foundation
Aue has been with the Ethereum Foundation for several years, serving in various capacities before joining the executive management team.[2]
Interim Co-Executive Director (2026–Present)
On February 13, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation Board announced the appointment of Bastian Aue as interim co-Executive Director, with the appointment being effective immediately.[3] He assumed the responsibilities following the decision of Tomasz Stańczak to step down from the role at the end of February 2026.[1][4]
After his February appointment and before Wang’s June departure, Aue co-led the foundation alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang, who had been serving as co-Executive Director with Stańczak since the dual-leadership structure was formalized in April 2025.[1] The transition occurred just over nine months after this structure was established, which coincided with Aya Miyaguchi moving from the Executive Director role to become President of the Foundation.[1] Stańczak, founder of the Ethereum client Nethermind, chose to depart the EF to focus on building a new project within the Ethereum ecosystem.[4]
June 2026 Leadership Transition
Hsiao-Wei Wang stepped down from her co-Executive Director role effective immediately on June 18, 2026, after returning from a sabbatical and reflecting on her future priorities. She said she felt it was the right moment to step back. During Wang’s sabbatical, Aue helped oversee the leadership transition; after both Wang and Stańczak had departed, Aue took on a larger interim role guiding the Foundation.[5]
Previous Roles at the Foundation
Prior to his appointment as interim co-Executive Director, Aue was a key member of the Ethereum Foundation's core executive team.[3] In this capacity, he participated in high-level decision-making alongside co-Executive Directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak.[3] His responsibilities on the management team included a focus on grants, enterprise initiatives, and operations.[3] Before joining the core management team around early 2025, Aue had already been with the Ethereum Foundation for several years in other unspecified roles.[2]
Reception of Appointment
Bastian Aue's appointment as interim co-Executive Director was met with widespread support and strong endorsements from senior leaders within the Ethereum Foundation. The official announcement from the EF Board highlighted his "deep organizational knowledge of the EF’s unique structure and values, and extensive experience within EF management." The Board stated that his knowledge is "invaluable for keeping the EF in good shape while continuing to move forward."[3]
Key figures in the organization voiced their confidence in his leadership:
- Aya Miyaguchi, President of the Ethereum Foundation, stated there is "no one more ready to take on this role" and expressed her confidence that Aue would provide "steady leadership" during the transition period.[1]
- Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, publicly welcomed Aue to his new role in a social media post following the announcement.[2]
- Danny Ryan, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, described Aue as "the single most thoughtful and wise person I have ever worked with."[2]
- Martin Hansen of the Ethereum Foundation commented, "I've worked closely with Bastian [...] at the EF and he is the most thoughtful and best strategic thinker I've ever worked with."[2]
- Franziska Heintel, also of the Ethereum Foundation, praised Aue's "understanding of Ethereum and the bigger picture" and noted that "his strategic mind will be a great asset for this position."[2]
June 2026 Organizational Restructuring
On June 23, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation said a months-long reorganization implemented its Mandate and Treasury Management Policy. The new structure organized work into five clusters—protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer—alongside operations and management-related teams. The EF said 54 colleagues were leaving, approximately 20% of its workforce, and characterized the change as a move toward a leaner, more focused organization.[6]
Execution Priorities
In a public execution thread in June 2026, Aue framed the EF’s work around its mandate to maintain Ethereum as permissionless infrastructure for self-sovereignty, censorship
- and capture-resistant, open-source, private, and secure. He highlighted reducing harmful MEV and capture of transaction ordering in the transaction pipeline, making privacy a default, and treating staking concentration as a protocol-security concern.[7][8]
Aue also proposed moving EF compensation and major financial relationships toward ETH and Ethereum-native stablecoins that comply with the Foundation’s mandate, subject to legal requirements or unavoidable operational constraints. For funding external spinouts, he outlined criteria including relevance to the mandate, whether the EF would otherwise do the work internally, whether a better home exists, the ability to execute without increasing capture or dependency, and whether funding reduces long-term dependence on the EF.[7][8]
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