'An honest, neutral counterpart:' Bitmine, Sharplink and Joe Lubin back new Ethereum Institutional non-profit

Bitmine, Sharplink, and Consensys CEO Joseph Lubin are backing another Ethereum-focused non-profit called the Ethereum Institutional, an independent organization "dedicated to accelerating the institutional adoption of Ethereum, its L2s, applications and overall ecosystem," according to an announcement on Wednesday. 

"For years, Ethereum has had the most credibly neutral, liquid, and battle-tested base layer in crypto. What it lacked was a neutral party responsible for the wider ecosystem's institutional GTM, someone in the room with institutions, representing Ethereum as a whole rather than any single product or vendor," David Walsh, a longtime Ethereum backer and now co-founder of Ethereum Institution, said on X. 

Walsh said Ethereum Institution is aiming to be “an honest, neutral counterpart” institutions can call when building on Ethereum.

"Choosing Ethereum isn’t a single decision. It unfolds through a long run of technical and commercial decisions, and throughout that process, institutions need a credible counterpart who can help them navigate the ecosystem and brief leadership with clear, unbiased answers," the institute wrote on its new X account.

EF shakeup

Wednesday’s launch comes amid the latest shift at the Ethereum Foundation, the firm primarily responsible for the Ethereum protocol’s research and development. Last month, the EF cut 20% of its staff and announced it would be focusing primarily on its cypherpunk CROPS mandate.

Several former EF employees and other longtime Ethereum supporters have also recently formed EthLabs, which will take over significant Ethereum protocol research and development duties. EthLabs is acting as a sort of sister organization to the EF, which had seen several significant senior executive departures in recent months, including the three former co-leads of the Protocol Cluster.

In a note to The Block, Standard Chartered Bank's Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick said the launch of EthLabs and Ethereum Institutional will help "drive the type of communication the Ethereum ecosystem has been lacking."

"The aim is to ensure Ethereum is well represented in institutional conversations, and to making sure the broader ecosystem captures the maximum benefit from those engagements, so that more institutions are bought onchain and ultimately have more of the world’s tokenized assets, stablecoins, and market infrastructure on Ethereum and its ecosystem," Kendrick said.

Earlier this year, Standard Chartered predicted "2026 will be the year of Ethereum," in part due to the network's tokenization and stablecoin dominance, and other fundamentals. In January, SC predicted (ETH) could end 2026 at $7,500, down from a previous $12,000 estimate, followed by $15,000 in 2027 and $22,000 in 2028.

ETH is up 3.34% at publication time, to $1,615.

In addition to institutional engagement, education, and advice, the organization said it will also focus on "ETH marketing." The announcement post notes the organization looks to scale the work done at the Ethereum Foundation's Enterprise unit, which "the founding team built."

Bitmine and Sharplink, the two largest ETH treasury firms, and Lubin, who co-founded Ethereum, were named specifically as "anchor funders," alongside an unnamed "broad coalition of individual and institutional contributors." All three were also named backers of EthLabs.

In an interview with The Block last month, Lubin said that the EF was planning to split into at least three organizations, one with a tech focus and another focused on institutional adoption. In its recent reorganization, the EF was divided into domain-focused clusters, including the protocol layer, access layer, user layer, community layer, and institutional layer — alongside a dedicated operations cluster and a management cluster.