The Ethereum Foundation has named three new leaders for its core Protocol Cluster, marking a fresh chapter for the project’s technical roadmap. Will Corcoran, Kev Wedderburn, and Fredrik will now coordinate the work that keeps Ethereum’s base layer evolving. The change comes as the community prepares major upgrades under the “Glamsterdam” and later “Hegotá” forks.
The new appointments follow a period of leadership transition inside the foundation. Earlier this year, co‑executive director Tomasz Stańczak stepped down, and the board named Bastian Aue as interim co‑executive director alongside Hsiao‑Wei Wang. Now, the Protocol Cluster is also turning the page as long‑time leads move on.
New Protocol Cluster Leads
Under the reshuffle, Corcoran, Wedderburn, and Fredrik replace outgoing Protocol Cluster leads Barnabé Monnot and Tim Beiko, while researcher Alex Stokes goes on sabbatical. The Foundation says the trio already helped drive the protocol track, the Fusaka upgrade, PeerDAS data sampling, and a mainnet gas‑limit increase. These changes support Ethereum’s long‑term goals for scalability, data throughput, and security.
Each new lead has a clear focus. Corcoran will coordinate zkVM proofs and post‑quantum consensus research. Wedderburn leads the zkEVM team, while Fredrik heads Protocol Security and the “Trillion Dollar Security” effort to harden Ethereum for very large value at stake.
Glamsterdam and Hegotá on the Horizon
The leadership update came with a May 2026 Protocol Cluster report on the Glamsterdam upgrade. Developers recently held an interoperability event in Svalbard, where client teams tested key features and confirmed milestones for the next fork. The Foundation calls Glamsterdam the next major step in Ethereum’s multi‑year scaling roadmap.
At the same time, some features are shifting to Hegotá, a follow-up upgrade now framed as a “cleanup and hardening” release in late 2026. Items like FOCIL, Verkle Trees, and parts of account‑abstraction work will likely land there instead of Glamsterdam. The new Protocol Cluster leads will guide how these pieces fit into the longer Strawmap roadmap for the base layer.
These Protocol Cluster changes sit inside a broader evolution of the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership model. In 2025, the Foundation introduced a co‑executive director structure with Hsiao‑Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, while long‑time executive director Aya Miyaguchi became Foundation president. In February 2026, the board named Bastian Aue interim co‑executive director after Stańczak stepped down to focus on core development work outside management.
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