Ethereum Foundation Cuts 20% of Staff as SBI Mints ¥10B Stablecoin, ETH Holds $1,650

Ethereum News

The Ethereum Foundation has concluded a months-long restructuring by cutting 54 staff, roughly 20% of its workforce, while trimming its operating budget by about 40%. The organization said the overhaul moves it away from broad ecosystem promotion toward a focused, cluster-based model, with remaining personnel reorganized into five divisions: protocol, access, users, community and institutions. It framed the changes as aligning its structure with execution on its mandate and treasury policy. The foundation also signaled a shift of internal compensation and reserves into ETH and stablecoins, requiring staff to operate within the same network constraints faced by ordinary users of the leading altcoin smart-contract platform.

In Japan, SBI launched JPYSC, billed as the country’s first trust-type yen-denominated stablecoin, with plans to issue ¥10 billion (about $69 million) of the token directly on Ethereum. The move places a regulated, fully backed yen instrument on the network at a moment when issuers increasingly choose Ethereum as settlement infrastructure for tokenized cash. Unlike experimental algorithmic stablecoins, JPYSC is structured around a trust framework intended to keep redemptions one-to-one with reserves. The launch underscores how institutional stablecoin activity continues to gravitate toward Ethereum even as broader sentiment around the asset has weakened over recent months.

Separately, SBI VC Trade became the first Japanese venue to list RLUSD, the US-dollar stablecoin issued under Ripple’s brand, offering it exclusively on Ethereum. The listing extends the dollar-pegged token’s reach into a tightly regulated market and adds another institutional stablecoin to Ethereum’s settlement layer. Together with the JPYSC rollout, the decisions highlight a consistent theme: regulated Japanese financial groups are routing new digital-cash products through Ethereum rather than rival chains. For a network whose token price has lagged its fundamentals, the steady accumulation of stablecoin issuance and tokenized assets represents one of the clearest signs of deepening real-world usage.

On the derivatives side, a large trader known as Machi Big Brother drew market attention on Hyperliquid after being liquidated seven times in ten hours while repeatedly reopening a leveraged ETH long. On-chain data showed the account still holding 1,100 ETH, worth roughly $1.82 million, with a fresh liquidation price near $1,635. Because Hyperliquid publishes address-level activity and liquidation maps, traders could watch the position’s vulnerable price band in real time. That transparency turns liquidation risk into a monitorable signal, letting others use exposed levels as reference points for stops or hedges, though visible clusters never guarantee where price ultimately moves next.

The foundation also outlined where its remaining engineering effort will concentrate. Its protocol division will prioritize scaling and strengthening Ethereum’s base-layer cryptographic guarantees, while flagging suppression of maximal extractable value and stronger privacy as core objectives—work that aligns with zero-knowledge approaches such as the Aztec Network. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin described a third-generation roadmap he calls Strawmap, with a long-term goal of moving maintenance toward a leaner, near-finished state. Once complete, he argued, development should narrow to security fixes and a small set of high-value upgrades, borrowing the conservative, tightly scoped change philosophy that has long governed Bitcoin.

Underlying activity tells a more constructive story than ETH’s chart. Network usage reached record levels in the first quarter, with monthly active users climbing to 13.2 million—up 53.5% from the prior quarter and 85.9% year over year—even as layer-1 transaction fees fell about 48% to $39.9 million. Yet that growth has diverged sharply from price: ETH has dropped more than 44% year to date to trade around $1,650, far below its all-time high. The disconnect has hardened bear-market sentiment, with some warning the foundation’s cuts could feed further spot-ETF outflows.

COINOTAG’s proprietary 42-indicator composite scoring engine rates first support at $1,623 a 73/100 (strong), built on the confluence of the S1 pivot and the prior-day close, while overhead resistance at $1,691 scores 63/100, anchored by the 20-period SMA and previous-day high. With spot near $1,654, derivatives data shows a still-positive 0.0026% funding rate and $5.97 billion in open interest, but a stretched 2.96 long/short ratio—nearly 75% long—signals crowded bullish positioning vulnerable to another flush. A Fear and Greed reading of 12 (Extreme Fear) and an RSI of 37.91 reinforce the caution. Holding $1,623 keeps a rebound toward $1,691 in play; losing it would invalidate the thesis and expose $1,572.