resignation

According to The Block, Josh Stark, a key figure at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), announced his resignation after five years and will officially step down at the end of the month. Stark joined the Ethereum Foundation in 2019, initially working in the special projects team, and later rose to leadership, collaborating with EF Chair Aya Miyaguchi, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, and co-executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Bastian Aue.He is one of the most prominent members of the foundation's external image and has led several significant advancements in Ethereum, including the "The Merge" upgrade that transitioned from proof of work to proof of stake, as well as subsequent upgrades like Dencun, Fusaka, and Pectra. During last year's leadership adjustments at the foundation, he was appointed as the "co-manager" of the EF board and recently took on the role of co-chair of the "trillion-dollar security" initiative.Last month, Stark co-authored a strategic blog post on Ethereum with Josh Rudolf and Julian Ma, outlining Ethereum's latest scaling direction and its relationship with the Layer 2 ecosystem. Stark stated, "I haven't planned for the future yet; I just want to take a good rest and spend time with family and friends." This resignation occurs against the backdrop of ongoing changes at the Ethereum Foundation.Last year, the foundation underwent significant leadership adjustments, refocusing its strategic priorities on scaling the Ethereum mainnet and core cypherpunk values; Tomasz K. Stańczak also resigned from his co-executive director position at the end of February this year, having served for less than a year. On the same day, Trent Van Epps also announced his departure from EF to fully dedicate himself to Protocol Guild, the independent funding organization for Ethereum core developers that he founded.

Trent.eth, a member of the Ethereum Foundation, posted on the X platform stating that he is no longer serving at EF as of last Friday. He expressed respect for the partnership with the team over the past five years in network upgrades and funding support work.Trent Van Epps also stated that he will continue to participate in the Protocol Guild and work related to the political economy of Ethereum as long as funding allows.

Tom Duff Gordon, Vice President of International Policy at Coinbase, has left the company to join AI giant OpenAI as the head of policy for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.Tom Duff Gordon worked at Coinbase for nearly 4 years and previously served as a banker at Credit Suisse for 8.5 years. A Coinbase spokesperson confirmed this change via email.

The technical director of the xAI Omni team, Haotian Liu, stated on the X platform that he left xAI earlier this week.It is reported that Haotian Liu independently led the development of the Grok Imagine v0.9 & v1 (image + video generation) project.

According to Bloomberg, Tether Holdings SA Chief Investment Officer Richard Heathcote announced his resignation and will transition to a non-executive advisory role, no longer responsible for daily operations. His deputy, Zachary Lyons, will succeed him.During his tenure, Richard Heathcote led the management of Tether's reserve assets and drove a series of diversified investments for the company, covering areas such as football clubs and humanoid robots.

According to a social media disclosure by Dana Hou, an investment partner at YZI Labs, she has concluded her nearly four-year tenure at YZI Labs (formerly Binance Labs).In her farewell letter, Dana Hou reflected on four major highlights of her work: collaborating and learning alongside partners such as CZ and He Yi; supporting multiple teams including Pendle, Ethena, and Particle Network; facilitating the integration of the Jackson team into Binance Wallet; and working with several talented investors.Dana Hou stated that her belief in the crypto industry remains unchanged, asserting that Bitcoin is still a store of value, cryptocurrencies as an asset class will continue to exist, and blockchain as an open and borderless infrastructure will provide more efficient financial channels and universally accessible on-chain asset services. She expressed her intention to continue monitoring industry developments and firmly believes that "blockchain can function and thrive without permission."It is reported that before joining Binance, Dana Hou worked at Alibaba and Kuaishou, and was also a macro strategist at Goldman Sachs.

According to CoinDesk, since the United States and Israel launched attacks on Iran, dozens of contracts related to Iran have appeared on the prediction market Polymarket, with the prediction market for Khamenei's resignation attracting a trading volume of $45 million.The account with the highest trading volume is named "Curseaaaaaaa," which made a profit of $757,000 by betting "yes." Additionally, four other traders also achieved six-figure profits.

The co-founder and CEO of digital asset technology and trading company BlockFills, Nicholas Hammer, has stepped down. The company's website now lists Joseph Perry as the interim CEO, and a company spokesperson confirmed that Hammer served as CEO until July 2025.Blockfills announced on February 11 that it had suspended customer deposits and withdrawals due to recent market volatility that resulted in approximately $75 million in losses. According to informed sources, the platform had urged some customers to withdraw their assets in advance before the freeze, and deposits remain suspended. Reports indicate that the company is also seeking potential buyers, with investors including Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, CME Ventures, and Simplex Ventures.

Ethereum consensus layer core contributor Greg posted on the X platform revealing the insider details of the resignation of Ethereum Foundation Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak. He expressed that he was not surprised by this event, as there has long been power struggles within the Ethereum Foundation. The organizational inertia of "this is how the Ethereum Foundation operates" makes reforms difficult to implement. Over the past year, core figure Vitalik Buterin has been mostly absent, leading to issues such as resource inefficiency and project stagnation within the foundation.The internal reforms initially promoted by Tomasz Stańczak were not widely accepted, which may have led to his departure. In fact, he has extensive industry experience, including backgrounds in Nethermind, Flashbots, and venture capital. Although potential conflicts of interest were disclosed in advance, some community members still have doubts about this.Additionally, Tomasz Stańczak sincerely hopes to return to technical development, but he is likely to encounter resistance in the reform process at the Ethereum Foundation, which may force him to leave. In the future, it will be necessary to introduce leaders with real business experience and decision-making power to drive the organization’s effective operation.

According to Bloomberg, Naveen Mallela, the global co-head of JPMorgan's blockchain division Kinexys, has left the company. Meanwhile, the bank is accelerating its expansion into digital asset payment services. Mallela took on the role in 2024 and had been with the bank for over ten years.A JPMorgan spokesperson confirmed that Mallela has left and stated that a successor will be appointed soon.

xAI co-founder Jimmy Ba announced his departure. In a tweet, Jimmy Ba stated that today is his last day at xAI, expressing gratitude to Musk for bringing the team together to complete this journey, feeling proud of the achievements of the xAI team, and stating that he will continue to stay in close contact as a friend.According to previous reports from ChainCatcher, xAI co-founder Wu Yuhua announced his departure yesterday.

xAI co-founder Wu Yuhua announced on Twitter that he officially resigned today.

According to Cryptopolitan, Bitcoin Core developer Gloria Zhao has resigned from her maintainer position and revoked her cryptographic signing key. She has long focused on areas such as mempool validation, transaction forwarding, and fee estimation, and her resignation does not affect Bitcoin's consensus rules, network security, or transaction processing.The report notes that resigning and revoking keys is a common practice in open-source projects. Bitcoin Core maintainers are a trusted small group of developers responsible for code review, update approval, and digitally signing official releases using keys. Zhao has contributed to Bitcoin Core development for over six years, but her work did not involve changing the underlying protocol rules of Bitcoin. Zhao did not respond regarding the specific reasons for her departure.

OpenAI's Chief Information Security Officer Matt Knight tweeted that he will soon be stepping down.During his tenure, Matt Knight led the development of security products, ultimately resulting in the release of Aardvark.

According to Lookonchain monitoring, two of the three wallets that previously predicted the ousting of Venezuelan President Maduro and profited from it have been inactive for 11 consecutive days. The remaining wallet, "SBet365," made a new bet two days ago, predicting that Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei will step down before January 31.

According to on-chain analysis platform Lookonchain, three suspected Polymarket "insider wallets" placed bets hours before Venezuelan President Maduro was arrested, totaling a profit of $630,484.These three wallets were created and funded days in advance, betting only on events related to Venezuela and Maduro. Among them, wallet 0x31a5 invested $34,000 and profited $409,900, wallet 0xa72D invested $5,800 and profited $75,000, and wallet SBet365 invested $25,000 and profited $145,600.

According to The Block, Neel Somani, the founder of the Ethereum L2 protocol Eclipse, has stepped down as Executive Chairman as of October 2025. Somani stated that this move is to fully dedicate himself to machine learning and other intellectual research directions.Somani founded the company in 2022, raising $15 million in seed funding, aiming to build scaling solutions using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM). He later shifted focus to building a high-performance Ethereum L2 in 2023 and transitioned from CEO to Executive Chairman after completing a $50 million Series A funding round in 2024. The related adjustments were founder-led and pre-planned, with no changes to his equity or board power.

Nick Martitsch, the Head of Market Development at the crypto venture capital firm Paradigm, announced that this week will be his last week working at Paradigm after building and advancing the GTM (Go-To-Market) function for three years.ChainCatcher previously reported that Paradigm General Partner Charlie Noyes announced he has resigned from his position but will continue to participate in Kalshi affairs as a board observer alongside Paradigm founder Matt Huang, and will also provide support to Paradigm's portfolio companies and founders.

ChainCatche message, Paradigm general partner Charlie Noyes announced on social media that he has resigned from his position and will continue to participate in Kalshi affairs as a board observer alongside Paradigm founder Matt Huang.It is reported that Charlie Noyes joined Paradigm at the age of 19, making him the first employee of the venture capital firm.