The Ethereum Foundation, the independent organization responsible for the development of the Ethereum network, has opened applications for the seventh round of protocol development grants. Applications will be open until May 13, and participants selected for the program will receive training and mentoring from core developers for six months, from June to November. Financial support will also be provided to participants within the scope of the scholarship every month.
What does the EPF7 program offer?
According to the Ethereum Foundation’s statement, the new era will proceed with a smaller team compared to previous years and cycles. In this way, the Foundation aims to ensure that participants receive more intense one-on-one support from existing mentors and make a deeper contribution to the projects. People who have a strong software engineering background, can work on their own and are willing to develop open source can apply to the program. The selected scholars will take part in client applications, testing processes, technical documentation and core protocol research.
In previous years, the majority of program participants went on to become long-term developers on Ethereum client teams. This program aims to constantly introduce new capabilities to the system that will advance the road map of the network. The size of the period and the participant profile will be determined after May 13, when applications will close.
The Foundation protocol support team explained that “They prioritize the participants to produce more effective work in their projects, rather than relying on more people.”
Ethereum Foundation’s resource management in recent months
Vitalik Buterin, one of the founding partners of ETH, announced at the beginning of the year that he would reduce the foundation’s expenses for a certain period of time. At that time, the foundation had approximately 172 thousand ETH on hand, and annual expenses sometimes reached up to $100 million. After a sell-off six days ago, the foundation currently holds over 92 thousand ETH. These moves aim to use resources more efficiently and ensure the sustainability of the Ethereum ecosystem in the long term.
Additionally, it is known that Buterin has personally allocated 16,384 ETH to support the ecosystem for the next five years. These steps will enable the foundation to use existing opportunities more carefully for further development activities.
Support for the ecosystem and new initiatives
One day before the announcement of the EPF7 program, the foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program shared its grants in the first quarter of 2026 with the public. Grants continue to be awarded to areas such as cryptography, zero-knowledge proof, protocol security, and basic research. Projects supported include EthereumJS TypeScript infrastructure, performance benchmarks testing network health ten times larger than the mainnet, and Lighthouse client developments for the Fusaka migration.
In addition, personnel recruitment was supported for the 2026 intern program carried out in the fields of protocol consensus, cryptography and protocol security. Additionally, the Ethereum Applications Guild, a global non-governmental initiative, was launched. This new formation announced that it aims to promote the spread of Ethereum-based applications and the development of projects that touch real life.
Foundation officials shared the information: “While the resources allocated to core development are used carefully, innovative projects continue to be funded on the protocol and application side.”
