In this week's edition of The Protocol Newsletter, we’re digging into Ethereum Institutional, a new nonprofit aimed at educating financial institutions and banks about Ethereum.

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s tech newsletter covering the most important stories in blockchain. I’m Margaux Nijkerk, a reporter at CoinDesk.

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This week, we’re diving into Ethereum Institutional, a new nonprofit aimed at educating financial institutions and banks about Ethereum.

Ethereum's newest nonprofit is positioning itself asWall Street’s crypto sherpa, guiding banks and asset managers through the Ethereum ecosystem at a pivotal moment for the network.

For much of the past year, the conversation around Ethereum has been dominated by questions about its future. The Ethereum Foundation has faced mounting criticism over its role in the ecosystem, and, in response, has restructured its leadership, laid off staff and narrowed its focus to stewarding the protocol. At the same time, independent organizations have begun emerging to take on responsibilities that were once housed within the foundation.

The latest is Ethereum Institutional, a nonprofit launched last week with an ambitious goal: becoming the Ethereum ecosystem's front door for banks, asset managers and other financial institutions.

Its founders say the organization will serve as a neutral guide for enterprises exploring Ethereum, helping institutions understand the ecosystem, connect with developers and infrastructure providers, and navigate the network without promoting any single company or product.

Ethereum Institutional is led by David Walsh, Matthew Dawson and Marius Smith, whose backgrounds span traditional finance, technology and crypto. Walsh and Dawson previously worked on the Ethereum Foundation's enterprise engagement team, while Smith joined after senior roles at Google and EigenLayer developer Eigen Labs.

"We've built up around 500 relationships over the course of the year, and what's consistently come back was that they appreciate having a neutral counterpart," Dawson told CoinDesk in an interview. "There's thousands of teams in the Ethereum ecosystem... the feedback sometimes has been, 'This is overwhelming.'"

The organization is designed to fill what its founders see as a missing piece in Ethereum's institutional strategy.

Unlike companies building products on Ethereum, Ethereum Institutional says it will work across the ecosystem, helping enterprises evaluate use cases such as tokenization, stablecoins and digital asset infrastructure while introducing them to the teams best suited for their needs.

"Navigating what is already a new and fairly complex technology and the decentralized ecosystem is a bit daunting," Dawson said. "Having a trusted and neutral partner that can help with that navigation... can accelerate that journey and give them confidence."

Its launch comes as Ethereum itself reaches an inflection point. The leaders steering the network are increasingly formalizing how different parts of the ecosystem are taking on responsibilities and roles. The Ethereum Foundation has made clear it intends to focus more narrowly on protocol development while encouraging independent organizations to lead areas such as business development, ecosystem growth and institutional engagement.

For Ethereum Institutional's founders, becoming an independent nonprofit rather than remaining within the foundation was a deliberate choice.

"The EF has always been quite vocal about its principle of subtraction," Dawson said, referring to the organization diving up responsibilities for the network to other organizations . "This is an example of that increasing decentralization, and the number of nodes participating in representing Ethereum."

Operating outside the foundation also gives the organization greater freedom, Walsh said.

"We feel like we have a lot more autonomy and freedom to work as an independent entity," he said. "We can get a bit more opinionated, and a bit more aggressive, in terms of being able to support these teams."

For years, the Ethereum Foundation has walked a careful line in how much influence it exerts over the ecosystem. Its mandate has largely been to coordinate protocol development and steward Ethereum’s technical roadmap, rather than act as a central authority driving business development or adoption. But as the network grew, some in the community pushed for the foundation to take on a more active role in areas like institutional outreach and ecosystem coordination, responsibilities it has increasingly chosen to decentralize instead.

Ethereum Institutional joins a growing network of organizations taking on specialized roles within Ethereum. Last month, EthLabs launched to support ecosystem development, while firms such as Etherealize, launched in 2025, have focused on bringing institutions onchain through commercial products and services.

Walsh sees Ethereum Institutional as complementary to these other firms rather than competitive. "We've taken a slightly different approach, where it's a bit more about education and a bit more neutral in terms of what solutions we want to help institutions adopt."

The founders argue that while much of the online conversation around Ethereum has focused on governance debates and competition from rival blockchains, institutional momentum has continued to build behind the scenes.

He points to recent tokenization initiatives from firms including BlackRock, JPMorgan and Robinhood as evidence that Ethereum remains the dominant platform for institutional blockchain deployments.

For Dawson, there's no contradiction between Ethereum's cypherpunk origins and Wall Street's growing interest, even as many feel like those interests may be separating.

"Those cypherpunk values translate into operational resilience for institutions," he said. "Lack of downtime and security are all things that institutions are absolutely obsessed with."

The founders don't believe Ethereum's future belongs solely to banks. Instead, they see institutional adoption as one piece of a much broader vision.

"I think of it as the internet," Walsh said. "There's room for everyone: DeFi, cross-border payments, banking the unbanked, and Wall Street."

Read more: EthLabs launches as Ethereum undergoes its biggest leadership transition in years

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