Ethereum Foundation Opens EPF7 Fellowship Applications

The Ethereum Foundation opened applications April 30 for the seventh Ethereum Protocol Fellowship, EPF7. Candidates have until May 13 to apply for the June–November cohort, and an introductory town hall is scheduled for May 6 at 1500 UTC.

Selected fellows will receive monthly stipends and mentorship from active core developers. The foundation plans a smaller cohort than in prior rounds, prioritizing “depth of engagement over breadth” so participants can work more closely with mentors and focus on higher-impact contributions. Fellows will contribute to client implementations, testing, specifications and core protocol research.

The program targets software engineers with solid technical backgrounds who are self-directed and motivated by open-source work. The foundation reports past participants have joined client teams and some have stayed on as long-term contributors. Final cohort size and composition will be determined after the May 13 application deadline.

Co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote in January that the foundation was “entering a period of mild austerity” to align an aggressive technical roadmap with longer-term financial sustainability. The foundation held about 172,000 ETH in January; on-chain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence shows holdings now exceed 92,500 ETH after recent sales, including one to BitMine six days before EPF7 opened. Buterin has earmarked 16,384 ETH from his personal plan for ecosystem goals over five years.

A day before the EPF7 announcement, the foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program published a Q1 2026 allocation update listing grants for cryptography, zero-knowledge proofs, security tooling and protocol research. Funded work includes maintenance of the EthereumJS TypeScript stack, Lighthouse client development for the Fusaka transition, L2BEAT’s 2026 operations and a benchmarking initiative to stress-test states ten times the size of mainnet. The update also notes funding for protocol consensus, cryptography and protocol security roles in the foundation’s 2026 internship program.

On April 29 the Ethereum Applications Guild announced itself as a nonprofit dedicated to advancing Ethereum-native applications and supporting developer growth.

Applications for EPF7 remain open through May 13. The foundation’s protocol support team will use the deadline to set the cohort’s final size and makeup.