On May 21, 2026, the crypto community suffered a major blow: David Hoffman, the most steadfast and representative bullish believer in Ethereum history and the core founder of Bankless, publicly announced that he had cleared all of his ETH holdings.

This is not an ordinary personal position adjustment, but the most iconic signal of faith collapse in Ethereum's current cycle.

Following closely behind, Bankless's other founder Ryan Sean Adams spoke out simultaneously, announcing that the brand has officially entered the "second era". He stated that he still has long-term confidence in the ETH and Bankless ecosystems, but will completely step back from behind the scenes and no longer dominate content direction and guest selection. In the future, David Hoffman will take full charge of brand operations.

Behind this high-level personnel change lies even more brutal internal turmoil. Former Bankless team member Lucas publicly revealed that the platform had quietly disbanded most of its team members yesterday, without any official announcement, gratitude, or assistance in connecting departing employees with new jobs. Internal conflicts within the team have completely surfaced.

It is worth noting that the massive transformation of Bankless coincides perfectly with the Ethereum Foundation's largest personnel turnover and strategic shift in recent years. The once unified, firm, and deeply ingrained ETH investment narrative is now crumbling and dissipating from its foundation.

Former cornerstone of faith: the narrative architect who defined the entire era of ETH

Many people may not understand why a KOL's clearance would cause such a huge shock in the crypto industry. Because David Hoffman has never been an ordinary crypto blogger - he is the creator and ultimate evangelist of the entire value narrative of Ethereum.

In September 2020, David Hoffman and Ryan Sean Adams co founded Bankless, which started as a simple industry weekly and grew into the most influential content matrix and ecological brand in the English crypto community within five years. The platform covers podcasts, in-depth columns, paid members, DAO ecosystem, and Bankless Ventures, a $35 million venture capital fund. Its subsidiary Ethereum Weekly is the core voice platform of the Ethereum ecosystem.

If Ryan Sean Adams is the macro evangelist of Bankless, then David Hoffman is the 'fundamental narrative architect' of Ethereum. He, who started his career as a psychological counselor in 2017, has been deeply involved in the fundamentals of Ethereum for many years and has written a series of classic long articles that laid the foundation for ETH's ten-year faith: "Ether: The Triple Point Asset," "Ether is Equity," "Ethereum's Economic Engine," and "The Ethereum Watershed.

His original theory of "Triple point Asset" systematically defined for the first time that ETH possesses the triple core values of currency, bonds, and equity, completely removing ETH from the label of "counterfeit Bitcoin" and establishing its core positioning as a "global decentralized financial underlying asset".

Even more extreme is that David Hoffman has always been consistent in his words and actions, practicing his beliefs with extreme holdings. He once publicly admitted that 99% of his net assets are allocated to ETH, and he doesn't even have a personal bank account. Just four months ago at the 2026 Davos Forum, he firmly stated that Ethereum will reshape the new global financial order in 2026.

In just a hundred days, Ethereum's most loyal believers have personally ended their faith that they had been holding for years, from being extremely full and firmly believing in reshaping the world, to completely clearing their positions and leaving.

Not a sudden collapse: the bullish faith has already gradually disintegrated

This clearance was not a momentary impulse, but the ultimate decision made by David Hoffman after more than a year of disappointment, doubt, and struggle. In the past year, his attitude towards Ethereum has gradually shifted from full praise to public criticism, and the emotional turning point is clearly visible.

In April 2025, ETH fell to a low of $1415, and David Hoffman publicly criticized the Ethereum Foundation for the first time, stating that its leadership and team culture were continuing to drive away users and developers, and calling for the official to thoroughly reform and adjust direction.

In October 2025, Dankrad Feist, a senior core researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, resigned and joined the stablecoin public chain project Tempo. He publicly expressed his condolences, stating that high-quality core talents continue to be siphoned off by commercial profit projects, and the crisis of talent loss in the Ethereum ecosystem is severe.

In December 2025, he released an annual review article, openly acknowledging that 2025 will be a year of bearish candlesticks for both ETH and BTC, and the industry dividend will fade.

In January 2026, he published an article titled 'This Crypto Cycle Skipped ETH', which presented a heart wrenching conclusion: this round of cryptocurrency bull market has completely skipped Ethereum, and the track dividends are fully tilted towards emerging public chains.

In March 2026, the Ethereum Foundation released a new strategic plan, which he publicly criticized once again, stating that the foundation had given up fighting for ETH market share and market value growth, blindly adhering to a nihilistic ideology, and completely detached from market and user needs.

And Ryan Sean Adams' concession and delegation of power this time are hidden deep signals. He did not follow the clearance and still expressed confidence in ETH, which can be considered as keeping his original intention with dignity. However, completely handing over the content dominance means that Bankless has officially begun its "de ETH" transformation. In the future, the platform's content will significantly expand, adding emerging narratives such as Solana, Hyperliquid, predictive markets, and new ICO tracks, no longer focusing solely on Ethereum, and the former "ETH first loudspeaker" will come to a complete end.

Foundation overhaul: Proactively giving up value capture, ETH core logic collapses

Bankless's narrative shift and bullish exit are essentially external manifestations of the Ethereum Foundation's ongoing turbulence and strategic deviation. Since Vitalik's promotion of foundation restructuring in 2025, the official Ethereum team has undergone continuous major changes, with a large number of core talents leaving and a disruptive shift in strategic positioning.

Previously, Aya Miyaguchi, the executive director who had long been in charge of the foundation, stepped down and was succeeded by Tomasz Sta ń czak and Hsiao Wei Wang. The community's long-standing dissatisfaction has completely erupted - the industry generally criticizes the foundation's opaque operation, lagging development pace, and lack of responsibility for capturing ETH market value and value.

The blood transfusion turmoil did not stop: in February 2026, joint executive director Sta ń czak announced his resignation after less than a year of service; In March 2026, the foundation released a 38 page new official manifesto, "Ethereum Foundation Mandate," introducing the CROPS framework and positioning Ethereum as a neutral, censorship resistant, open-source, private, and secure underlying infrastructure.

The most fatal core statement of this manifesto directly shatters the ETH value system that David Hoffman has built for many years: the Ethereum Foundation returns to its "neutral night watchman" identity, no longer leading ecological expansion, nor responsible for ETH price and market value growth. The document is even equipped with illustrations of the anime "incisive license", vowing to stick to the bottom line of neutral open source in an extreme way, and never commercialize or interfere in the market.

According to community reports, the foundation forced all employees to sign a new program agreement at that time, and those who refused to sign left directly. Under the policy shift, the core team has left in batches: from March to May 2026, all three leaders of the Foundation's protocol cluster resigned, and five senior researchers left in May alone. Within just one year, eight senior core members with over seven years of experience, including Carl Beekhuizen, Tim Beiko, and Josh Stark, left one after another, greatly shaking the foundation of Ethereum.

Ultimate question: Abandoning value capture, where does Ethereum go in the future?

The strategic return of the Ethereum Foundation, seemingly adhering to its original intention and returning to the origin of decentralization, has caused irreparable fatal damage at the capital and market levels.

Previously, the core investment logic of ETH was not only based on technological ecological barriers, but also on the expectation of continuous value capture: the foundation promotes ecological expansion, Layer 2 landing, ecological income increase, and ultimately feeds back ETH market value, forming a complete closed loop.

But now, as the "issuer" of the project, the Ethereum Foundation has taken the initiative to tear down this core value logic, publicly declaring that it is not responsible for market value, does not compete for market share, and only serves as a purely neutral infrastructure.

This is also the fundamental reason for David Hoffman's thorough clearance. In his criticism in March, he bluntly stated that Ethereum in 2026, despite having top-level technological foundations, has abandoned market competition and value growth, and is addicted to the cyberpunk ideology that cannot empower market value, completely betraying the beliefs of its holders.

The cryptocurrency market has never been just a technology market, but also a market of narrative and confidence.

In the past few years, it is the triple asset narrative constructed by David Hoffman, Bankless's continuous preaching, and the foundation's ecological expansion expectations that have supported ETH's high valuation and industry position.

Nowadays, the largest external narrative mouthpiece is beginning to de ETH, core believers are completely clearing their positions and leaving, official foundations are voluntarily giving up value capture, and core talents are being lost in large numbers. The technology is still there, but the beliefs and growth logic that support asset prices have completely collapsed.

In the short term, a single KOL liquidation is difficult to directly shake the ETH market price, but in the long run, Ethereum has lost its competitive qualification in this bull market. When emerging public chains are striving for ecological expansion, value capture, and user growth, the former industry leader Ethereum has chosen to retreat from neutrality and give up competition.

Ethereum, which has experienced seven years of rapid development, is now experiencing a turning point in its era due to its fading faith, shattered narrative, turbulent team, and conservative strategy.