Lubin, BitMine, SharpLink form nonprofit for Ethereum on Wall St.

BitMine, SharpLink and Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin launched the nonprofit Ethereum Institutional on Wednesday to give banks, asset managers and other financial firms a single point of contact for adopting Ethereum tokenization, stablecoins and other on-chain financial infrastructure.

The group will operate independently of the Ethereum Foundation. Primary funding comes from BitMine and SharpLink, two publicly traded firms with large Ethereum treasuries, with additional contributions anchored by Lubin and dozens of individual and institutional backers, the organization said.

The launch follows last week’s debut of Ethlabs, a separate nonprofit formed by former Ethereum Foundation researchers and backed by many of the same supporters. The entities involved wrote in a joint statement that Ethlabs will focus on protocol-level research and core infrastructure while Ethereum Institutional handles institution-facing adoption.

It will concentrate on compliance, custody integration, token standards for asset issuance, stablecoin use and operational support for on-chain settlement. The group plans to offer guidance on technology selection, regulatory considerations and scaling deployments across trading, custody and payments.

The announcement comes as the Ethereum Foundation has reorganized. The Foundation published a 38-page “Mandate”, implemented a new treasury policy and reduced staff by about 54 positions, roughly 20% of its workforce. Several long-standing Foundation leaders have left in recent months.

The joint statement reads: “Together, Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional form complementary pillars of Ethereum’s next chapter,” adding that one organization will advance protocol innovation while the other provides a dedicated counterpart for institutions moving from evaluation through deployment at scale.

Ethereum Institutional presents itself as a counterpart for institutional firms seeking to deploy tokenized assets and other on-chain services.