Protocol Consensus Intern

About the Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a global non-profit organization dedicated to supporting Ethereum and related technologies. Our mission is to do what is best for Ethereum’s long-term success. Our role is to allocate resources to critical projects, to be a valued voice within the Ethereum ecosystem, and to advocate for Ethereum to the outside world.

EF Internship

As part of our mission to advance blockchain systems, interns will contribute to bleeding edge research that spans computer science, distributed systems, crypto-economics, and mechanism design. This program offers a unique opportunity to work closely with Ethereum Foundation researchers, their collaborators, and other contributors across the ecosystem, tackling both foundational and applied research challenges. Interns will also have opportunities to share their findings through ethresear.ch, academic publications, or conference submissions helping shape the future of Ethereum.

Interns can choose to work remotely but are encouraged to work out of an EF office (likely Berlin, Germany). In addition, interns will be invited for an in-person cohort meetup in the summer.

The duration of the internship is 12 weeks during summer 2026.

Protocol Consensus team description

The Protocol Consensus team’s mission is to bridge the gap between the guarantees provided by Ethereum’s consensus protocol today and those necessary to fully support the network’s long-term values and objectives. To move toward this goal, we focus on activities such as protocol design, theoretical analysis, specification writing, academia engagement and collaboration with the broader ecosystem to ensure that ideas can be translated into practice.

Resources:

- TOB-SVD: Total-Order Broadcast with Single-Vote Decisions in the Sleepy Model

- Integrating 3SF with ePBS, FOCIL, and PeerDAS

- A Fast Confirmation Rule for Ethereum | Devcon SEA

More on the EF Protocol cluster: https://protocol.ethereum.foundation/

• Foundational knowledge of permissionless BFT consensus protocols
• Familiarity with Dynamically Available protocols
• Familiarity with LMD-GHOST and Casper-FFG
• Some Python; familiarity with Go/Rust a plus

• Conduct original research in areas relevant to Ethereum and decentralized technologies.
• Collaborate with Ethereum Foundation researchers and contributors to address pressing technical and conceptual challenges.
• Contribute to public-facing materials, such as blog posts, white papers, and technical reports, to share research outcomes.
• Engage with the broader research community through discussions, seminars, and collaborations.

• Current university enrollment studying a relevant field such as computer science, cryptography, mathematics, or economics. Very recent graduates (~1 year) may also be considered.
• Demonstrated interest in Ethereum, blockchains, and decentralized technologies.

Important dates:

This application closes on Dec 1st, 2025. Applicants will receive decisions by January 30th, 2026.

Note on AI-assisted review:

The hiring team will use an AI-assisted tool to help us review resumes for this role. Here’s what that means:

- Your resume is anonymized before the AI review.

- We have been assured that your information will not be used to train AI models.

- Human reviewers make all final decisions. The AI tool does not reject or advance candidates automatically.

- The tool simply helps the hiring team manage a large volume of applications by highlighting potential fits.

If you’d like to know more about how the tool works, you can read the Talent Fit AI Brief.