Protocol Prototyping 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 Prototyping team description

The Protocol Prototyping team at the Ethereum Foundation builds end-to-end implementations of new ideas for Ethereum’s core protocol. By turning concepts into working prototypes, the team explores how potential upgrades behave in practice, helping the community move beyond theory and speculation. Their work tests assumptions, quantifies trade-offs, and uncovers risks that may not be apparent from research alone.

These prototypes serve as a proving ground for innovation, offering concrete insights that feed directly into Ethereum’s specifications, client implementations, and long-term roadmap. By reducing uncertainty and surfacing challenges early, Protocol Prototyping helps de-risk proposed changes and ensures that Ethereum evolves in a safe, informed, and sustainable way.

Resources:

Website: https://ethereum.github.io/protocol-prototyping-site/

Post: Toward Semantic Block Chunking

Post: Block-level Access Lists (bonus: diet BAL)

Post: NYE Proofing Your Specifications

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

• Strong grasp of Ethereum EL/CL, block lifecycle, and Engine API
• Proficiency in Go or Rust; Python for tooling and data scripts
• Linux: profiling/debugging (pprof/perf), logs, containers, CI basics
• Data structures & proofs: Merkle/SSZ, inclusion proofs, hashes/encodings

• 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.