Alex Stokes

Alex Stokes spent several years as a core Ethereum protocol researcher, building consensus-layer infrastructure including ethereum-consensus, a Rust implementation of the consensus specifications, alongside the mev-rs block-builder gateway, the ssz-rs serialization library, and a KZG commitment scheme implementation. In January 2025 the Ethereum Foundation named him co-lead of its newly formed Research department alongside Barnabé Monnot, and he went on to lead the Scale L2 track of the Foundation's Protocol research cluster with Francesco D'Amato. Under that cluster's coordination, Ethereum shipped the Fusaka upgrade to mainnet in December 2025, introducing PeerDAS and raising the network's gas limit. Stokes stepped back from the Foundation onto an open-ended sabbatical announced in May 2026 as part of a wider leadership reshuffle there, and his ETHBoulder 2026 talk, on AI, credible neutrality, and Ethereum's role amid overlapping global crises, extends that protocol-research background into the network's current pressures.

130 talks by Alex Stokes