Vitalik Buterin Promises Ethereum Foundation Will Make “Big Changes” Soon, Sets Non-Fungible Token Mil...

The Ethereum founder has responded to the feedback and even criticism from the community over the "lack of enthusiasm" of the project.

Vitalik Buterin promises that the Ethereum Foundation will soon have many "major changes", using the Milady NFT as a profile picture

Vitalik Buterin outlines changes to the Ethereum Foundation

On the evening of 01/18/2025, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, outlined the changes he wants to make to the Ethereum Foundation (EF), the organization behind the management of the second largest blockchain in the world, following the divisive debates within the ETH community in recent times.

We are indeed currently in the process of large changes to EF leadership structure, which has been ongoing for close to a year. Some of this has already been executed on and made public, and some is still in progress.

What we're trying to achieve is primarily the following…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 18, 2025

Vitalik revealed that the Ethereum Foundation has been in the process of changing its leadership structure for nearly a year, with some changes already announced to the community, while other adjustments are still ongoing.

Overall, the goals he wants the Ethereum Foundation to achieve after the restructuring include:

- Increasing the level of technical understanding in the Ethereum Foundation's leadership.

- Increasing two-way dialogue between the EF and the Ethereum ecosystem, both old and new projects.

- Attracting new talent and improving the speed of task processing.

- Being more proactive in supporting developers and programmers, upholding core values such as privacy, open source, and anti-censorship.

- Continuing to strengthen the decentralized and private nature of Ethereum's technology, especially in areas such as payments and treasury management.

On the flip side, the Foundation will avoid:

- Shifting its ideology from progressive to conservative.

- Engaging in lobbying and reaching out to influential politicians, especially in the US, causing Ethereum to lose its political neutrality.- Allowing insider interests within the organization.- Becoming a centralized power structure, seen as the "main player" in the Ethereum ecosystem.

To demonstrate his determination for "change", Vitalik has also changed his profile picture on X (Twitter) to the Milady NFT, a "custom" of the crypto community when they want to show seriousness about something and be ready to face criticism from the community.

Fluctuations in the floor price of the Milady NFT, screenshot of the NFT Price Floor at 10:10 AM on 01/19/2025

Fluctuations in the prices of tokens related to Milady, screenshot of CoinMarketCap at 10:10 AM on 01/19/2025

Internal division within Ethereum

The Ethereum founder's post comes against the backdrop of the ETH network potentially going through a "major crisis" as both protocol activity and community sentiment are at multi-year lows.

This process has been simmering for months as ETH price has not grown as much as other Layer-1s, there have been no notable technological advancements, the community has been in constant debate about the relationship between L1 and Layer-2 projects, while the Ethereum Foundation has been regularly selling ETH and had to wait for the community to put pressure before disclosing budget information.

The climax may be seen as January 18, 2025, when US President Donald Trump chose to launch a memecoin, causing this blockchain to explode in both activity and value. The past period has also witnessed many projects with Ethereum origins choosing to develop further on Solana, a typical case being the Pudgy Penguins NFT collection. This is unacceptable for Ethereum supporters, as they have always assumed ETH to be the pioneering network in crypto market trends, not to be outperformed as it is currently.

One of the most criticized focal points is directed at the Ethereum Foundation and the leadership position of Director Aya Miyaguchi, with a general consensus that the ETH management organization is "sitting on an ivory tower" and does not understand what the community wants. The consequence is that there are many calls for Ms. Miyaguchi to resign and be replaced by someone else who is more community-savvy and adaptable to the changes of the times.

Accordingly, Eric Conner - the author of the EIP-1559 proposal - revealed last week that a veteran programmer in the Ethereum ecosystem, Danny Ryan, is seeking to self-nominate for the position of Ethereum Foundation Director. Mr. Ryan is the team leader who implemented the critical The Merge event, the most important milestone in ETH history, but resigned in September last year for unknown reasons.

Followin' Conner even opened a vote on X, with the result being an overwhelming support for Danny Ryan. The general sentiment of many large KOLs in the Ethereum community is that although Ms. Miyaguchi has made significant contributions to Ethereum in her leadership role at the EF since 2018, the current situation demands a leader who is "daring to think and act" and has a more resolute attitude in both management and social media activities to attract attention to Ethereum. i'd support Danny Ryan as head of the EF Danny led Ethereum through the most difficult transition in Ethereum history, and is respected by both developers AND community members. Aya is frankly respected by neither he "gets" Ethereum, and he lives and breathes Ethereum. full... I believe @AyaMiyagotchi deserves an enormous amount of respect and gratitude for what she has done over the years in stabilizing the EF initially and setting it on a healthy trajectory during first a tough period and then through periods of growth. We are now in a very...