The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has just announced the Silviculture Society, a new 15-member advisory council, to address leadership disputes. This diverse group of Ethereum developers is focused on a single goal: protecting the core values of the project.

Vitalik Buterin stated that this Council is an experimental effort to drive community governance. EF will build its own institutions and advisory groups to address other issues, but the direction of the project is the top priority.

Can the Silviculture Association maintain Ethereum's values?

Ethereum has finally begun to address the leadership issues that have shaken the community. Two days ago, Aya Miyaguchi announced that she will become the next Chair of the Foundation after serving as Executive Director for seven years.

Today, EF announced its new advisory body: the Silviculture Society.

"EF Silviculture Society: a loose collection of individuals from outside the Foundation providing informal advice to EF ... to ensure we maintain the core values of open source, privacy, security, and anti-censorship. Ethereum's success depends on having talented and committed developers building with these values in mind," they declared.

The Silviculture Society includes 15 members from diverse backgrounds. Some have fairly traditional public careers, such as Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, or Lefteris Karapetsas, the founder of Rotki, a privacy protection tool.

However, most of the Silviculture Society members appear to be completely anonymous, using only pseudonyms like "Aleph," "dystopiabreaker," or "mashbean." The entire group is strongly committed to the values of the old crypto community and cypherpunk culture.

However, as one member noted, the Silviculture Society is not a governing board. Instead, it provides "remote feedback from the perspective of ecosystem participants" to the EF.

This member also re-shared a comment from another ecosystem developer, who noted that some criticism of the EF may not be well-intentioned. Instead, "price declines causing meaningless outrage" may be the cause.

Volatile Ethereum prices lead to criticism

While the EF is embroiled in a leadership crisis, Ethereum's price is also struggling. For example, a major controversy has arisen over how the Foundation handles operating costs.

This has been addressed through DeFi lending protocols, but dissatisfaction remains. Today, Ethereum's price is at a multi-month low, and the entire crypto market may be entering a bearish trend.

However, ultimately, it does not matter if some community members attack the EF leadership out of disappointment over the price.

The Silviculture Society is clearly a well-intentioned effort, assembling a team of veteran developers to approach the same goal from multiple angles. This appears to be a positive development for the Ethereum project and ecosystem.

Ethereum's founder, Vitalik Buterin, has actively defended the Silviculture Society against online criticism. He called it "an experimental effort to create more channels for developers and other community voices to influence the EF," and this initiative is focused on protecting core values.