Ethereum Foundation Refocuses on Mainnet Development
Ethereum is like an onion—it has multiple layers. The first layer is the mainnet (Ethereum itself), with dozens of second-layer blockchains (Rollup scaling solutions) built on top, and there is also a so-called "social layer".
This fancy term refers to all groups concerned with Ethereum's development. This group has achieved several major victories: last year, activists successfully prompted some industry giants to re-examine their over-reliance on a single software, thereby avoiding a potentially catastrophic split in the blockchain ecosystem.
Now, the social layer seems to have scored another point. It has prompted the Ethereum Foundation to rethink the path to mass adoption. As the most important driving force in the blockchain's continuous development, the new co-directors of this non-profit organization announced their top three priorities for the coming year this Monday: improving Ethereum's performance, ensuring second-layer blockchains remain low-cost, and enhancing user experience.
For years, the industry has generally believed that the path to adoption would go through second-layer blockchains. As stated in last week's newsletter, Ethereum developers have always positioned the mainnet as a high-end product: slow and expensive, but maintaining high decentralization and strong security. Second-layer chains were designed as the "people's blockchain": fast and cheap.
Current second-layer chains have indeed achieved high speed and low cost, but the community has collectively questioned the "Rollup-centric" roadmap. Critics accuse the Ethereum Foundation of being overly focused on obscure research, rather than improving ETH prices, enhancing the mainnet, and user experience.
The Foundation has clearly received these signals. Co-director Tomasz Stańczak explicitly stated on Monday: "We will focus on execution speed, accountability, clear goals, and quantifiable metrics to fully ensure the success of the Ethereum mainnet protocol. Our future focus is to create a unified perception of the entire multi-chain ecosystem through excellent user experience, design, and interoperability."
To demonstrate this "return to the core" determination, Ethereum developers canceled a scheduled upgrade plan this Monday, citing it as "not absolutely necessary". It should be noted that most developers are not Foundation employees, and this decision was not made solely by the Foundation. However, this fully demonstrates that the developer community has entered a "wartime state".
Developers had spent years preparing for an upgrade to the Ethereum Virtual Machine (the software for executing smart contracts), an improvement called the EVM Object Format (EOF), which was originally set to be included in the Fusaka upgrade in the second half of 2025.
However, due to its complexity, legacy issues, and doubts about its actual value to end users, developers unanimously decided to postpone its implementation during a Zoom meeting on Monday, removing EOF from the Fusaka upgrade and delaying its review.
Storm Slivkoff, research partner at Paradigm venture capital firm, commented on X platform: "This is a significant milestone, symbolizing Ethereum turning a new page and evolving towards 'maximizing user impact'."
