In the decentralized world built on crypto principles, the Ethereum Foundation is viewed as a technically and value-neutral guardian. However, a recent split triggered by core developer Péter Szilágyi has shattered this trust facade.
Dissolving the Geth Team, EF Falls into Internal Dispute
Geth (Go Ethereum) is the most commonly used execution client on the ETH network, with approximately 41% of nodes relying on it. The network's stability and decentralization heavily depend on its development quality. Recently, ETH core developer and Geth client developer Péter Szilágyi mentioned in a review that years ago, he proposed providing a small grant to the author of Geth's key dependency components (such as go-leveldb) to encourage continued code maintenance. At the time, he hoped to provide a $10,000 grant but was told only $500 could be allocated, with anything beyond requiring a contract and deliverables.
According to Szilágyi, during the same period, the Ethereum Foundation could unconditionally provide Parity with a $5 million grant, reasoning that "ETH needs a second client because Geth is unreliable". This became an unshakable imbalance for Szilágyi: While both are critical protocol infrastructure, the Geth team had to scrimp and save, while competitors could easily obtain large grants.
As time passed, this imbalance gradually evolved into a trust crisis. Szilágyi revealed that the foundation has already built a new Geth team within Nethermind, explicitly stating it is a "completely independent, uncooperative" fork. More critically, the original Geth team was not informed in advance and only learned about this after Szilágyi discovered it himself.
Facing Szilágyi's accusations, Ethereum Foundation Joint Executive Director Tomasz K. Stańczak publicly responded: "Currently, there are no plans to remove Geth. It is an excellent client software, and an outstanding team is contributing to protocol security. We will continue to maintain and support Geth and strive to make it better and faster."
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Tomasz is also the leader of Nethermind, which is now the most important infrastructure in the ETH ecosystem, listed alongside Geth, Besu, and Erigon as one of the five major execution clients.
However, this statement clearly differs significantly from Szilágyi's disclosure. Szilágyi openly challenged the EF leadership to deny his claims and named multiple foundation executives who had privately suggested that the Geth team become an independent company, separate from EF, which was rejected three times by the team.
Szilágyi stated that Tomasz recently approached most of the remaining Geth developers, telling them they could start interviewing at other companies because he thought their salaries were too high, and asked how many would leave if wages were cut in half. "Come on, deny it! Remember that vacation of mine? Yes, that was after a one-on-one conversation with @0xstark about the secret second Geth team I discovered. I was fired by the foundation within 24 hours."
The rest of the text continues in a similar translated manner, maintaining the original structure and meaning while translating to English.
Szilágyi's college major was computer science, with a research background in distributed systems, particularly passionate about network direction. During his master's degree, he focused on building distributed hosting platforms, dissatisfied with the inefficiency and fragility of manual configuration, and determined to develop a computing system that could self-organize without human intervention. "After graduation, I wasn't necessarily committed to blockchain, but was looking everywhere for work that would let computers execute tasks on their own, and then I encountered ETH," Szilágyi described his encounter with ETH.
In an interview with Bankless, Szilágyi said that in the last few years of working with the Geth team, most of the work was patching and fixing. In the early years, his motivation was "creating, releasing, and tinkering," but that drive has almost faded now.
Gradually, it transformed into a sense of responsibility: he realized he was maintaining an extremely valuable network, and he was one of the few who truly understood and could maintain it. "This work is indeed not as interesting, but it is fulfilling. You gain a sense of satisfaction from being part of it."
In an interview in 2023, when asked about his trajectory with Geth, Szilágyi answered, "There have indeed been ups and downs over the years, and times when I was so frustrated I wanted to flip the table and leave. The most severe was probably during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was really tough. But now I still enjoy this job."
However, just a year later, Szilágyi became an "outsider" in the ETH community.
In fact, this wasn't the first time Szilágyi had criticized issues in the ETH community. In July last year, he criticized ETH for going down the wrong path, arguing that the research team had completely accepted centralized ideas, focusing only on verifiability. On the surface, it was decentralized verification, but essentially centralized control. His strong wording drew widespread attention in the ETH community and sparked heated debates about the network's core principles.
A month later, Szilágyi released a complaint about the crypto industry, questioning whether he had chosen the wrong industry. He said, "For example, SpaceX sends rockets to Mars? Human progress. They fail to launch a rocket and it explodes? Humans learn a lesson and still progress. All outcomes bring progress.
In comparison, the crypto industry is simply a casino prepared for fools (apologies to the few exceptions). Prices rise? Great, when can I buy a sports car. Prices fall? Life is destroyed. What contribution to humanity?
In my view, this industry should have started creating something truly useful that people want to use, otherwise it should shut down. At least Bitcoin tried (though failed) to be a hedge asset. But others are just selling shovels with no gold rush in sight."
Looking back now, at that time, Szilágyi may have encountered some unpleasant events within the ETH Foundation.
Szilágyi also seemed to have issues with Tomasz, now a director of the ETH Foundation. Nethermind had previously stopped storing ETH's historical data along with Besu, a decision that drew Szilágyi's public criticism, considering it irresponsible and potentially misleading to users. This was also one of the triggers for Szilágyi's exit from ETH, saying, "If even core developers are maximizing their interests relative to other developers, why bother making it better? I'm deeply disappointed in everyone involved."
On November 16, 2024, Szilágyi announced a temporary leave from the Geth team for "vacation". However, as previously mentioned, his "vacation" was actually a dismissal after discovering that the ETH Foundation was secretly funding a second Geth development team within Nethermind. After a one-on-one meeting with Foundation member Josh Stark, he was fired within 24 hours for "threatening to resign and undermining team morale".
The process of cost-cutting was not dignified
This public split essentially touched on the dilemma of ETH's current governance structure. On one hand, the Foundation emphasizes that "multi-client consensus" is crucial for protocol security, stressing that Geth should not dominate; on the other hand, Geth has been the main force in protocol execution for years, and its infrastructure quality and team experience are not easily replaceable.
In February this year, ETH Foundation Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi announced her transition to a newly created "Chair" position, which concluded months of community dissatisfaction with the Foundation's leadership and direction.
In June, the ETH Foundation announced the elimination of some R&D personnel and reorganized the original research team into a new department called "Protocol", focusing resources on three major technical directions: L1 expansion kit, blob expansion kit, and UX improvement. The official positioned this move as an optimization of resource allocation, on one hand cutting some R&D personnel, especially those long stuck in theoretical stages; on the other hand, introducing stricter accountability mechanisms to quickly transform research results into actual output.
It can be said that since being widely criticized in the second half of last year, the ETH Foundation has been committed to transforming the entire team, but reforms inevitably encounter growing pains. According to the new policy, EF will determine the allocation ratio of fiat and ETH based on the "operational expenditure ratio × buffer years" model, maintaining annual expenditure at a high level of 15%. The Foundation pointed out that 2025-2026 will be a critical stage for the ecosystem, requiring concentrated resources to advance protocol-layer technical implementation, including L1 expansion kit, blob technology, and UX optimization.
EF stated that 2025-2026 will be a key window for advancing protocol implementation, expecting to maintain 15% annual expenditure and set a 2.5-year fiat currency buffer period. This means the Foundation needs to convert about 37.5% of its treasury into fiat currency to support medium to short-term investments.
Now, with continuous policy-level benefits, this is good news for the application layer on ETH. But regarding governance, we may need to give the ETH Foundation more time to adapt to this new stage.
