Author: Azuma, Odaily
The world has long been suffering from the Ethereum Foundation (EF).
As the community's disappointment with ETH's weak performance this week has gradually accumulated and finally erupted, the call for reforming the EF has also become increasingly loud.
Over the past few days, the entire Ethereum community has been discussing the EF's leadership structure, personnel composition, operation mode, and financial plan. The current EF Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi has been criticized by the community, and Vitalik himself has had to publicly state that he is "undertaking a major overhaul of the EF leadership structure" under pressure.
Time has come to this Monday, and the discussion has further deepened. The founders and executives of several leading Ethereum ecosystem projects have come forward to criticize the EF's many sins, and the intensity of their words shows that the major project parties have long been resentful of Ethereum's performance.
The following is a collection of views compiled by Odaily.
Synthetix and Infinex Founder: EF Should Require L2 to Use Revenue to Repurchase ETH
Synthetix and Infinex founder Kain Warwick took the lead in attacking.
On Monday afternoon, Kain posted on X saying: "If I were to run the EF, I would definitely put pressure on Layer 2 to use their sequencer revenue to burn ETH. Ethereum has a lot of leverage in this negotiation..."
Curve Founder: EF Should Abandon the L2 Strategy Immediately
Following Kain, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov also jumped out to attack Layer 2, but his wording was more radical.
On Monday afternoon, Egorov posted on X saying that the EF's top priority should be to abandon the Layer 2-centric roadmap and focus all efforts on expanding Layer 1.
In subsequent discussions with community members, Egorov also said bluntly: "Layer 2 is not a moat, but a bandage."
Aave Founder: 12 Measures to Save the EF
In the evening, Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted a long article on X stating that he had read the EF's annual budget report and believed that the EF needed to undergo a thorough reform in 12 aspects to achieve better sustainability:
Immediately reduce the burn rate from $130 million to $30 million;
Reduce the number of employees to 80;
Carefully review who can stay. Remove senior positions, consultants, any part-time roles, interns, freeloaders, cockroaches and parasites;
Prohibit consultants or any conflicts of interest;
Ensure that 80% of employees are technical;
Split all technical teams into small 5-person teams, each focused on a specific area and specialty;
The leadership should be a 5-person committee, selected based on performance, with one as the chairman responsible for VB;
Part of the non-technical team should focus on financial management (done internally);
Diversify financial investments into various long-term sustainable assets (LRSTs) and well-fundamentaled and profitable DeFi and non-DeFi projects built on Ethereum;
Diversify staking rewards into stablecoins and invest the funds into DeFi;
Borrow from Aave to manage finances and sell periodically when ETH outperforms other assets;
Create a sustainable revenue model from transaction or staking fees to fund a reasonable EF budget.
Former Ethena Growth Lead: EF Should Focus on DeFi
Seraphim, the former Growth Lead of Ethena and former Expansion Lead of Lido, also posted his views on EF reform.
Seraphim mentioned that Ethereum needs two paths to save itself: one is for the EF to focus on DeFi, and the other is for Consensys led by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin to emulate Microstrategy's approach to BTC. As long as these two points can be achieved, ETH will soon break through $6,000.
Wintermute Founder: The Potential Death Spiral of Ethereum
Although the top-tier market maker Wintermute is not exclusive to the Ethereum ecosystem, the firm is directly involved in market making for a large number of Ethereum ecosystem projects, so its stance is also of great significance to Ethereum.
In the evening, founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy wrote about the potential death spiral of Ethereum.
Evgeny stated that Ethereum's biggest internal contradiction is that the more ETH is used for "gambling", the more DeFi-related Dapps running on Ethereum, the higher the ETH price and the higher the security; conversely, if there is no gambling behavior and ETH is only used for transfers on Zazulu, the ETH price will be very low and the security will also be very low. As the ETH price declines, fewer and fewer Dapps that still believe Ethereum is secure will flee to other chains, further reducing the ETH price, which could be a very large death spiral.
Therefore, any blockchain must treat gambling, speculation, and broader financial applications as part of its product, otherwise it will be seen as insecure.
In the Midst of Public Outrage, the EF Chose to Sell Again...
In the midst of collective condemnation and unabated public anger, the EF has once again chosen a surprising move.
Around 6:20 pm, the EF's address 0xd77...1f4 used for small and high-frequency ETH sales sold another 100 ETH at an average price of $3,364.
As a long-term ETH holder, I find it hard to imagine why the EF would make such an "operation with low total value but great symbolic significance" at such a sensitive time, especially when the community has actively suggested that the EF use staking rewards instead of direct sales, and this proposal has also been acknowledged by Vitalik for further exploration.
You didn't read it wrong, as the top-level organization in the Ethereum ecosystem architecture, the EF hasn't even invested its ETH holdings into staking. Vitalik's explanation is that one is the concern over regulatory issues; the other is the neutrality issue of the EF, as if the EF self-stakes, it will force them to take a stance on any future controversial hard forks.
The regulatory issue is not to be said much about for now, as the overall regulatory environment has gradually relaxed, this is no longer a problem.
As for the second point, does this explanation really hold water? When Solana is pressing hard and the competition has reached the stage of life and death, the EF is still "avoiding suspicion" for hypothetical future situations.
Oh yes, the EF also doesn't seem to care about competition - today the Ethereum community has dug up Aya Miyaguchi's previous remarks in an interview: "I'm training people to say no to a culture of competition and winning."
At a loss for words, I hope the day of real reform will come soon.
