Author | Azuma, Odaily
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has long been a source of discontent.
As the community's disappointment with ETH's weak performance this cycle has gradually accumulated and finally erupted, calls for reforming the EF have also grown louder.
Over the past few days, the entire Ethereum community has been discussing the EF's leadership structure, personnel composition, operating model, and financial plans. Current EF Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi has been heavily criticized by the community, and Vitalik himself has had to publicly state that he is "undertaking a major overhaul of the EF's leadership structure" under pressure.
The discussion further deepened this Monday. Founders and executives of several top Ethereum ecosystem projects have come out to criticize the EF's many sins, and the intensity of their language shows that these major projects have long-standing grievances against Ethereum's performance.
The following is a collection of views compiled by Odaily.
Synthetix, Infinex founder: EF should require L2s to use revenue to buy back ETH
Synthetix and Infinex founder Kain Warwick was the first to attack.
On Monday afternoon, Kain posted on X saying, "If I were to run the EF, I would absolutely put pressure on Layer2s to use their sequencer revenue to burn ETH. Ethereum has a lot of leverage in this negotiation..."
Curve founder: EF should immediately abandon the L2 strategy
Following Kain, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov also jumped out to attack Layer2, but his language was more aggressive.
On Monday afternoon, Egorov posted on X saying that the EF's top priority should be to abandon the Layer2-centric roadmap and instead focus all its efforts on expanding Layer1.
In subsequent discussions with community members, Egorov also bluntly stated that "Layer2 is not a moat, but a bandage."
Aave founder: 12 measures to save the EF
In the evening, Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted a lengthy article on X stating that he had read the EF's annual budget report and believes the EF needs a thorough overhaul in 12 areas 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 chairman responsible for VB;
- Part of the non-technical team should focus on financial management (done internally);
- Diversify the treasury 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 in 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 at Ethena and former expansion lead at 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. If these two things can be done, ETH will soon break through $6,000.
Wintermute founder: Potential death spiral for Ethereum
Top market maker Wintermute, though not exclusively focused on the Ethereum ecosystem, 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 posted about the potential for a death spiral for 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, Dapps that still believe Ethereum is secure will flee to other chains, further lowering the ETH price, which could be a very large death spiral.
Therefore, any blockchain must have gambling, speculation, and broader financial applications as part of its product, or it will be seen as insecure.
In the midst of public outrage, the EF chooses to sell again...
In the midst of community-wide condemnation and public outrage, the EF has once again chosen a surprising move.
Around 6:20 pm, the EF's address 0xd77...1f4 used for small, 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 this "low in total value but extremely symbolic" move 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 in staking. Vitalik's explanation is that one is the concern over regulatory issues; the other is the EF's neutrality issue, as if the EF self-stakes, it will force them to take a stance on any future controversial hard forks.
Regulatory issues aside, which are gradually becoming less of a problem as the regulatory environment relaxes overall.
As for the second point, does this explanation really hold water? When Solana is pressing hard and the competition has reached a life-and-death stage, the EF is still "avoiding suspicion" over 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 comments 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 true change will come soon.
