Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum must be "amazing," but the foundation is not the center

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

After experiencing a series of negative events such as the continuous departure of core members and criticism from former core supporters, Ethereum founder Vitalik today had to publish a lengthy response to the community to quell public opinion and inject more confidence into the community.

In fact, all the negative doubts essentially stem from the decline in ETH's price. Compared to the strong performance of Hyperliquid, Ethereum lags behind in ecological prosperity, community belief, and main chain performance, resulting in its price dropping by more than 64% in the past year. In contrast, HYPE's price has repeatedly hit new highs, surpassing $64 at its peak.

As a result, the Ethereum community has directed its main criticism towards Ethereum's core contributor: the Ethereum Foundation. Many opinions believe that the strategic formulation of the Ethereum Foundation is vague, with frequent changes in leadership, and not only has it not increased its holdings of ETH but has also continued to sell coins, failing to represent the interests of ETH holders.

Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of Bankless, stated in a post on May 20 that Ethereum's future can no longer rely on the Ethereum Foundation (EF). "While EF is important, Ethereum needs new institutions to intervene and fill the gaps. We need an organization that truly hopes for the success of Ethereum assets (ETH) — growth in quantity — and is willing to speak out and take action. EF is not that, and will never be."

Tempo researcher and former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist shares a similar view. He stated in a post a few days ago that the Ethereum Foundation currently holds less than 0.1% of all ETH, with no funds flowing to it from Ethereum staking or transaction fees. The way to save Ethereum lies in the community creating an organization that aligns with Ethereum's economic interests and is accountable for them.

Veteran crypto journalist Laura Shin further pointed out that the original sin of Ethereum lies in the fact that every step since Dencun has not considered token economics, meaning that the Ethereum Foundation has overly focused on ideology while neglecting capital markets and price performance.

In response to these criticisms, Vitalik addressed the community's concerns in today's lengthy article with a candid and firm attitude, systematically elaborating on his deep thoughts regarding the role, strategic direction, and value positioning of the foundation.

1. Facing the "Sense of Crisis": Ethereum Cannot Become "The Second Google"

Vitalik began by acknowledging a sense of "disturbance" — he often sees people saying: "Vitalik talks about decentralization, privacy, and becoming a refuge technology, which sounds great, but why do EF's actual actions not reflect this?"

He further admitted that there might be a "real difference" between his sense of crisis and that of others in the community — in terms of "which type of criticism I value most and which critics can hit my pain points the hardest."

To illustrate this, he made a significant analogy: Google. Vitalik believes that Google is a success story, "but one could also hold another view: they had a beautiful and idealistic start, but at some point, the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they gradually abandoned the 'don't be evil' motto."

He stated: "If you took me back to around 2008 and gave me a button that, when pressed, would raise Google's standards on 'dogmatism' by one or two standard deviations, such as giving Richard Stallman a permanent veto over certain key policies, I would press it without hesitation."

The reason is that the entire tech industry is deviating from the early idealistic foundation of "don't be evil," "turning to chase financial interests, embracing the grand narrative of accelerating superintelligence that devours everything, being infiltrated by unscrupulous individuals, and cowardly yielding to government pressure in terms of ideological control, surveillance, and war." Therefore, "having a company do something different, positioning itself as the 'irrational person' that George Bernard Shaw spoke of, resisting the tide of the times, is more beneficial for freedom, power balance, and the stability of society as a whole than all major companies succumbing to mainstream trends."

This discourse has actually set the tone for the future of the Ethereum Foundation: it will not become the second Google — it will not slide into mediocrity and corruption step by step after an idealistic opening.

2. EF is Not the Center, but a "Node with Clear Objectives"

In response to external criticism regarding the foundation's positioning, Vitalik provided a clear framework: EF is not "the center of Ethereum," but rather "a node with clear responsibilities alongside other nodes." He said that within the Ethereum ecosystem, "even within EF, many people hope we become the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure we become the latter."

The necessity of this shift lies in a harsh financial reality: EF holds only about 0.16% of all ETH, "less than many individual ETH holders," while in other blockchains, it is common for "central foundations" to hold 10% to 50% of the shares. Vitalik further pointed out that EF's initial design was only to complete the limited scope of work defined in the token sale document, which was fully completed in 2022, "it was never designed to be an eternal manager."

Therefore, Vitalik stated that EF will choose to use its remaining resources to pursue long-term goals rather than blindly expanding. EF will clearly focus on activities that are crucial for Ethereum's success as a censorship-resistant, capture-resistant, open, private, and secure system, and that would not happen without their promotion. He particularly emphasized that EF will no longer continue to sell large amounts of ETH.

3. Ethereum Must Be "Stunning"

Vitalik put forward a clear stance in the lengthy article: Ethereum must be "stunning."

"We live in an era of highly intelligent AI and various technological accelerations. 'Maintaining the status quo of EVM, hard forking once or twice a year to meet short-term user needs' is unimaginative."

But for some, "stunning" means 250 milliseconds of latency and 1 million TPS. Vitalik bluntly stated: "I think it's a mistake for Ethereum to go down this path. Pursuing speed and scalability while being only slightly better in decentralization is a path to mediocrity, and if we do this, we will inevitably fail."

He believes Ethereum should strive in another dimension — that is the CROPS dimension:

First, a provably bug-free Ethereum. About six months ago, "all network security researchers would have thought this was an absurd and impossible goal. And now, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification, it is on the verge of becoming a reality."

Second, highly available chain consensus. Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum will continue to be the only chain that possesses both the traditional BFT security attributes (high fault tolerance in asynchronous networks) and Bitcoin's PoW security attributes (resisting 49% attacks in synchronous networks) under streamlined consensus.

Third, minimizing intermediaries. "Frankly, protocols like smart contract wallets and railgun must send transactions through intermediaries to go on-chain, which is embarrassing and has always been a weak point." He admitted, "Only achieving 50% does not make Ethereum stunning in the CROPS dimension. So we must pursue 100%."

This "irrational" technical insistence is, in fact, a response to veteran journalist Laura Shin's criticism: Ethereum has not ignored token economics but is trying to achieve the highest capital premium by establishing extreme "certainty."

4. How to Bridge the Gap of "Interest Alignment"?

Looking back over the past decade, Ethereum has experienced the bursting of the ICO bubble, the DeFi winter, rampant hacking, and multiple bear market impacts, but ultimately completed its self-evolution.

Today, Vitalik's reflection on the foundation has garnered widespread attention, not only because he responded to external criticisms but more importantly, it sends a signal: the Ethereum Foundation is gradually transitioning from a past technology-oriented organization to a mature institution that balances organizational governance, ecological coordination, and long-term strategy.

For an ecosystem managing hundreds of billions of dollars in on-chain economic activities, this transformation may not be any easier than any hard fork upgrade.

Lucas Tcheyan, Vice President of Research at Galaxy, expressed firm support for ETH, stating, "The market is repeating the same mistakes with ETH, just as it did with SOL in 2022/2023. The executive changes at EF are concerning. But Ethereum's roadmap looks more coherent than at any time since the merge."

However, after the Ethereum Foundation further reduces its scope of responsibilities, regarding the view that many industry professionals believe the Ethereum ecosystem needs to create an "organization that aligns with Ethereum's economic interests and is accountable for them," Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation have not responded to this issue, and the market has not yet seen a viable solution.

This gap of "interest alignment" may be key to ETH reversing its decline.