Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
On July 1, at the ETHCC conference in France, Ethereum core developer Zak Cole announced the establishment of the "Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF)" with the aim of driving up ETH prices, proclaiming, "ETH should rise to $10,000."
ETH's recent price performance has indeed been impressive, especially in early May when it surged over 40% in a single day. The short-term goal of returning to $3,000 seems to have become an obsession for the "E Guardians." However, behind this fervor lies a deeper story of value attribution and self-repair.
ECF: A Voice for Holders
Zak Cole does not hide ECF's positioning and ambition: "It is not an extension of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), but a new force aimed at 'correcting' the course. We say what EF dares not say and do what they are unwilling to do. We serve ETH holders because you deserve better."
The mission of ECF is clear: to promote institutional adoption of Ethereum infrastructure, accelerate the ETH burn mechanism, and enhance ETH's market value.
Currently, ECF has raised millions of dollars in ETH funds and plans to prioritize funding "neutral, immutable, non-tokenized" public technology projects, focusing on supporting tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and repairing the blob space pricing mechanism among other key infrastructures.
Despite the limited scale of fundraising, ECF has introduced a "token voting" mechanism in governance to ensure transparency in the flow of funds. Its first funded project is the "Ethereum Validator Association," aimed at providing resources and a voice for the validator community, offering institutional support for network operators. This initiative not only responds to the community's demand for transparent governance but also injects new vitality into the Ethereum ecosystem.
The Old Ailments of the Ethereum Foundation: Centralization Dilemma and Transparency Crisis
The birth of ECF seems to be a clear challenge to the long-standing governance issues of the Ethereum Foundation.
Founded 11 years ago, the Ethereum Foundation was once a solid backing for Ethereum's development. However, in recent years, it has been criticized for being overly focused on long-term research while neglecting the short-term needs of users and developers. Even more frustrating is its centralized governance structure and opaque decision-making process.
Ethereum developer Péter Szilágyi had a dispute with Tomasz Stańczak, the co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. Szilágyi stated that as a key member of the Geth (Go Ethereum's main client software) development team, the foundation had previously proposed to pay $5 million to have the Geth team separate from the foundation and operate independently. Similar funding maneuvers had also occurred with Parity (another Ethereum client development company). The Ethereum Foundation has long adopted a "diversified investment" strategy for client development, perhaps intending to reduce single-point dependency risks, but this has also exacerbated friction in internal resource allocation and power negotiations.
The greater governance chaos is reflected in the organizational structure of the Ethereum Foundation itself. Former Galaxy Digital vice president Christine Kim publicly questioned the opacity of EF's organizational structure: Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, Alex Stokes, and others hold multiple roles, juggling the dual tasks of "coordinating L1 and L2 scaling" and "leading research and development teams." Additionally, Christine expressed doubts about the details of the organizational chart, such as whether bolded names indicate team leaders, the purpose of highlighted sections, and the logic behind color groupings, such as why consensus mechanisms and account abstraction are grouped together while stateless consensus is not; why Testing and pandaops are grouped while Security is not, all of which lack clear explanations.
Another point of criticism against the Ethereum Foundation is its "selling coins" behavior. As a core supporter of the Ethereum ecosystem, EF holds a large amount of ETH to maintain operations and fund development. However, community members question why it chooses to sell directly instead of earning returns through DeFi staking (like Aave), especially since EF's selling behavior often coincides with ETH price movements, making market sentiment sensitive and fragile. Some believe that EF's sell-off is to cope with operational expenses; others worry that it may reflect a lack of strategic planning.
Data shows that the Ethereum Foundation's expenditures reached $134.9 million in 2023, funding mainnet upgrades, zero-knowledge proofs, and other projects, yet it delivered a less than satisfactory report on funding transparency.
Struggling Self-Repair: The Transformation Path of EF
Amidst numerous criticisms, the Ethereum Foundation has begun to seek change actively.
In early 2025, its internal governance and personnel structure began to loosen. On March 10, Hsiao-Wei Wang officially joined the board of the Ethereum Foundation. This female tech leader, who grew from a core researcher to an Asia-Pacific community ambassador and then to a co-executive director, complements Tomasz Stańczak, the founder of Nethermind, symbolizing EF's governance transformation from "Vitalik's unilateral authority" to a "dual-track system of technology and infrastructure." Wang focuses on sharding scalability and the Asia-Pacific ecosystem, while Tomasz concentrates on client development and MEV mechanism optimization. This combination of "Eastern tech geek + Western infrastructure architect" is seen as EF's proactive choice to address ecological fragmentation. Related reading: "Who Will Save Ethereum's 'Midlife Crisis'? Can Hsiao-Wei Wang Help?"
On June 3, the Ethereum Foundation announced a major restructuring of its research and development team, laying off some employees and renaming the department to "Protocol" to focus on the core challenges of protocol design. This adjustment aims to respond to the community's ongoing criticism of the foundation's management and strategic direction.
The restructured Protocol team will work on three main priorities: expanding the scalability of the Ethereum base network, advancing blobspace expansion in data availability strategies, and improving user experience. Moreover, the restructured team will strive to enhance the transparency of upgrade timelines, technical documentation, and research.
Although the number of layoffs has not been disclosed, feedback from various sources indicates that this is a "self-sacrificing" organizational reshaping. Wang publicly expressed hope that the new structure would enable core projects to progress more efficiently.
However, regarding the Ethereum Foundation's layoff plans and subsequent development direction, Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani cautioned that there is tension between EF's new goals: If it simultaneously lays off, restructures, and advances multiple projects, does it risk diluting its focus?
Of course, reform extends beyond the organizational level. On June 5, the Ethereum Foundation released the latest version of its financial policy document, clarifying its asset management strategy, ETH selling mechanism, and long-term commitment to the DeFi ecosystem. The document states that EF currently sets its annual operating expenses at 15% of total finances, retains a 2.5-year spending buffer, and will gradually transition to a long-term spending level of 5%, emphasizing increased support during market downturns and restraint during bull markets.
In terms of crypto asset allocation, EF will prioritize supporting secure, decentralized, and open-source DeFi protocols, using methods such as wETH staking and stablecoin lending to obtain reasonable returns, while exploring Tokenized RWA (tokenized real assets) allocation. At the same time, EF explicitly supports the "Defipunk" concept, encouraging non-KYC, self-custodial, privacy-friendly DeFi protocols, planning to make privacy standards, decentralized UI, and anti-censorship mechanisms core evaluation criteria for fund deployment.
EF stated that its financial management will gradually adopt decentralized, privacy-friendly tools and workflows to "live out" the crypto values it advocates, continuously providing long-term robust support for the Ethereum ecosystem.
In the coming year, the Ethereum Foundation's work will focus on two core pillars: core values and strategic goals, based on technological excellence to drive the long-term success of the Ethereum ecosystem. Specific focuses include:
Expanding the Ethereum mainnet (L1) and data scalability (Blobs);
Improving user experience (UX), enhancing L2 interoperability and application layer development;
Promoting improvements in developer experience (DevEx) and increasing exposure and support for applications and L2 projects on platforms like Devcon.
Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation will accelerate the paths for developers, entrepreneurs, and institutions to build and apply Ethereum, fully leveraging EF's knowledge and leadership to attract and nurture a new generation of builders.
New Narrative: The Emergence of Ethereum as "Institutional Asset"
Beyond governance adjustments, it is noteworthy that Ethereum is undergoing a more grand narrative transformation: ETH is shifting from "development fuel" to "asset reserve." U.S. publicly listed companies like SharpLink, Siebert Financial, and Treasure Global are incorporating ETH into their balance sheets.
At the same time, institutions such as BlackRock's BUIDL fund, the Securitize platform, and Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund are actively building asset channels based on ETH, leveraging the Ethereum network to deploy tokenized financial infrastructure.
In this larger trend, the establishment of ECF is not meant to overthrow EF but to supplement a force that is closer to market efficiency and more suited to the financial context. While EF is still coordinating documents and research routes, ECF accelerates the appreciation path of ETH through market-aligned mechanisms.
The relationship between the two is not a zero-sum game but a more complex and authentic collaborative tension. On one side is the traditional foundation attempting self-correction and to reshape its credibility, while on the other is the emerging force calling for efficiency and market mechanisms. When we refocus our attention on Ethereum, it is no longer a project pushing in a single direction but a more complex, multipolar structure of technology and power.
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