The Rise of the Ethereum Community Fund: A New Hope to Revive ETH Faith?

In the cryptocurrency industry, the price of ETH reaching $10,000 was once seen as a consensus. However, the reality is that Bitcoin has performed outstandingly in this cycle, while the price of ETH has hovered around $2,000, even briefly falling below $1,500.

In the face of the sluggish token prices, community members have raised numerous criticisms against the Ethereum Foundation (EF), including lack of action, overly centralized governance, insufficient transparency, poor brand maintenance, an overly bloated organization, and a lack of strategic foresight. Although the EF announced a strategic reorganization in June of this year, it has still failed to quell the voices of doubt.

In this context, Ethereum core developer Zak Cole launched the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF) at the eighth Ethereum Community Conference held in Cannes, France, this July. ECF is positioned as an independent organization with the core mission of "supporting Ethereum in asset form" and is committed to pushing the price of ETH to $10,000.

Zak Cole, as the initiator of ECF, has a rich and diverse background. He received training as a network engineer in the United States Marine Corps and participated in Operation Iraqi Freedom. After retiring, he ventured into the Bitcoin space, founding multiple companies in areas such as advertising technology, web hosting, and cybersecurity. In 2017, he established Whiteblock to provide blockchain testing services for several well-known institutions and projects.

In addition to Whiteblock, Zak is also active in several Web3 projects and organizations. He is one of the co-founders of Code4rena, has served as co-founder and CTO of Slingshot Finance, and is the chair of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance testing working group, providing technical consulting for multiple projects.

The goal of ECF is to enhance the value of ETH through education, funding, outreach, and ecological support. They plan to fund projects that strengthen Ethereum's underlying infrastructure while working to increase the amount of ETH burned, expand contributions to public goods, and advance network scalability. ECF has raised millions of dollars worth of ETH to support projects that align with its goals.

ECF has set strict funding standards, only supporting "no tokens, immutable" projects, and requires that all selected projects must directly promote ETH destruction. Their first major funding project is the Ethereum Validator Association ( EVA ), which aims to provide a voice channel for network validators, allowing them to vote and prioritize protocol upgrade paths through staked ETH.

In addition, ECF actively promotes cooperation and communication with governments, regulatory agencies, and traditional financial institutions, hoping to facilitate the institutional adoption of Ethereum. The foundation emphasizes that all grants and decisions will maintain "radical transparency," and the community can participate in decisions regarding grant direction through a "coin voting" mechanism.

The community has mixed reactions to the ECF initiative. Some believe that this funding model, which focuses on non-token and public chain infrastructure, helps return to the original values of Ethereum, enhancing network security and reliability; while others express concerns about the completely non-token incentive model, questioning the ongoing motivation for project maintenance and developer rewards.

Whether ECF can achieve the goal of "ETH returning to $10,000" still needs time to test. Promoting token value and reconstructing the governance and funding logic of the Ethereum ecosystem are both daunting tasks. The key to ECF's success lies in whether it can continuously attract developers and financial support while maintaining trusted neutrality.

Regardless of the outcome, the emergence of ECF itself conveys a positive signal: the Ethereum ecosystem still has the ability to self-update, and there are still developers willing to step up. This diverse range of voices and the emergence of new forces may become a glimmer of new hope for Ethereum, which is at a critical turning point.