Vitalik: The Ethereum Foundation will "scale down" and reduce ETH sales

PANews May 25 news, citing The Block: Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy post on the X platform, responding to recent turmoil within the Ethereum Foundation and the wave of researcher resignations. Buterin said the Foundation is choosing “long-term survival rather than being big and all-encompassing,” reducing ETH sales, and focusing on Ethereum’s CROPS attributes, including censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security. He emphasized that the post only represents his personal views, and that his influence within the organization will continue to decline, which aligns with his wishes. Buterin believes the EF should be understood as “a node with a clear purpose, alongside other nodes,” rather than the center of Ethereum.

Buterin noted that the Foundation holds about 0.16% of ETH, while other blockchain foundations typically hold 10% to 50% of their own token supply. The Foundation will focus on key activities that only it can drive, and some respected contributors and projects will remain outside the Foundation, which helps attract external capital. On technical direction, Buterin laid out three priorities: achieving “provably bug-free Ethereum” through AI-assisted formal verification, usable chain consensus, and minimizing intermediaries. He explicitly opposed the idea that Ethereum should compete solely on speed, calling it “a path toward mediocrity.” Buterin concluded that the EF’s size will be smaller than in past years, its position will be more distinct, and in some cases its stance may be difficult to understand, but it will also last longer. The Foundation’s new long-term operating model is expected to become stable in the coming months.