Vitalik makes a declaration: The Ethereum Foundation should not act as an overbearing "parent," ETH is growing up on its own

Author: Deep Tide TechFlow

In the early morning of May 25th, Vitalik posted a long article on X.

It was very restrained, more like a memo to the foundation internally, to the community, and to himself, rather than a vision statement.

In the five months prior, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) experienced its most difficult period. At least eight senior contributors left or announced their departure from EF within 2026, with five leaving just in May; Executive Director Tomasz Stanczak resigned, and protocol researcher Alex Stokes also left. Community doubts have been nonstop since the beginning of the year: What is the foundation actually doing? Why does it keep talking about decentralization, privacy, censorship resistance, but its actions increasingly resemble a Silicon Valley company focused on operational efficiency?

Vitalik’s response was very particular. He used a lengthy article to do something seriously underestimated: downgrade the role of the Ethereum Foundation from "central bank of the Ethereum ecosystem" to "constitutional court of Ethereum values."

What exactly did he say?

Removing diplomatic language, Vitalik explicitly mentioned five specific points this time.

First, EF is no longer the center of Ethereum, just a node. He specifically laid out the proportion of ETH held by the foundation: about 0.16% of all ETH. In comparison, other blockchain central foundations usually hold 10% to 50% of their native tokens. Behind this number is a qualitative judgment: EF no longer has the financial firepower to "single-handedly influence the ecosystem," and must accept that it is just one of many nodes, no longer the one issuing commands.

Second, EF’s mission has been narrowed. In the future, it will only do three types of work: censorship resistance, privacy, and open infrastructure, and only in parts that "no one else will do if EF doesn’t." All other work, including market cap management of ETH assets, ecosystem expansion, and commercial cooperation, will be outsourced to other organizations. Vitalik also left a heavy statement: some "necessary" work supporting ETH as an asset that falls outside EF’s scope needs "other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than EF)" to take on.

A light but precise punch, hitting whom, insiders know well.

Third, firmly reject the "high TPS route." The sharpest sentence in the entire article: "Going as fast as possible, as scalable as possible, with only an epsilon (a mathematical symbol meaning infinitesimally small) more decentralization than others—that is a path to mediocrity. If we do this, we will lose." He named his opponents: "Ethereum cannot rely on social consensus and hard forks to save itself; if 34% of nodes go offline, it collapses. This is possible for Hyperledger, BNB, Solana, Tempo, but not for Bitcoin, Ethereum, Zcash."

Fourth, he set an ambitious technical goal: to use AI-assisted formal verification to make Ethereum "provably bug-free" within months. Six months ago, he thought this was impossible; now he says it’s within reach.

Fifth, he is also stepping back personally. 90% of his net assets are in ETH, and the remaining about $40 million in on-chain stablecoins have been pledged to open-source biotech, software, and hardware projects. The board will expand, and his influence will "continue to decline, which is exactly what I want."

From Central Bank to Constitutional Court

Over the past decade, EF has essentially played the role of "Ethereum’s central bank": holding a large reserve of ETH, deciding research directions, incubating key projects, coordinating upgrade schedules, and providing external brand endorsement. Its influence comes from its "presence": as long as it holds a large amount of ETH, employs top researchers, and Vitalik himself is involved, it naturally becomes a gravitational center.

But the side effects of the "central bank model" have concentrated in the past two years.

Last year, Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi’s leaked letter laid out the contradictions: "Ethereum may be decentralized, but Vitalik definitely has complete indirect control over it."

Szilágyi’s accusation was sharp, revolving around the "5-10 person small ruling elite" led by Buterin that directs the network. The words are harsh, but they hit a real issue: a network that claims to be decentralized in speech is highly dependent on one person’s attention distribution in execution.

Coupled with the researcher departures since May, the continued weakening of ETH’s price against BTC, and community dissatisfaction with the "both-ways" stance of the foundation, this "central bank model" has reached the point of diminishing returns.

Vitalik’s new design essentially transforms EF from a "central bank" into a "constitutional court":

No longer holding large reserves: shifting from a central bank’s balance sheet logic to a logic of minimal financial tool use;

No longer involved in ecosystem development or business expansion: shedding the "industrial policy" role;

Only safeguarding a few non-negotiable core principles: censorship resistance, privacy, decentralization resistance;

Only stepping in at critical moments: for example, vetoing routes that sacrifice decentralization for TPS;

The leadership’s personal influence continues to fade: expanding the board, Vitalik stepping back.

The power of a constitutional court is not measured by how many matters it controls, but whether it can’t be bypassed on the most critical issues. What Vitalik wants is precisely this "small but irreplaceable."

Why is this inevitable?

Looking at the bigger picture, Vitalik’s "self-downgrade" has precedents in history.

The Linux Foundation has never defined what the Linux ecosystem should look like; it only maintains the kernel. The Apache Foundation has never planned how the web should develop; it only guards protocol neutrality. W3C doesn’t get involved in making browsers, only standards. All open-source governance organizations that have lasted over 20 years tend to converge into a "gatekeeper" role, staying away from the "builder" role.

Organizations that don’t converge tend to have two outcomes.

One is corruption. Vitalik’s article uses Google as a counterexample, and the comparison is quite sharp: he says Google started with strong idealism, but gradually deviated from its original purpose under mainstream corporate pressure; if he could have pressed a button in 2008 to give Google two more standard deviations of "principledness," he would have. The other is being voted out by the ecosystem.

EF reaching this point was inevitable. The Bitcoin Foundation disbanded in 2015, Satoshi disappeared ten years ago, and Bitcoin has survived precisely because it has no central point that can be attacked, corrupted, or acquired. What Vitalik is doing now is to teach Ethereum this lesson, just two years later than he ideally would have.

How will the market price it?

In my view, in the short term, this long article is not a positive for ETH’s price.

The logic is simple: "Foundation sells less ETH" sounds like reducing selling pressure, but the market’s real concern is another question: who is responsible for ETH assets? Over the past few years, although EF has not been an efficient market cap manager, it was at least a "visible responsible party." Now Vitalik says: this is no longer EF’s responsibility; it depends on "other heroes (some holding more ETH than EF)" to step up.

Translated, ETH has officially entered an "parentless" era.

Whether this is good or bad depends on whether "other heroes" will truly appear, when they will appear, and whether they can form a coalition. In the short term, the market cannot price the uncertainty, only the ambiguity. So don’t be surprised if ETH/BTC exchange rate doesn’t improve in the past few days.

But looking at a three-year horizon, this direction is correct. An asset that can stand on its own without the foundation’s backing, without the founder’s tweets, and just by its inherent nature, deserves the label of "digital commodity" or "Internet-native currency." ETH is being forcibly squeezed from a "project token" into a "protocol asset," a painful process, but one that must happen.

The several technical goals Vitalik repeatedly emphasizes (usability consensus, provably bug-free, minimal middlemen) can be understood as the fundamental attributes a "protocol asset" should have. A system that can produce blocks even when 34% of nodes are offline, whose code can be mathematically proven to be bug-free, and that users can connect directly to the mainnet bypassing all third parties, qualifies to become the new "neutral infrastructure."

The past three years in crypto have been dominated by "narrative industry": meme coins, political concept coins, AI agents, RWA, stablecoin legislation, wave after wave. Each wave is very short, noisy, and highly profitable. In this atmosphere, "Ethereum not chasing trends, sticking to infrastructure" sounds like a clumsy stance.

This clumsiness is exactly what Vitalik repeatedly calibrates in this long article. He sees Solana’s TPS, knows BNB Chain’s cash flow, and is aware of Hyperliquid’s valuation. But he has realized one thing clearly: in an era where everyone surrenders to short cycles, the long cycle itself is the most scarce resource.

This is a market judgment, not a moral high ground.

The high return rate of short-cycle narratives, with very short half-lives. The long-cycle construction seems to have a low return rate, with compound interest only becoming apparent after ten years. Bitcoin took ten years to turn "digital gold" from a joke into an asset class on Wall Street. If Ethereum can, in the next ten years, turn the concept of "neutral world computer" from an enthusiast’s ideal into infrastructure common sense, then all the price pressures, community doubts, and researcher departures it endures today are worthwhile.

The premise of this "if" is that EF must first retreat from the ecosystem’s center to the edge, and Vitalik must step back from being a leader to a watcher.

This is happening.