Vitalik urgently calls out ETH whales: The Foundation is just a node, the value of Ethereum depends on you to support it

ETH accounts for nearly 90% of Vitalik's personal assets, but he admits the foundation only holds 0.16% of the tokens, far less than major whales. The future core of Ethereum is not TPS competition, but CROPS — Censorship Resistance, Openness, Privacy, Security — to be perfected in the AI era. The foundation will shrink, take a clearer stance, and focus solely on what no one else is doing for Ethereum.
(Background summary: Ethereum Foundation's major transformation: Vitalik releases CROPS framework, downsizes, and refuses to be the ETH dump party)
(Additional background: Ethereum core developer Péter Szilágyi angrily criticizes: ETH Foundation's unfair compensation, power concentrated around Vitalik Buterin...)

Table of Contents

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• Foundation self-mockery: We are just one of countless nodes, not the big brother
• CROPS replacing TPS: Vitalik openly states "pursuing millions of TPS leads to mediocrity"
• Three core goals: Zero bugs, unbreakable consensus, no third-party intermediaries
• Major whales step up: Foundation's ETH is only 0.16%, ecosystem whales are the main stabilizers
• Foundation transformation: fewer people, clearer stance, but longer-lasting

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin openly states in his latest blog post that outsiders often criticize the foundation for shouting decentralization, privacy protection, and security slogans, yet its actual operations are not like that. But he quickly shifts tone, revealing in a long post on X that the foundation holds only 0.16% of ETH, less than many major whales; the true ETH value guardians should be those large token holders within the ecosystem.

Regarding the future direction of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), I want to share some personal thoughts.

First, this is only my personal opinion. The foundation is not solely decided by me, and I have no special privileges on the board. This transition is mainly implemented by Aerugo, and I am primarily responsible for providing some technical ideas. Currently, the board is recruiting new members, and my influence within the foundation will only decrease — honestly, that’s exactly what I want.

By 2025, the foundation’s operational efficiency has improved significantly, solving many old problems. But earlier this year, I had a new concern. I often hear criticism like: “Vitalik is out there every day hyping Ethereum’s decentralization, privacy, and security, but the foundation itself is not doing that at all?”

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going.

First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 24, 2026

Great to see Aya @AyaMiyagotchi (@ethereumfndn) and Duncan join QZ @not_qz for a high-level fireside chat on Ethereum’s core principles and its institutional future.

✅ The role of the Ethereum Foundation is to coordinate and keep the ecosystem resilient and decentralized.
✅ CROPS as… pic.twitter.com/Rc7MUbCeAm

— Hong Kong Ethereum Community Hub (@ethereumhkhub) April 22, 2026

Foundation self-mockery: We are just one of countless nodes, not the big brother

You might have heard different versions. Maybe you think things are fine now, no crisis, and even believe the foundation is finally taking execution and business expansion seriously — just keep going. If so, then on questions like “what criticism do I value most” and “which critics’ feedback hurts me most,” you and I might see eye to eye differently.

To clarify, I’ll give an example from another circle.

Regarding Google, you might see it as a successful company that has organized information for all humanity, meritorious beyond measure. But you could also see it as initially shouting “Don’t be evil,” full of ideals, yet later contaminated by big corporate problems, gradually losing its original intent.

My view of Google is somewhere in between. But if there were a button that could send me back to 2008, injecting a bit of “stubborn ideals” and “utopianism” into Google (for example, giving open-source advocate Richard Stallman permanent veto power over Google policies), I would press it without hesitation.

CROPS replacing TPS: Vitalik openly states “pursuing millions of TPS leads to mediocrity”

Why? Because a company's choices impact the entire world. The tech environment Google has operated in, past and present, has diverged from the early ideals of “Don’t be evil,” with everyone chasing money, engaging in authoritarian AI, infiltrated by anti-social personalities, even bowing to government surveillance and authoritarian power for profit. When everyone is drifting with the tide, if a big company stands out as a “gatekeeper,” holding the line, it would be a huge boon for societal freedom and stability. That’s what I understand as diversification.

This idea isn’t just mine; Aya and others at the foundation also think this when formulating our “mission.”

So, what does this have to do with the Ethereum Foundation?

The foundation has never been the “center” of Ethereum; it’s just one of countless nodes in the ecosystem, carrying a specific mission. We’ve always said this, but many in the community (even inside the foundation) insist on treating us as the “big brother.” Now, we want to prove with real actions that we are truly just an ordinary node.

Three core goals: Zero bugs, unbreakable consensus, no third-party intermediaries

This is very important because the foundation’s capacity is limited, and so are our funds. We only hold about 0.16% of ETH (less than many ETH whales), while other blockchain projects often hold 10% to 50% of tokens. Financially, the Ethereum Foundation was initially defined based on token sale documents and other startup materials, aiming to complete a limited scope of work (including building the chain software, completing phases like Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, and Serenity). These tasks were all completed by 2022. It was never meant to rule Ethereum forever.

Today, the foundation chooses to use its remaining resources for long-term development rather than blind expansion (yes, this also means we will reduce ETH sales). Moving forward, the foundation will focus solely on tasks that are critical to Ethereum’s core—maintaining resistance to censorship, capture, openness, privacy, and security (we call this CROPS)—and that cannot be done without our help.

This entails making tough choices; sometimes even activities and people we highly respect and trust will be excluded from EF. If we want important tasks to attract external capital, then it’s necessary to keep talents with outstanding skills, public respect, and high alignment with our mission and CROPS outside the EF. This also means the EF must adopt a principled stance culturally.

All of this is to cooperate with other parts of Ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the Ethereum world also highly respect CROPS and related values. But high respect doesn’t mean specializing and dedicating fully to one field (like I think animal protection is important, I love vegetarianism, but I can’t eat vegetarian every meal).

Major whales step up: Foundation’s ETH is only 0.16%, ecosystem whales are the main stabilizers

The foundation is still in transition, likely taking several more months to fully settle. What will the future of the foundation look like? From a technical perspective, my core requirement is:

Ethereum must be astonishing.

We live in an era of rapidly advancing AI and other technologies. “Maintaining EVM status quo, with one or two hard forks per year to optimize short-term user needs” is no longer attractive.

For some, “astonishing” means: 250ms latency and 1 million TPS. I believe Ethereum trying to go this route is a mistake. Pursuing speed and scalability as much as possible, while only slightly reducing decentralization compared to other chains, is a path to mediocrity. If we try this, we will definitely fail.

Foundation transformation: fewer people, clearer stance, but longer lifespan

Ethereum must of course scale, but we should excel in another dimension: CROPS (Censorship Resistance, Openness, Privacy, Security). Specifically:

• Absolute zero bugs in Ethereum. Half a year ago, security experts thought this was impossible. But now, with AI-assisted verification, it’s close to reality. We must be first in this area.
• Unbreakable consensus mechanisms. Ethereum is (and with lean consensus, will continue to be) the only chain capable of two things simultaneously: first, traditional BFT-style features, safe under asynchronous conditions with high fault tolerance; second, Bitcoin PoW-style features, safe under synchronous conditions against 49% attacks. To my knowledge, no other chain has or plans to have this. Other chains either do one or the other. I’ve argued many times for this stubborn belief: chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin, if 34% of nodes go offline, cannot rely on “cutting the network” or social consensus to recover. Hyperledger, BNB, Solana, Tempo, etc., can accept this. But for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Zcash, it’s unacceptable.
• Reduce intermediaries. Many smart contract wallets and privacy protocols still rely on third-party relays to broadcast transactions, which is embarrassing and a security risk. Therefore, FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and earlier 7701 and years of work) aim to minimize intermediaries in transaction delivery through truly universal methods, using public memory pools and powerful on-chain features, covering protocols like secp256r1 and privacy schemes. Kohaku is pushing at the user layer to reduce intermediaries, helping Ethereum escape the current state of wallets that don’t even verify the chain and send private data to multiple third-party servers, moving toward a brighter CROPS future.

Some goals may be unrealistic; maybe 50% is good enough if we rely on intermediaries. But only aiming for 50% won’t make Ethereum’s CROPS truly impressive. We must aim for 100%.

Fortunately, all these goals are compatible with high TPS, which is also a major focus of research (especially in state scaling). Well-designed Layer 2 solutions can assist, especially for specific applications (like high-frequency trading, privacy, etc.). Thanks to Raul’s work on erasure-coded P2P and many other optimizations, these goals even align with significantly shortened block times.

At the end of the day, the most valuable “product” of the Ethereum blockchain is ETH itself. ETH now safeguards assets worth $250 billion. The various features of Ethereum I mentioned above are highly beneficial for this asset.

Personally, nearly 90% of my funds are ETH, and the remaining $40 million are donated to open-source biotech, software, or hardware projects.

However, maintaining ETH’s value also depends on factors outside the foundation’s control. That’s where other major players in the ecosystem (some holding more ETH than the foundation) need to step up. The foundation has recently been exploring how to support these new organizations early on.

In summary, the future Ethereum Foundation will have fewer people, a clearer stance (sometimes perhaps hard to understand), but it will last longer. Its purpose is to ensure Ethereum leaves something meaningful for the world. Thanks to everyone inside and outside the foundation helping to realize this goal.