Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum must be amazing, but the foundation is not the core.

Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

After experiencing a series of negative events such as the continuous departure of core members and former key supporters' criticism, Ethereum founder Vitalik had to release a lengthy article today to respond to the community, quell public opinion, and inject more confidence into the community.

In fact, all negative doubts fundamentally stem from ETH's price decline. Compared to Hyperliquid's strong performance, Ethereum lags in ecosystem prosperity, community confidence, and mainnet performance in all aspects, with its price dropping more than 64% in the past year at most. In contrast, HYPE's price repeatedly hit new highs, peaking over $64.

Therefore, the Ethereum community mainly targets Ethereum's core contributors: the Ethereum Foundation. Many opinions believe that the Ethereum Foundation's strategic planning is unclear, with frequent leadership changes causing instability, not only failing to increase ETH holdings but also continuously selling tokens, and it can no longer represent the interests of ETH holders.

Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams posted on May 20 that Ethereum's future can no longer rely on the Ethereum Foundation (EF). “EF is important, but Ethereum needs new institutions to intervene and fill the gap. We need an organization that genuinely wants ETH to succeed—growth in quantity—and dares to speak out and implement effectively. EF is not that, and it never will be.”

Tempo researcher and former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist also shares a similar view. A few days ago, he stated that the Ethereum Foundation now holds less than 0.1% of all ETH, with no funds flowing from ETH staking or fee income to it. The way to save Ethereum is for the community to create an organization aligned with Ethereum’s economic interests and responsible for them.

Senior crypto media personality Laura Shin further pointed out that, the original sin of Ethereum lies in the fact that every step starting from Dencun has not considered tokenomics, meaning the Ethereum Foundation has overly focused on ideology while neglecting capital markets and price performance.

In response to these criticisms, Vitalik published a long article today with an honest and firm attitude, addressing community concerns and systematically elaborating on his deep thoughts regarding the role, strategic direction, and value positioning of the Foundation.

1. Confronting the "Sense of Crisis": Ethereum Cannot Become the "Second Google"

Vitalik begins by admitting a "sense of trouble"—he often hears people say: "Vitalik talks about Ethereum decentralization, privacy, and becoming a refuge technology, but why do EF's actual actions not reflect these?"

He further confesses that his sense of crisis may differ from others in the community—specifically, in "which criticisms I value most and which critics can most effectively hit my sore spots."

To illustrate, he makes a meaningful analogy: Google. Vitalik believes Google is a success story, "but one could also hold another view: they had a beautiful and idealistic start, but at some point, the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they gradually abandoned the slogan of 'do no evil.'"

He says: "If you could take me back to around 2008, give me a button, and pressing it would raise Google's standards on 'creed' by one or two sigma—for example, giving Richard Stallman a permanent veto over certain key policies—I would press it without hesitation."

The reason is that the entire tech industry is deviating from its early "do no evil" ideals, "turning instead to pursue financial gains, embracing the grand narrative of superintelligence devouring everything, being infiltrated by unscrupulous actors, and cowardly yielding to government pressures on ideological control, surveillance, and war." Because of this, "letting a company do something different, positioning itself as George Bernard Shaw's 'moral nonconformist,' resisting the tide of the times—this is more conducive to freedom, power balance, and social stability than all the major corporations conforming to mainstream trends."

This discourse essentially sets the tone for Ethereum Foundation's future: it will not become the second Google—gradually slipping into mediocrity and corruption after an idealistic start.

2. EF is Not the Center, but a "Node with Clear Goals"

In response to external criticism of the Foundation's positioning, Vitalik provided a clear framework: EF is not "the center of Ethereum," but "a node standing alongside others with clear responsibilities." He said that in the Ethereum ecosystem, "even within EF, many hope we become the former. Now, we are taking actions to ensure we become the latter."

This shift is driven by a harsh financial reality: EF holds only about 0.16% of all ETH—"less than many individual ETH holders"—whereas in other blockchains, "central foundations" holding 10% to 50% is commonplace. Vitalik further pointed out that EF's initial design was only to fulfill the limited scope of work defined in the token sale documents, which were fully completed by 2022, "it was never designed to be an eternal manager."

Therefore, Vitalik states that EF will now focus remaining resources on long-term pursuits rather than blindly expanding. EF will explicitly concentrate on activities crucial to Ethereum’s success as an anti-censorship, anti-capture, open, private, and secure system—activities that would not happen without their push. He emphasizes that EF will no longer continue to sell large amounts of ETH.

3. Ethereum Must Be "Stunning"

Vitalik puts forward a clear and bold view: Ethereum must be "stunning."

"We live in an era of highly intelligent AI and rapid technological development. 'Maintaining the current EVM, with a few hard forks each year to meet short-term user needs,' this path is unimaginative."

But for some, "stunning" means 250 milliseconds latency and 1 million TPS. Vitalik straightforwardly says: "I believe taking this route is a mistake. Pursuing speed and scalability alone, with only marginal improvements in decentralization, is a path to mediocrity. If we do this, we will inevitably fail."

He believes Ethereum should strive in another dimension—the CROPS dimension:

First, a provably bug-free Ethereum. About six months ago, "all network security researchers thought this was an absurd and impossible goal. Now, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification, it is on the verge of becoming reality."

Second, highly available chain consensus. Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum, under streamlined consensus, will continue to be the only chain with both traditional BFT security properties (high fault tolerance in asynchronous networks) and Bitcoin-like PoW security (resisting 49% attacks in synchronous networks).

Third, minimizing intermediaries. "Frankly, protocols like smart contract wallets and Railgun must send transactions through intermediaries to get on-chain, which is embarrassing and has always been a weak point." He admits, "Only doing 50% is not enough to make Ethereum in the CROPS dimension truly stunning. We must pursue 100%."

This "irrational" technical persistence is actually a response to Laura Shin's criticism: Ethereum is not neglecting tokenomics but trying to achieve the highest capital premium through establishing extreme "determinism."

4. How to Bridge the "Interest Alignment" Gap?

Looking back over the past decade, Ethereum has experienced the ICO bubble burst, DeFi winter, hacking waves, and multiple bear markets, but has ultimately evolved itself.

Today, Vitalik’s reflection on the Foundation has attracted widespread attention, not just because he responded to external criticism, but more importantly, because it signals that the Ethereum Foundation is gradually shifting from a technically oriented organization to a mature institution balancing governance, ecosystem coordination, and long-term strategy.

For an ecosystem managing hundreds of billions of dollars in on-chain activity, this transition may not be easier than any hard fork upgrade.

Lucas Tcheyan, Vice President of Galaxy Research, expressed strong support for ETH: “The market is repeating the same mistakes with ETH, just like it did with SOL in 2022/2023. The leadership changes at EF are concerning. But Ethereum’s roadmap looks more coherent than ever since the Merge.”

However, after the Ethereum Foundation further reduces its scope of responsibilities, many industry insiders believe that Ethereum’s ecosystem needs to create an “organization aligned with Ethereum’s economic interests and responsible for them.” Vitalik and the Foundation have not responded to this issue, and no workable solution has been seen in the market yet.

This "interest alignment" gap may be the key to ETH reversing its downward trend.