Former core members of the Ethereum Foundation: The Ethereum Foundation's "subtraction" strategy is triggering issues related to institutional succession and protocol funding pressure

Deep Tide TechFlow News, June 19 — Former Ethereum Foundation core developer coordinator Trent Van Epps stated that the Ethereum Foundation's long-standing "reduction" strategy aims to gradually decrease the Foundation's relative influence on the ecosystem. However, in practice, the Foundation still maintains significant institutional influence in areas such as branding, public trust, funding, employment relationships with core developers, and media resources.

He pointed out that as the Ethereum Foundation's treasury continues to shrink, and since the client incentive program will expire in April 2026 with no replacement plan, the ecosystem may face a slow-developing protocol funding crisis within the next 3 to 9 months. This could weaken core development, research, and coordination capabilities, and pose risks to the network's long-term reliability.

Van Epps believes that the Ethereum Foundation will not be the primary guardian of Ethereum over the next decade. The ecosystem needs to explore new social, political, and economic contracts as soon as possible, clarify governance responsibilities for shared resources such as software, networks, and assets, and establish scalable, accountable, and neutral funding mechanisms to support Ethereum's future expansion, maintenance, and institutional succession.