Vitalik confirms the Ethereum Foundation’s budget has been cut by 40%! Ethereum will roll out the third-generation “straw map” upgrade, ultimately emulating Bitcoin’s simplification.

According to the latest long article posted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on the X platform, he personally confirmed that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will significantly cut its budget by about 40% this year. He admitted that this is not merely about improving operational efficiency, but a "genuine sacrifice." Moving forward, EF will shift to a long-term donation fund model, fully promoting a third-generation upgrade called "Strawmap," and has announced that after completing the upgrade, the Ethereum protocol will follow Bitcoin’s path toward simplification.
(Background summary: Vitalik challenges AI: Using writing style to identify his anonymous Ethereum documents)
(Additional context: Vitalik calls for abandoning US dollar stablecoins! Proposes using "AI combined with prediction markets" to create customized stable assets)

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• Bidding farewell to high expenditure, shifting to a "donation fund" model
• Merging PSE team, streamlining Devcon conference scale
• Promoting "Strawmap," which will emulate Bitcoin’s route in the future

The recent organizational restructuring and layoffs at the Ethereum Foundation (EF) have sparked widespread community attention. In response, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy post on the X platform today (23rd), personally explaining the deep considerations behind EF’s strategic transformation. He first confirmed that EF’s overall budget will be reduced by approximately 40% this year, in line with the capital management policy established last year, leading the foundation toward a more long-term future.

This year, the EF is decreasing its budget by roughly 40%, which entails some difficult decisions. The goal of the decreases was set out in the Treasury Management Policy last year: the EF is transitioning into being a long-term-oriented endowment-based organization, shifting…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) June 23, 2026

Bidding farewell to high expenditure, shifting to a "donation fund" model

Vitalik pointed out in the article that EF used to spend about 15% of its remaining funds annually, but now it is fully transitioning to a long-term "endowment-based" organizational model. The ultimate goal of the foundation is to strictly control the annual fund consumption rate to around 5% after 2030.

In light of recent layoffs and restructuring, he did not sugarcoat the situation but frankly stated that this is not merely about "efficiency improvement," but a "painful yet necessary sacrifice." He expressed high appreciation for affected colleagues, praising these outstanding engineers who have contributed nearly a decade to Ethereum’s ecosystem, and wished them continued success in the future.

Merging PSE team, streamlining Devcon conference scale

To achieve sustainable operation, EF has made several major concessions in its business execution. Vitalik cited that Ethereum previously emphasized multi-client "redundancy" for security, but will now shift toward more "specialization," and plans to heavily incorporate AI-assisted formal verification to significantly reduce development resource requirements.

Additionally, the PSE unit, which focuses on privacy and scalability exploration, will gradually end its original "exploration" tasks and instead directly build known core infrastructure. Other cost-cutting measures include reducing the scale of Devcon developer conferences to lower deficits, decreasing EF’s investments in large projects outside the core Ethereum ecosystem (Vitalik mentioned he will personally support some projects), and narrowing the organizational scope to focus on deployment cases with anti-censorship (CROPS) attributes.

Promoting "Strawmap," which will emulate Bitcoin’s route in the future

Despite resource reductions, Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum’s core goals remain unchanged. EF will focus on advancing a grand project called "Ethereum Strawmap." This is seen as Ethereum’s third-generation upgrade (similar to how the Merge was the second), which is expected to gradually replace or upgrade underlying mechanisms such as consensus, proof, privacy, and account models; at the same time, EF will further strengthen its strategic role in the access layer.

In the concluding part of the long article, Vitalik depicted his ultimate vision for Ethereum. He personally favors a "soft lean-and-done" approach — after the Strawmap upgrade is completed, Ethereum should cease frequent large-scale upgrades and instead follow Bitcoin’s minimalist model. At that point, the protocol will focus solely on security fixes and high-value minor optimizations, setting very high thresholds for any new features to ensure that Ethereum remains resistant to capture and maintains its decentralized resilience.