Vitalik Defends EF as Ethereum’s Last Line of Defence

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• Vitalik has defended the Ethereum Foundation, noting that it wants to be the last line of defence against surveillance and corporate capture.

• He conceded that Ethereum may need other entities to step in on aspects such as boosting the price of ETH, which some members previously suggested.

The Ethereum Foundation will stand its ground and fight for the vision of a censorship-resistant and democratic blockchain. Its role within the ecosystem will continue to contract, and it will not compete with networks like Solana on transaction speed and similar metrics. This is according to Vitalik Buterin, who, in a lengthy post, defended the Foundation and laid out his vision for the network over the next few years.

Ethereum has been in a leadership crisis in recent months. As we reported, many community members have blamed the Foundation, alleging it has abandoned ETH holders for ideology and communism.

Vitalik has now pushed back, stating that the Foundation remains grounded in its vision of the network.

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

Vitalik made it clear that the views were his own, not the Foundation’s, and that his role in the entity is limited and will continue to reduce, “which is honestly what I want.”

According to the founder, every landmark invention faces an inflection point when the movement’s leaders must choose between idealism and corporate greed. Google had its moment in the 2000s, and if Buterin had to choose, he’d have picked dogmatism and given an idealist leader veto power over some key policies that have come to define the modern internet.

This, he argues, “would have been better for freedom, balance of power, and stability of society as a whole.”

Vitalik’s Vision for Ethereum

While Google may have bent to the corporate will, Vitalik is adamant that Ethereum must not, and the Foundation is vital as the last shield against this.

He acknowledged that the Foundation is limited in resources, scope, and manpower. Today, it holds only 0.16% of all available ETH. As such, it must choose carefully what to prioritize.

He stated:

“The EF focuses specifically on those activities critical to the success of Ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases, even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect, becoming outside of the EF.”

Vitalik’s vision is for Ethereum to be “impressive.” To him, this does not mean chasing 250ms latency or 1 million transactions per second.

“Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it, we will lose,” he says.

Rather, it must adhere to the CROPS roadmap, becoming provably bug-free with AI assistance, maintaining chain consensus, and minimizing intermediaries.

Vitalik acknowledged that there is merit to calls for a new entity that can focus on ETH as an asset and work on boosting its price, which some members have suggested. He stated:

“This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support.”

ETH trades just above $2,100 at press time, trading sideways over the past day as volume dipped 33% to $10.76 billion.