Ethereum's Ultimate Vision

Author: Thejaswini, Source: TokenDispatch, Translation: Shaw Golden Finance

Introduction

Between the series of events where Base spun off from OP Stack and Dankrad Feist left to join a public chain project supported by Stripe, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has recognized that what is needed now is a declaration.

On March 13, the Ethereum Foundation released a 38-page document titled “EF Mandate.” It functions as a charter, declaration, and action guide all in one. The opening addresses “Dear friends,” and the closing ends with “With deepest love in the world.” The document is stored on-chain and features illustrated pages, one of which even states: “If the Foundation fails to uphold its solemn commitments to Ethereum, may it self-destruct and bow out.”

Even if the Ethereum Foundation ceases to exist tomorrow, Ethereum must continue to operate independently. The core idea of this document is: The measure of the Ethereum Foundation’s success is how “redundant” it becomes.

This may be the most principled statement written in black and white in the entire industry. The wording is compelling, yet straightforwardly declares: We are already on the path to retreat.

In my view, this is more like an organization that has gradually lost its voice over the past year, preemptively inscribing its values on paper before others redefine them.

As background, this document was published two weeks after Tomasz Stańczak left. Stańczak, a former co-Executive Director, had been pushing the Ethereum Foundation toward a pragmatic approach, strengthening developer engagement, and focusing more on real-world needs during 2025. Vitalik also praised him upon his departure.

However, the Foundation has just announced a return to its core cypherpunk roots.

Why did they choose this moment to make a statement?

Content of the Declaration

The Ethereum Foundation’s mission declaration is built around the CROPS principles—an acronym for Censorship resistance, Open source, Privacy, and Security. The document explicitly states that these four principles are permanently above all else. Any proposal that sacrifices any of these features for convenience will face stricter review thresholds, with no room for negotiation.

The Ethereum Foundation positions itself as a guardian, not a leader.

Areas the Foundation will not involve itself in include:

• Developing products;

• Business development to attract institutions or retain developers;

• Blindly pursuing adoption metrics.

Instead, its core focus will be on:

• Protocol strengthening;

• Privacy research;

• Security assurance.

Is it reasonable to position itself as providing underlying infrastructure that can remain neutral for decades?

Next, let’s discuss the exit test: Even if the Ethereum Foundation disappears tomorrow, the Ethereum network must continue to operate normally. If any system depends on the Foundation to run, it fails this test. The entire declaration argues why Ethereum can exist independently of the people who wrote this document, forming a coherent philosophy.

What’s the problem?

Coinbase senior engineer Yuga Cohler commented: “Just as Netscape wasted a lot of time rewriting its browser from version 4 to version 6 during Microsoft’s crushing dominance, now institutions are finally moving onto chains at scale, but often choose other public chains. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation insists on focusing on cypherpunk values at this critical juncture. A winning foundation should focus on making Ethereum the most suitable public chain for finance.”

In the mid-90s, Netscape nearly monopolized the browser market. Later, Microsoft bundled IE with Windows for free, and Netscape responded by completely rewriting its codebase. When the new browser was released, it was too late—Microsoft had already won. The lengthy rewrite caused the market window to close entirely. Within three years, Netscape’s market share plummeted from 90% to insignificance. It’s hard not to regret this history.

At a critical moment of industry upheaval, Netscape fell into internal development driven by its own interests. Is the Ethereum Foundation repeating this mistake?

This mission declaration hardly addresses how the ecosystem serves real users’ needs.

Dankrad Feist’s departure itself is a signal. As co-creator of Danksharding, one of Ethereum’s most important scalability breakthroughs, he left to join Tempo, a payment-focused public chain supported by Stripe and Paradigm. To me, this choice signifies a pursuit of faster iteration and serving more financial scenarios. He cast his vote with his feet.

Developers moving to Solana and institutions adopting multi-chain strategies are doing the same. Base has left OP Stack. Meanwhile, the Ethereum Foundation issues this mission declaration.

Since the last crypto bear market bottom, Bitcoin has rebounded over 348%, and Ethereum over 130%. But from the network perspective: Ethereum accounts for about 58% of the total decentralized finance (DeFi) TVL, a share that has remained stable over the past few years.

Ethereum’s stablecoin supply accounts for roughly 55% of the global total. In 2025 alone, it added $50 billion in issuance, driven mainly by institutional capital inflows, asset tokenization, and real-world asset (RWA) infrastructure development. Major banks are deploying 56.8% of their real-world asset tokenization projects on Ethereum, with a market size approaching $10 billion. When institutions want to hold heavyweight assets, they still choose Ethereum.

But competitors are not to be underestimated.

Solana, for example, performed quite well during the bear market, though it still cannot match Ethereum.

During the Iran conflict, Hyperliquid completed nearly one billion dollars in crude oil trades over a single weekend. Institutions now see multi-chain deployment as the default, not an exception. BlackRock has launched a staked ETH ETF and is also positioning on other chains. The world is not waiting for Ethereum to figure out what it wants to be.

The entire ecosystem seems to be losing narrative dominance.

The declaration contains no sections on how to make Ethereum more attractive to developers who prefer Solana today, nor does it address the competitive pressure from user-friendly, more aggressive roadmapped chains. This document is not aimed at the market but is only for the Ethereum Foundation’s internal reference.

The Logic of Proactive Retreat

Bitcoin has no foundation but remains the world’s largest crypto asset by market cap. The less control a protocol has by a single entity, the higher its neutrality and credibility. Any foundation that accumulates power risks becoming a target for regulation, politics, or internal conflicts. The Ethereum Foundation is trying to avoid this.

Let me state the core rationale: Ethereum’s value to institutions lies not in transaction speed or low fees, but in its trusted neutrality and the promise that “no single entity controls it, rules won’t change with leadership shifts, and it will remain secure for the next thirty years.” Every time the Foundation reduces its influence, its credibility increases; every step back makes Ethereum less like an ordinary company and more like a neutral infrastructure.

The Foundation shoulders protocol development work that no one else wants to do, while the ecosystem handles product deployment that the Foundation shouldn’t involve itself in. If both roles are fulfilled properly, Ethereum can remain a neutral foundation for finance regardless of whether Foundation members are active.

The Power Vacuum

When an organization voluntarily retreats, other forces inevitably fill the gap. The Foundation’s shrinking footprint is the core purpose of this exit test. But Ethereum does not exist in a vacuum—those with significant influence over its future do not share the CROPS principles.

Coinbase owns the Base chain, with over 100 million users and developers, and has enormous economic interests in Ethereum’s development direction. Lido controls a large amount of staked ETH, with governance power that no document can strip away. Many protocols invested by a16z profoundly influence Ethereum’s roadmap. These are not neutral guardians but participants with their own interests, development pace, and visions.

The mission declaration states that the Foundation is “one of the guardians, not the only guardian,” but it does not specify who the other guardians are, what their optimization goals are, or how to ensure their interests align with CROPS principles when conflicts arise.

Talents and institutional resources once affiliated with the Foundation are now dispersed among various entities driven by commercial interests. Who are they building for? Do their interests align with Ethereum’s long-term neutrality, or are they diverging?

Decentralization does not eliminate power struggles; it only makes them more covert.

What is Ethereum’s ultimate vision?

The declaration provides an answer: Sovereign infrastructure. It aims to be a neutral foundation that guarantees human freedom in the digital world—a millennial project concerning free operation mechanisms.

At the same time, it aspires to be the most liquid stablecoin settlement network, the most trusted neutral public chain in institutional finance, and the top platform for real-world asset tokenization—because of its superior regulatory compliance compared to other chains.

These goals are not mutually exclusive. Achieving the first requires slowing growth and maintaining ideological purity; the latter two require confronting competitive realities, with chains like Solana currently leading in developer engagement and public perception battles.

If I had heard this a year ago, I would applaud and share it. But today, the users who truly want to use blockchain are not flooding in. Everyone wants good products and convenience.

Principles may win out over the long term, but I must say the actual development cycle is much shorter than Vitalik anticipated.

The declaration completely sidesteps asset-related issues. Ethereum is not just a protocol; ETH is also an asset held by investors. An asset that consistently underperforms its peers will gradually lose capital attractiveness, reduce security budgets, and ultimately backfire on the protocol itself. Principles can sustain a network but cannot support token prices. And in the crypto industry, the two are more tightly linked than we imagine.

The most critical gamble is always the vote of developers when choosing their next building platform.

In my view, this declaration agrees with one point but remains silent on another. The correct point is: A protocol that depends on the Foundation’s existence is fragile. The overlooked fact is: When competitors accelerate, guardians who are distracted are equally vulnerable. These are two fundamentally different failure modes, and the document only addresses one.

Ethereum has endured tougher times before. But today, those who once believed most firmly in it are more bearish than ever.