Originally from the Ethereum Foundation Global Policy Strategy Team

Compiled|Odaily Planet Daily Qin Xiaofeng(@QinXiaofeng 888 )

Editor's Note:On July 1st, the Ethereum Foundation's Global Policy and Strategy team released a policy guide for governments and institutions, positioning Ethereum as critical public infrastructure.

The report states that Ethereum has maintained uninterrupted operation since its launch in 2015, secured by approximately $76 billion in staked ETH as of March 2026, featuring a geographically distributed validator network, multiple independent client implementations, and a vast developer ecosystem. The Foundation indicates that many current digital services rely on centralized intermediaries, posing risks such as single points of failure, network attacks, or political pressure, whereas Ethereum's decentralized architecture is better suited for applications like digital identity, public records, and asset tokenization. The report points to implemented cases such as Bhutan's and Buenos Aires's decentralized identity initiatives and India's land registry project based on Ethereum as evidence that governments have begun exploring this technology.

Below is the original blog post from the Foundation, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily, Enjoy~

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The current global transformations make it clear that there is an urgent need for a shared, neutral digital public infrastructure not controlled by any single centralized entity. Designed as a public programmable network that does not rely on any single party, Ethereum was created to meet precisely these needs.

Today, the Ethereum Foundation Global Policy Strategy (GPS) team formally released "Ethereum for Governments and Institutions"—a guide for leaders in the public sector and institutions facing policy and deployment decisions. This report is a non-technical introductory document covering how Ethereum works, its governance, comparisons with alternative options, and examples of its practical deployments. This article introduces the report and answers the core question that prompted its creation: why digital infrastructure must be neutral, and why Ethereum is suited for this role.

Why We Need Neutral Digital Infrastructure

The digital systems underpinning the modern economy—including payments, identity verification, registries, and institutional record-keeping—are fragmented, proprietary, and held by a handful of intermediaries.

Using these systems creates single points of failure, concentrating operational risk. A cyberattack, regional service outage, or natural disaster affecting a centralized operator can bring an entire system to an instantaneous halt.

Using these systems also means trusting these intermediaries and accepting their rules. These intermediaries have the ability to unilaterally remove participants or change previously agreed-upon rules, whether voluntarily or under external pressure. What happens when an operator is no longer trustworthy? How are disputes handled when counterparties clash over whose rules apply?

As more value moves online, these risks multiply, and the cracks in our digital foundation are widening. In recent years, we have experienced increasing cloud service outages paralyzing government services, financial systems being weaponized across borders, and major identity service providers being breached, leading to violations of personal privacy and severe erosion of corporate confidence. These are not a series of isolated anomalies but the inherent reality of infrastructure bound to centralized control.

Patching this fragile foundation with better rules cannot fundamentally fix the problem. The only true answer is credibly neutral infrastructure—where the protocol itself enforces rules, free from human discretion or external pressure—exactly what Ethereum is built to be.

This report is a comprehensive primer on Ethereum and the broader blockchain ecosystem. Tailored for governments and institutions evaluating digital infrastructure, it provides the objective, rigorous analysis needed for high-stakes decision-making.

Evaluating Blockchains Based on Objective Metrics

Blockchains exist on a broad spectrum with fundamental differences in technical architecture and governance structures. At one end of the spectrum are genuinely decentralized protocols. They are open, ownerless, and function like other public infrastructure that everyone uses but no one controls, such as the internet. At the other end of the spectrum are effectively corporate products, controlled and rule-set by a single company or a small group of insiders. These products can fail like businesses, and insiders are liable when things go wrong. This distinction has profound implications for policymakers and regulators. A blockchain's structure determines whether it can serve as a credibly neutral public infrastructure for decades to come or must be treated as a corporate product with inherent liabilities and systemic risks.

A key objective of this report is to inform governments and institutions about critical factors to consider before making policy decisions or deploying products on a blockchain. The recently released OpenZeppelin report identified key differences among Layer 1 blockchains. Here are several points regarding Ethereum (all data as of March 2026 unless otherwise stated):

• Uptime & Resilience: Ethereum has never experienced downtime since its launch in 2015 and has been extensively battle-tested. All other blockchains mentioned in the report have experienced between 1 and 7 downtime incidents, including a 19-hour halt for a major blockchain in 2023. Outages for centralized internet services also continue to occur; Ethereum's uniqueness lies in its perfect uptime record.
• Economic Security: At the time of the OpenZeppelin report, Ethereum was secured by approximately $76 billion in staked ETH, with an estimated cost of around $50.7 billion to execute a fraudulent transaction, in addition to automatic on-chain slashing as a deterrent. The corresponding costs for other blockchains were significantly lower, with many lacking even the deterrent of automatic on-chain slashing.
• Design for Validator Decentralization: Ethereum's validators are distributed across continents and jurisdictions, with no single country holding a dominant share. This broad distribution stems partly from accessible participation requirements. Anyone with a consumer-grade computer and 32 ETH can become a validator—a requirement far lower than for all other blockchains assessed in the report. In contrast, many other Layer 1s require enterprise-grade infrastructure, deep Linux administration expertise, and near-perfect uptime, leading to validator concentration among well-capitalized operators. The result is that Ethereum's validator set is more diverse, more decentralized, and harder to capture than that of any other blockchain in the report.
• Software & Infrastructure Diversity: Ethereum nodes and validators run across multiple cloud providers and physical servers, with no single provider holding a dominant share. The community maintains over five independent software client implementations, developed by different teams using different programming languages, greatly reducing the risk of network failure due to a single bug or fault. No other Layer 1 blockchain in the report has a comparable level of diversity. Most run on a single client software, posing a significant network failure risk.
• Counterparty Risk: Because Ethereum has no operator, building applications on it does not introduce a new counterparty. No party can change the rules, restrict access, reorder the network for commercial benefit, or shut it down. The system's integrity does not depend on the continued solvency, goodwill, or strategic interests of any single entity. Most other Layer 1 blockchains do not meet this standard. For example, the foundation behind a certain blockchain mentioned in the OpenZeppelin report directly shapes its validator ecosystem. Other blockchains have corporate entities exerting substantial influence over the chain. The OpenZeppelin report notes that in one case, the enterprise behind a major blockchain controlled about 42% of the token supply and extended this control to validator selection and node listings. These are precisely the kinds of counterparty risk exposures that institutions typically need to disclose, justify, and manage.
• Ecosystem Maturity, Developer Scale & Future Roadmap: The standards established by Ethereum have become the technical foundation upon which other blockchain ecosystems build. For governments and institutions, this means building applications on top of common standards, enjoying unparalleled interoperability, and having greater flexibility for network migration if needed. It also means access to a mature ecosystem of tools, auditing firms, and compliance service providers. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) tech stack boasts over 11,000 developers, far surpassing the numbers for other chains covered in the report. This depth is reflected in the Ethereum community's ongoing work, including a post-quantum security roadmap built into the core protocol rather than as an add-on, supported by dedicated research teams and public cryptography grant funds.

What This Means for Governments and Institutions

Public discourse often oversimplifies Ethereum as a financial instrument. This framework overlooks Ethereum's capacity as an open, neutral, programmable infrastructure—applicable to any system requiring coordination among multiple parties without trusted intermediaries. This includes transaction settlement, asset issuance, identity, registries, attestations, public records, supply chain provenance, and tokenized markets.

Many of these use cases are already materializing. For instance, Bhutan and Buenos Aires anchor their decentralized digital identity systems on Ethereum, allowing users to own their identity and choose what data to share. Ethereum-based rails are also being used to manage land records, combat fraud, and ensure the immutability of public records in India.

For many other government and institutional stakeholders, two immediate priorities currently exist: (1) selecting neutral infrastructure that maintains their sovereignty while coordinating with other parties, and (2) exploring how to govern this type of infrastructure that doesn't neatly fit existing regulatory models. These two decisions influence each other. A truly neutral network—with no controlling party that can be captured or coerced—supports a unique type of public sector deployment and also necessitates a regulatory approach distinct from networks that carry such risks.

"Ethereum Basics for Governments and Institutions" is our effort to help stakeholders understand the Ethereum blockchain and how it differs from other infrastructure—including existing intermediated systems and other blockchains—to inform these decisions.

The report is now available. Please click here to read it.