Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher
Following a series of negative events including the continuous departure of core members and criticism from former core supporters, Ethereum founder Vitalik had to publish a long article today to respond to the community, aiming to quell public opinion and inject more confidence.
In fact, all the negative doubts essentially stem from ETH's price weakness. Compared to Hyperliquid's strong performance, Ethereum lags comprehensively in ecosystem prosperity, community conviction, and mainnet performance. Consequently, its price has fallen by over 64% at most in the past year. In contrast, HYPE's price has repeatedly hit new highs, surpassing $64 at its peak.
Therefore, the Ethereum community's main target has become its core contributors: the Ethereum Foundation. Many opinions hold that the Ethereum Foundation's strategy is unclear, its top management has experienced repeated turmoil, it not only hasn't increased its ETH holdings but has been continuously selling, and can no longer represent the interests of ETH holders.
On May 20th, Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of Bankless, stated that Ethereum's future can no longer rely on the Ethereum Foundation (EF). "The EF is important, but Ethereum needs new institutions to step in and fill the gaps. We need an organization that genuinely wants Ethereum's asset (ETH) to win—to grow in quantity—and is willing to speak out and execute practically. The EF is not that, and never will be."
Tempo researcher and former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist shares a similar view. A few days ago, he stated that the Ethereum Foundation now holds less than 0.1% of all ETH, with no Ethereum staking or transaction fee revenue flowing to it. The way to save Ethereum is for the community to create an organization whose economic interests are aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it.
Veteran crypto journalist Laura Shin further pointed out, Ethereum's original sin is that every step since Dencun has failed to consider tokenomics, meaning the Ethereum Foundation overly emphasizes ideology while neglecting capital markets and price performance.
In response to these criticisms, Vitalik, in the article published today, addressed the community's concerns with a candid and resolute attitude, systematically elaborating his deep thoughts on the foundation's role, strategic direction, and value proposition.
I. Confronting the 'Sense of Crisis': Ethereum Must Not Become the 'Second Google'
Vitalik began by acknowledging a 'haunting feeling'—he often hears people say: "Vitalik talks a good game about decentralization, privacy, and Ethereum being a sanctuary technology, but why aren't the EF's actual actions reflecting this?"
He further admits that there might be a 'real difference' between his sense of crisis and that of others in the community—regarding 'which kind of criticism I value most, and which critics can most effectively hit my pain points through their criticism.'
To illustrate, he offers a meaningful analogy: Google. Vitalik believes Google is a success story, "but you can also hold another perspective: they had a beautiful, idealistic beginning, but at some point, the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they gradually and thoroughly abandoned the 'Don't be evil' motto."
He states: "If you could take me back to around 2008 and give me a button to press that would make Google one or two standard deviations more dogmatic—like granting Richard Stallman permanent veto power over certain key policies—I would press it without hesitation."
The reason is that the entire tech industry is drifting away from its early idealistic roots of 'Don't be evil,' "chasing financial interests instead, embracing the grand narrative of accelerating superintelligence that devours everything, being infiltrated by unscrupulous actors, and cowardly succumbing to government pressure on ideological control, surveillance, and war." Therefore, "it is more beneficial to freedom, balance of power, and overall social stability for a company to do something different, positioning itself as what George Bernard Shaw called 'the unreasonable man,' resisting the tide of the times, than for all large companies to succumb to prevailing trends."
This discourse essentially sets the tone for the Ethereum Foundation's future: it will not become a second Google—it will not, after an idealistic opening, gradually slide into mediocrity and corruption.
II. EF Is Not the Center, But a 'Node with a Clear Purpose'
Addressing criticism about the foundation's positioning, Vitalik provides a clear framework: the EF is not 'the center of Ethereum,' but 'a node with clear responsibilities, standing alongside other nodes.' He says, there are even many people within the Ethereum ecosystem, "including inside the EF, who want us to be the former. Right now, we are taking steps to ensure we become the latter."
The necessity for this shift lies in a harsh financial reality: the EF holds only about 0.16% of all ETH, "less than many individual ETH holders," whereas in other blockchains, it's commonplace for the 'central foundation' to hold 10% to 50% of the supply. Vitalik further points out that the EF was initially designed only to complete the limited scope of work defined in the token sale documents, which was fully accomplished in 2022. "It was never designed to be a perpetual governor."
Therefore, Vitalik states the EF will choose to use its remaining resources to pursue long-term goals, rather than blindly expanding its scope. The EF will explicitly focus on activities crucial to Ethereum's success as a censorship-resistant, capture-resistant, open, private, and secure system, activities that wouldn't happen without its push. He particularly emphasizes that the EF will no longer continue selling large amounts of ETH.
III. Ethereum Must Be 'Amazing'
Vitalik puts forward a clear-cut viewpoint in the article: Ethereum must be 'amazing.'
"We live in an era of highly intelligent AI and accelerating technological development. 'Maintaining the EVM status quo, doing one or two hard forks a year to meet users' short-term needs'—this path lacks imagination."
But for some, 'amazing' means 250-millisecond latency and 1 million TPS. Vitalik says bluntly: "I think it's a mistake for Ethereum to go down this road. Chasing speed and scalability relentlessly, while being only slightly better than others in decentralization, is a path to mediocrity. If we do this, we will inevitably fail."
He believes Ethereum should go all out in another dimension—the CROPS dimension:
First, provably bug-free Ethereum. About six months ago, "all cybersecurity researchers would have considered this an absurd and impossible goal. Now, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification, it's on the verge of becoming reality."
Second, highly available chain consensus. Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum, with its lean consensus, will continue to be the only chain possessing both traditional BFT security properties (high fault tolerance in asynchronous networks) and Bitcoin PoW security properties (resistance to 49% attacks in synchronous networks).
Third, minimal intermediaries. "Frankly, it's embarrassing that smart contract wallets, protocols like Railgun, etc., must send transactions through intermediaries to get on-chain. This has always been a point of fragility." He admits, "Achieving only 50% won't make Ethereum deeply awe-inspiring in the CROPS dimension. So we must pursue 100%."
This 'unreasonable' technical insistence is actually a response to veteran journalist Laura Shin's criticism: Ethereum is not ignoring tokenomics but attempting to achieve the highest level of capital premium by establishing ultimate 'certainty.'
IV. How to Bridge the 'Interest Alignment' Gap?
Looking back over the past decade, Ethereum has weathered the ICO bubble burst, DeFi winter, rampant hacking, and multiple bear market impacts, but ultimately evolved.
Today, the reason Vitalik's reflection on the foundation is receiving widespread attention isn't just because he responded to external criticism; more importantly, it signals that the Ethereum Foundation is gradually transitioning from a past technology-oriented organization to a mature institution that balances organizational governance, ecosystem coordination, and long-term strategy.
For an ecosystem managing hundreds of billions of dollars in on-chain economic activity, this transition might be no less challenging than any hard fork upgrade.
Galaxy Vice President of Research, Lucas Tcheyan, expressed firm support for ETH, "The market is repeating the same mistake with ETH as it did with SOL in 2022/2023. The executive changes at EF are concerning. But Ethereum's roadmap looks more coherent than at any time since the Merge."
However, after the Ethereum Foundation further reduces its scope of responsibilities, regarding the view held by many industry figures that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to create 'an organization whose economic interests are aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it,' Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation did not address this issue, and the market has yet to see a viable solution.
This 'interest alignment' gap may be the key to ETH reversing its current weakness.
