On May 24, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a roughly 1,500-word post on X laying out his personal vision for the Ethereum Foundation’s future. He was direct about what the changes mean in practice: “The EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth. Yes, this means we sell less ETH.” The post arrives at a difficult moment for the organization, amid its deepest talent drain in years and growing community frustration over the Foundation’s direction.
A Foundation at a Crossroads
At least nine senior contributors have departed in 2026, including Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Carl Beek, Julian Ma, and Trent Van Epps. The Protocol Cluster — the team responsible for core protocol research — has been particularly hard hit, with all three of its former leads now gone. Community member Banteg posted on X alongside a screenshot of the Foundation’s org chart with the departed names struck through: “Situation: all three EF protocol leads have left.”
The leadership churn at the top has compounded the instability. Tomasz Stańczak, who had co-led the Foundation alongside Hsiao-Wei Wang since early 2025, stepped down as co-executive director at the end of February. He joined as co-executive director in March 2025 after stepping down as Nethermind CEO, and departed less than a year into the role, saying the restructuring objectives set in early 2025 were “either completed or structurally embedded.” Bastian Aue stepped in as interim co-executive director alongside Wang and is now overseeing the transition Buterin described.
A Foundation at a Crossroads
Buterin Steps Back — By Design
Buterin was careful to frame his May 24 remarks as personal opinion rather than an official board position. On the question of his own authority, he did not hedge. He said his influence within the organization will continue to shrink, adding that this is “honestly what I want.” The board is being expanded specifically to dilute the sway of any single member, Buterin included.
Part of what is driving the structural rethink is a long-running tension between the Foundation’s public profile and its actual holdings. The EF holds roughly 0.16% of all ETH — well below the 10% to 50% that Buterin noted is common for the central foundations of rival blockchains. Critics have argued for years that the Foundation’s influence over protocol direction was disproportionate to its economic stake. Buterin also offered a historical argument for why the Foundation should step back: the EF was designed to fulfill a limited scope that was completed in 2022 and was “not designed to be an eternal steward.”
Buterin Steps Back — By Design
The CROPS Framework: Doing Less, Better
The new direction centers on what Buterin calls the CROPS framework — censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security. The EF will focus specifically on activities critical to Ethereum’s success as a censorship- and capture-resistant, open, private, and secure system that would not happen otherwise. Competing on raw throughput speed, where rival chains already have an established edge, is explicitly off the table. Buterin argued that chasing high-throughput chains on speed alone leads to mediocrity, and that Ethereum should instead strive to be “deeply impressive” in the CROPS dimension.
Concrete technical priorities include making Ethereum provably bug-free through AI-assisted formal verification, building leaner consensus mechanisms that hold up under adversarial network conditions, and reducing reliance on intermediaries throughout the transaction stack through proposals like FOCIL and EIP-8141.
Selling Less ETH
The reduced ETH sales policy follows earlier moves in the same direction. Earlier this year the Foundation began staking a portion of its treasury rather than liquidating holdings to fund operations. The Foundation’s treasury holdings report showed that 99.1% of EF reserves remain in ETH. By conserving rather than selling, the Foundation is betting on a longer operational runway over short-term spending flexibility.
By narrowing its scope, the Foundation is also signaling that outside organizations should fill the gaps it leaves behind. Buterin said respected contributors and projects outside the EF are necessary for important work to attract outside capital. Activities tied to promoting ETH as a tradeable asset fall into that category — something the Foundation does not plan to fund directly going forward.
Ethereum (ETH) Price Performance. (Source: CoinMarketCap)
The $1 Billion Counter-Proposal
The community response to the departures has already produced one high-profile alternative vision. Former EF researcher Dankrad Feist proposed the creation of a new, independent organization with initial funding of at least $1 billion, built on permanent staking revenue streams and focused explicitly on improving Ethereum’s competitive market position. Feist, who left the Foundation in 2025 to join Tempo, argued that the EF’s minimal stake in ETH limits its ability to act as an effective advocate for the network’s economic health. Ryan Sean Adams and other prominent Ethereum voices have publicly backed the concept.
ETH has fallen roughly 57% from near $5,000 last summer to around $2,100, and has made four failed attempts to retest that level — a price backdrop that has added urgency to the debate over whether the Foundation’s long-term, research-first posture is the right one for the current moment.
What Comes Next
For now, Buterin’s message is that the Foundation is consciously choosing depth over breadth and permanence over scale. The new long-term form is expected to stabilize over the next few months. Whether the wider Ethereum ecosystem can absorb the roles the Foundation is vacating — and whether the talent drain slows — will be the real test of whether that bet pays off.
