A few days after the most abrupt departures of several high-profile researchers and contributors from the Ethereum Foundation, the EF’s silence has only deepened the uncertainty gripping the Ethereum community.
What began earlier this week as a shock over more departures from key figures has now turned into something more existential, according to some community members: a public analysis of whether Ethereum’s most influential institution still understands the ecosystem it was created to serve.
The Foundation has yet to offer a detailed explanation of the departures or address the growing criticism of its leadership and strategic direction, which many have noted in recent weeks. In that void, community members, investors, and former experts have begun to craft their own narratives about what went wrong at EF and what it may mean for the future of Ethereum.
On Thursday, former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist published one of the clearest articulations yet of a growing view among critics: that Ethereum’s governance and institutional structure are fundamentally misaligned with the economic interests of the network itself.
“The way to save Ethereum,” Feist wrote on X, “is for the community to create an organization that is economically aligned with and accountable to Ethereum.”
Feist argued that, despite its cultural influence, the FA does not have as much economic influence on the ecosystem. The foundation now controls “less than 0.1% of all ETH,” he wrote, and does not receive any direct stream of staking revenue or network fees.
“If we want Ethereum to win again,” he said, the ecosystem needs a new institution with permanent funding, explicit accountability, and growth-focused leadership. Among their proposals: a billion-dollar treasury, funded in part through staking revenue, overseen by a board incentivized to see ETH’s value appreciate.
‘Original sin’
Cryptojournalist Laura Shin, host of the Unchained podcast, raised the issue even more directly.
“I think Ethereum’s original sin was not considering tokenomics in every move it made from Dencun onwards,” Shin wrote on
The “ultrasonic money” thesis, the idea that ETH would become increasingly scarce through fee burning, once became central to the Ethereum investment narrative. But critics argue that Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, particularly its adoption of lower accruals and base layer fees, undermined that dynamic without offering a compelling replacement narrative to token holders.
“Most people,” Shin wrote, “don’t want to believe in anything other than also adding points to the scoreboard.”
His comments reflected a broader frustration emerging in some corners of the Ethereum community: that EF has focused too much on ideology while neglecting competition, business development, and ETH price performance.
“When the mainstream offering becomes ideology/communism and money/symbolic economics/capitalism is ignored,” he wrote, “peasants will rebel.”
Others pointed to recent internal controversies at the EF, including the “mandate” that some contributors were allegedly asked to sign, according to Shin, as well as lingering questions about recent leadership appointments and decision-making processes within the Foundation.
In the absence of direct communication from the EF, speculation has increasingly focused on what role the new executive leadership may have played in the departures and whether the departures reflect a deeper cultural shift taking place within Ethereum’s most important institution.
“Personally, I don’t think it will be good for Ethereum if its most competitive people leave,” Shin wrote. “Ethereum’s unwillingness to stop the brain drain will only benefit its competitors or spawn new ones.”
Read more: ‘What is happening at the EF?’ Ethereum community seeks answers after high-profile departures
