Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the Ethereum Foundation will choose “longevity over breadth,” reduce ETH sales, and limit its focus to CROPS: censorship resistance, capture resistance, openness, privacy, and security.
In a lengthy post on
Nearly 90% of his own net worth is in ETH, and the remaining roughly $40 million in on-chain fiat is already earmarked for open source hardware, software and biotech initiatives, Buterin added.
His influence within the EF will continue to decline as the board expands, aligning with his desire to be less influential there. However, he also covered his words by saying, “This is just my own opinion. The board is not just me, and I don’t have any additional special powers on the board that other board members don’t have.”
He framed EF as “a node, with a defined purpose, along with other nodes,” not as the center of Ethereum. Addressing throughput, Buterin said it would be a mistake for Ethereum to max it out.
“Being as fast and scalable as possible, and just a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a path to mediocrity, and if we try, we will lose.”
Instead, Buterin noted that Ethereum strives to be “deeply impressive” in what he called the “CROPS dimension.” This involves making Ethereum error-free, which is argued to be within reach given AI-powered verification.
The position came after at least 8 senior EF collaborators left or announced their departure in 2026, 5 in May alone, reigniting debate over the direction of the foundation.
The crypto community reacts
Prominent Ethereum voices supported Buterin.
Anthony Sassano, an independent Ethereum educator, angel investor, and advisor, responded directly to the post, thanking Buterin. A separate quote tweet from Sassano focused on Buterin’s formulation of ETH as the highest-value “product” of the Ethereum blockchain.
Author and early Ethereum advisor William Mougayar tweeted the post: “Basically, Ethereum just got its own Clarity Act over the weekend. It was a very clear message, and the path forward is super clear. Ethereum is untouchable.”
Developer Suhail Kakar also responded directly, calling the post “bullish.” “A foundation voluntarily reducing its own power is the weirdest thing in crypto. Really the most cypherpunk thing I’ve read in a long time.”
Meanwhile, the core developers chose the CROPS framework.
Go-Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden responded that security was being underestimated: “When people talk about CROPS, they seem to focus on the CR, OS and Privacy part. The security part is, in my opinion, the most important! Without a secure L1, none of this makes sense and we have already taken the security of the Ethereum base layer for granted.”
Consensus layer developer Potuz followed the thread, noting that “one of the biggest selling points of Ethereum is that there is no downtime since its genesis” and that the registry made each fork a concentrated risk.
Unchained host Laura Shin asked the governance question the publication left open: “What is the process for adding new board members?” Buterin did not respond publicly at the time of writing. DeFiPrime founder Nick Sawinyh noted that EF now sounded “less like a cathedral and more like a commons protocol operator.”
Others criticized the cryptocurrency’s performance. Ether has fallen almost 60% against bitcoin in the last five years, down to 0.02738 BTC. During that period, the price of bitcoin nearly doubled from $35,600 to $77,500 at the time of writing.
Read more: Ethereum’s identity crisis is deepening after a high-profile ‘brain drain’ frustrates the community
