It’s been a difficult year for the Ethereum Foundation, the nonprofit organization that makes grants and helps support Ethereum, the best-known blockchain behind Bitcoin. As Ethereum loses market capitalization and mindset share to its competitors, the foundation has been dogged by scandal. Vitalik Buterin, co-founder and main figurehead of Ethereum, has presented a new plan to right the ship.
“In fact, we are currently in the process of major changes to EF’s leadership structure, which has been ongoing for almost a year,” Buterin said in an X post. “Some of this has already been executed and done public, and another part is still in progress.
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According to Buterin, the changes will not be designed to centralize, corporatize or politicize the foundation. The organization will not do it suddenly”[s]”We will not begin to aggressively pressure regulators and powerful political figures,” he said, nor will we “[b]become an arena for vested interests […] or even more like a ‘main character’ within Ethereum.”
The shakeup comes as Ethereum’s reputation among builders has deteriorated in recent months. Members of the broader crypto community are flocking to fast and cheap competitors like Solana, which has been quicker to adapt to the recent memecoin fervor.
Some say Ethereum has fallen behind because it lacks an organizational vision, something the foundation, while not “in charge” of Ethereum, could have helped remedy.
For the past 12 months, the foundation has been mired in controversy. It has withstood accusations of being ineffective, but also too powerful. Conflict-of-interest scandals haven’t helped either: Private company payments to foundation employees recently sparked widespread backlash and forced the organization to update its policies.
Some have blamed Aya Miyaguchi, the foundation’s executive director since 2018, for the foundation’s problems. Amid a pressure campaign for Miyaguchi’s ouster, Buterin stepped in as the Ethereum Foundation’s sole decision-maker. “The person who decides the new EF leadership team is me,” he said in X. “One of the goals of the ongoing reform is to give the EF a ‘proper board’, but until that happens, it is me.”
Miyaguchi, however, has not been expelled from the foundation. Buterin lashed out at some of her X critics, accusing them of using her as a “scapegoat.” In multiple tweets, Buterin highlighted certain particularly inflammatory comments on social media, including death threats and explicit calls for further intimidation against Miyaguchi, calling them “pure evil.”
“If you ‘keep up the pressure,’ then you are creating an environment that is actively toxic to top talent,” Buterin wrote. “Some of Ethereum’s top developers have been messaging me recently, expressing their displeasure with the social media environment that people like you are creating. YOU’RE MAKING MY JOB HARDER.”
