Author: Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

After experiencing a series of negative events such as the continuous departure of core members and criticism from former key supporters, Ethereum founder Vitalik had to publish a long article today in response to the community to quell public opinion and inject more confidence into the community.

In fact, all the negative doubts essentially stem from ETH's decline in price. In comparison to Hyperliquid's strong performance, Ethereum is lagging behind in ecological prosperity, community faith, and main chain performance, resulting in its price dropping by more than 64% in the past year. In contrast, HYPE's price has repeatedly hit new highs, surpassing $64.

Therefore, the Ethereum community is directing its main criticism at Ethereum's core contributor: the Ethereum Foundation. Many opinions suggest that the strategic formulation of the Ethereum Foundation is vague, with frequent changes in leadership, and instead of increasing their holdings in ETH, they are continuously selling coins, which can no longer represent the interests of ETH holders.

Ryan Sean Adams, co-founder of Bankless, stated in a post on May 20 that the future of Ethereum can no longer rely on the Ethereum Foundation (EF). “While EF is certainly important, Ethereum needs new institutions to step in and fill the void. We need an organization that truly wants Ethereum assets (ETH) to win - to grow in number - and has the courage to speak out and implement actions. EF is not such an organization, and it never will be.”

Tempo researcher and former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist shares a similar view, stating a few days ago that the Ethereum Foundation now holds less than 0.1% of all ETH, with no funds flowing to it from Ethereum staking or transaction fees. The way to save Ethereum lies in the community needing to create an organization that aligns with Ethereum's economic interests and is responsible for them.

Senior crypto media personality Laura Shin further pointed out, the original sin of Ethereum lies in the fact that from the onset of Dencun, every step has not considered token economics, meaning that the Ethereum Foundation has overly focused on ideology while neglecting capital markets and price performance.

In response to these criticisms, Vlitak, in the long article published today, addressed the community's concerns with an honest and firm attitude and systematically elaborated on deep thoughts regarding the role, strategic direction, and value positioning of the foundation.

1. Face the "Crisis Awareness": Ethereum cannot become "the second Google"

Vitalik began by acknowledging a sense of "disturbance" - he often sees people saying: "Vitalik talks about decentralization, privacy, and becoming a sanctuary technology, saying nice things, but why do EF's actual actions not reflect these?"

He then admitted that there might be a "real difference" between his sense of crisis and that of others in the community - regarding "which types of criticism I value most and which critics can hit my pain points the hardest."

To illustrate, he provided a significant analogy: Google. Vitalik believes that Google is a success story, "but one can hold another view: they had a beautiful and idealistic start, but at some point, the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they gradually abandoned the motto of 'do no harm.'"

He said, "If you take me back to around 2008 and give me a button that could raise Google's standards on 'doctrine' by one or two standard deviations, for example, give Richard Stallman a permanent veto on certain key policies, I would press it without hesitation."

The reason is that the entire tech industry is straying from the early idealistic roots of 'do no harm,' "turning to pursue financial interests, embracing a grand narrative of accelerated superintelligence that devours everything, being infiltrated by unscrupulous individuals, and cowardly yielding to government pressure in terms of ideological control, surveillance, and war." Thus, "having a company do something different, positioning itself as the 'irrational person' as George Bernard Shaw said, resisting the tide of the times, is more beneficial to freedom, power balance, and the stability of society as a whole than all big companies submitting to mainstream trends."

This statement has effectively set the tone for the future of the Ethereum Foundation: it will not become the second Google - it will not slide towards mediocrity and corruption step by step after an idealistic opening.

2. EF is not a center, but rather a "node with clear goals"

In response to external criticisms of the foundation's positioning, Vitalik provided a clear framework: EF is not "the center of Ethereum," but rather "a node with clear responsibilities that stands alongside other nodes." He stated that within the Ethereum ecosystem, "even within EF, there are many who hope we become the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure we become the latter."

The necessity for this change comes from a harsh financial reality: EF only holds about 0.16% of all ETH, "less than many individual ETH holders," and in other blockchains, it is common for "central foundations" to hold 10% to 50% of the shares. Vitalik further pointed out that the original design of EF was only to fulfill a limited scope of work defined in the token sale documentation, which was fully completed in 2022, "It was never designed to be an eternal manager."

Therefore, Vitalik stated that EF will choose to use its remaining resources to pursue long-term goals, instead of blindly expanding. EF will clearly focus on activities that are critical for Ethereum's success as a censorship-resistant, anti-capture, open, private, and secure system, which would not happen without their push. He emphasized that EF will no longer continue to sell large amounts of ETH.

3. Ethereum must be "amazing"

Vitalik presented a bold opinion in the long article: Ethereum must be "amazing."

"We live in an era of highly intelligent AI and various technological accelerations. 'Maintaining the status quo of EVM, doing a hard fork once or twice a year to meet users' short-term needs' is unimaginative."

However, for some, being "amazing" means 250 milliseconds of latency and 1 million TPS. Vitalik bluntly stated: "I think it's a mistake for Ethereum to go down this path. Pursuing speed and scalability while being only slightly better in decentralization than others is a path to mediocrity, and if we do this, we will inevitably fail."

He believes that Ethereum should strive on another dimension - that is the CROPS dimension:

First, a provably bug-free Ethereum. About six months ago, "all network security researchers would consider this an absurd and impossible goal. But now, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification, it is on the verge of becoming a reality."

Second, high availability chain consensus. Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum will continue to be the only chain with both traditional BFT security attributes (high fault tolerance in asynchronous networks) and Bitcoin PoW security attributes (resistance to 49% attacks in synchronous networks) under streamlined consensus.

Third, minimizing intermediaries. "Frankly, protocols like smart contract wallets and railgun must use intermediaries to send transactions on-chain, which is embarrassing and has always been a weak point." He admitted, "Simply achieving 50% does not make Ethereum stand out in the CROPS dimension. So we must pursue 100%."

This insistence on "irrational" technology is actually a response to Laura Shin's criticism: Ethereum has not neglected token economics, but is trying to obtain the highest capital premium by establishing extreme "certainty."

4: How to bridge the gap in "interest alignment"?

Looking back over the past decade, Ethereum has experienced the burst of the ICO bubble, the DeFi winter, rampant hacking, and multiple bear market impacts, but ultimately it has achieved self-evolution.

Today, Vitalik's reflections on the foundation are widely attended not only because he responded to external criticisms, but more importantly because it sends a signal: the Ethereum Foundation is gradually shifting from a past technical-oriented organization to a mature institution that balances organizational governance, ecological coordination, and long-term strategy.

For an ecosystem managing hundreds of billions of dollars in on-chain economic activity, this transformation may not be any easier than any hard fork upgrade.

Galaxy Research Vice President Lucas Tcheyan expressed firm support for ETH, saying, “The market is repeating the same mistakes it made with ETH, as it did with SOL in 2022/2023. The changes in EF's executives are concerning. However, Ethereum's roadmap looks more coherent than it has since the merge.”

However, after the Ethereum Foundation further reduces its scope of responsibilities, regarding the viewpoint held by many industry professionals that the Ethereum ecosystem needs to create an “organization that aligns with Ethereum's economic interests and is responsible for them,” neither Vitalik nor the Ethereum Foundation has responded to this question, and the market has temporarily not seen a viable solution.

This gap in "interest alignment" may be the key to ETH reversing its downward trend.

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