On May 25, 2026, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a lengthy article on X platform, detailing his personal views on the future positioning of the Ethereum Foundation (EF). This statement quickly attracted attention from the global crypto community and was interpreted by several media outlets as a signal of EF's proactive "decentralized self-revolution".
Vitalik clearly pointed out that EF is transitioning to a "smaller scale, more long-term oriented" operating model, only holding about 0.16% of the total ETH supply, and will focus resources on core blockchain properties such as censorship resistance, anti-capture, openness, privacy, and security (abbreviated as CROPS), rather than broadly undertaking ecological construction and market promotion functions. He bluntly stated, "This means we will sell less ETH." This stance directly responds to recent community questions about the foundation's ETH selling actions and discussions regarding the departure of several senior researchers since 2026, which the market views as long-term bullish.
Vitalik emphasized that the EF board is expanding, and his personal influence will further decrease—"this is exactly what I want." He reflected on the significant improvement in EF's execution and goal focus in 2025 but pointed out that the most troubling criticism for him early this year was: "Vitalik verbally emphasizes that Ethereum needs decentralization, privacy, and shelter technology; why are EF's actual actions inconsistent with this?" Such suspicions of "being inconsistent in words and actions" led him to promote EF's return from being "the center of Ethereum" to "a node in the ecosystem." This transition is not sudden but a recalibration of the foundation's historical mission: EF was initially designed to complete the technical roadmap from Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis to Serenity, a mission that was fully accomplished in 2022 and not an eternal "trustee" role.
Unlike many public chain foundations that hold 10%-50% of native tokens, EF currently holds only about 0.16% of ETH, which is lower than many individual whales. Vitalik explicitly stated that EF will use the remaining resources to pursue "longevity over breadth," which directly implies "selling less ETH." Recently, the foundation has withdrawn about 21,270 ETH from Lido, but Vitalik clarified that this move aims to adjust the funding structure rather than an immediate sell-off. Several media outlets pointed out that this statement alleviated market concerns about sustained selling pressure. Currently, the ETH price hovers around $2094-2100, having halved from its nearly $5000 historical high in August 2025, with community expectations of the foundation's role shifting from "ecosystem promoter" to "protocol guardian."
Ethereum "deeply impressive" rather than merely a speed competition
Vitalik's core argument is that EF must focus on those key tasks that "would not naturally happen otherwise," ensuring Ethereum as a censorship-resistant, anti-capture, open, private, and secure system. EF will make "difficult choices," including moving some highly recognized technical talent and projects externally, to attract more external capital. This does not mean denying these efforts but acknowledging that EF has limited resources and cannot take on everything. "Highly respecting the value of CROPS does not mean full-time focus."
On the technical level, Vitalik emphasized "Ethereum must be impressive." In the current era of AI and technological acceleration, "the current EVM hard forks once or twice a year and only optimizes short-term user needs" is unattractive. Many define "impressive" as 250 milliseconds of latency and 1 million TPS, but he believes if Ethereum only pursues "a bit faster and a bit more centralized," it will head towards mediocrity and ultimately lose to competitors. Ethereum should expand, but the core competitiveness lies in the CROPS dimension:
Proven bug-free Ethereum: With AI-assisted formal verification, a goal previously seen as "absurdly impossible" has come close to reality in the past six months, and EF should take the lead in promoting this.
Usable chain consensus: Ethereum is the only public chain that combines traditional BFT asynchronous safety (high fault tolerance) and Bitcoin-style synchronized 49% attack tolerance. Vitalik has strongly opposed relying on social consensus or hard forks to rescue 34% of nodes going offline, which is critical for a decentralized system like Ethereum, rather than a temporary fix for chains like Hyperledger, BNB, or Solana.
Minimizing intermediaries: Smart contract wallets and privacy protocols like Railgun still need intermediaries to go on-chain, and this "awkward vulnerability" must be addressed. FOCIL, EIP-8141 (and previously 7701, etc.) aim to minimize intermediaries under a public memory pool, covering secp256r1 and privacy protocols. Work like Kohaku is pushing this transition from the user layer to avoid wallet reliance on third-party servers to verify on-chain data.
These goals are fully compatible with high TPS, especially through state expansion research, targeted L2 (high-frequency trading, privacy-focused), and optimizations on erasure coding P2P by Raul and others, which could even achieve shorter slot times. Vitalik pointed out that ETH, as Ethereum's most valuable "product," has anchored a market value of $250 billion, and its CROPS properties directly benefit ETH asset value. Almost 90% of his net worth is in ETH, with the remainder mainly supporting public good projects like open-source biotechnology, emphasizing that certain necessary tasks to support ETH assets should be carried by "other heroes" (some holders exceeding EF) while EF is considering how to provide initial support rather than taking the lead.
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