Ethereum Foundation releases three consecutive articles: reiterating vision, confirming direction, and disclosing governance structure
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Ethereum Foundation releases three consecutive articles: reiterating vision, confirming direction, and disclosing governance structure
In the future, the Ethereum Foundation will "strategically engage and consciously exit."
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Ethereum Foundation
Translated by: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
Editor's note: Last night, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) published three consecutive articles. They are: "The Vision of the Ethereum Foundation" authored by Vitalik Buterin and EF Chair Aya Miyaguchi; "The Next Chapter of the Ethereum Foundation" written by the two new Executive Directors, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak; and "Management and Board Structure of the Ethereum Foundation" released by the EF Board of Directors.
Though none of these articles are particularly long, together they restate EF’s vision and strategic direction at a high level, with a strong emphasis on EF's plans to decentralize authority in certain areas—potentially marking a significant milestone in EF’s ongoing self-reform journey.
"The Vision of the Ethereum Foundation" — Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi
Ethereum's strength lies in its decentralized nature—not only technically, but also socially and structurally. This article outlines the Ethereum Foundation’s (EF) vision, role, and focus as one of the stewards of the ecosystem. As a new management team takes office, we reaffirm our enduring vision, principles, and values. These priorities are not rigid plans, but are already reflected in the strategy articulated by EF’s two newly appointed Co-Executive Directors. By clarifying our methods and focus, we aim to communicate both where we will concentrate efforts and where we will intentionally step back—to ensure the ecosystem continues to thrive through broad participation.
Vision
Safeguarding the “infinite garden”—the ecosystem composed of projects, communities, and infrastructure built around Ethereum—ensuring its resilience amid changing conditions. We see Ethereum as humanity’s shared world computer, an open, permissionless platform that has already brought stability, freedom, and technological empowerment to collaboration for millions worldwide. We deeply value the real-world impact Ethereum is creating.
Hence, we use the metaphor of an “infinite garden” to describe the Ethereum ecosystem: a living, ever-evolving space where builders, dreamers, and stewards from across the globe plant seeds of creativity, support one another, and jointly build tools that will reshape the foundations of finance, identity, and civilization for decades to come.
Role and Positioning
Ethereum’s greatest strength lies in its unparalleled ecosystem. Beyond EF, numerous teams are pushing boundaries through technological innovation, education, and public goods funding. EF’s mission is to strengthen this advantage and protect core values: filling gaps, correcting imbalances, supporting critical initiatives, and ensuring—ourselves included—that no single entity dominates Ethereum’s evolution. We intervene strategically and withdraw consciously, continuously adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the environment changes.
Through “purposeful subtraction,” we empower members of the ecosystem to take primary responsibility. Today, our role is twofold:
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We do what no one else can do today;
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We help others do tomorrow what only we can do today.
This means focusing on high-leverage areas where EF’s unique position enables us to support the ecosystem in ways other organizations cannot, while simultaneously building capabilities and infrastructure so others can eventually assume leadership. Below are some concrete examples:
What we’re doing today that no one else can:
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Funding and maintaining critical Ethereum infrastructure, such as client diversity.
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Coordinating core protocol upgrades (e.g., The Merge, Dencun), where neutral stewardship is crucial—including both near-term efforts over the next 12 months and long-term initiatives defining Ethereum’s role over the next decade.
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Supporting zero-knowledge research and open-source tools to advance privacy-preserving technologies.
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Organizing ecosystem-wide gatherings (such as Devcon) to bring together diverse global contributors.
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Operating ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge hub for new users and developers.
How we’re helping others grow into roles we once held:
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Funding early-stage public goods projects until they become self-sustaining or community-funded.
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Open-sourcing educational content, developer tools, and research for others to build upon.
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Helping new coordination mechanisms emerge and transition toward independent governance (e.g., MACI pilots, protocol guilds, retroactive public goods funding).
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Supporting geographic decentralization and local leadership through: Next Billion Scholarships empowering local builders in underserved regions; grassroots community grants strengthening regional Ethereum ecosystems; Devcon Roadshow, engaging and growing regional communities ahead of Devcon; and the Devcon Fellowship Program, providing support and opportunities for participants from underrepresented communities.
Working Methods
Adaptive Evolution: We evolve alongside the ecosystem, continually reassessing our role and impact. Our structure and initiatives adapt to Ethereum’s changing needs while upholding core principles.
Thoughtful Complexity: We embrace the complexity required by decentralized systems while striving for elegant solutions. Our goal is not simplification for its own sake, but achieving balance through careful design.
Community Empowerment: We support and encourage community-led initiatives, helping create conditions where independent teams can succeed without reliance on the Foundation.
Core Principles
Long-Termism: Prioritizing Ethereum’s long-term success over short-term gains, evaluating each decision for its sustainable, multi-generational impact, recognizing that lasting resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation, and evolution.
Value Stewardship: Defending Ethereum’s core values—censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security—while enabling autonomous ecosystem development. Upholding these qualities as foundational to enduring innovation.
Purposeful Subtraction: Strengthening resilience by distributing power rather than accumulating it, through:
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Maintaining diversity in methods, solutions, and teams;
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Enabling broad participation;
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Promoting collaboration;
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Reducing centralization.
Strengthening resilience does not mean doing less—it often involves adding new mechanisms or complexity—but always with the goal of creating an antifragile ecosystem with widely distributed power and ownership.
Future Goals
At this pivotal moment and in the years ahead, our direction is shaped by a clear vision. Teams are already deeply engaged, and existing projects are driving Ethereum’s continued evolution. Future work is not about hitting benchmarks, but focusing energy on what matters most. To guide our collective attention, we outline several impact areas—concrete outcomes to which any participant in the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute.
These goals are not fixed; they will continue evolving with the ecosystem and the wider world.
EF’s role is to identify high-leverage gaps—areas where only it can effectively step in—and focus efforts to maximize impact.
Goal One: Maximize the Number of Users Who Benefit Meaningfully from Ethereum’s Core Values
Meaningful use cases include:
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Internet-native finance: Using tokenized assets/DeFi for payments, savings, and wealth accumulation in regions where fiat infrastructure is limited or potentially unreliable;
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Internet-native organizations: Participating in DAOs with programmable incentive structures, enabling collaboration, decision-making, and capital formation beyond traditional models;
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Decentralized social: Using Ethereum-based social platforms where content is stored on decentralized networks, allowing users to switch clients without losing their social graph;
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Decentralized AI: Collectively training AI models on Ethereum with verifiable security guarantees, and creating economic frameworks for coordination between AI agents and humans (e.g., micro-prediction markets);
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Enterprise applications: Institutional use of Ethereum in the backend, offering auditability, privacy, interoperability, and “escape hatches” even when interacting via non-wallet interfaces.
Non-goal use cases include:
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Custodial solutions that merely support transfers between custodial wallets;
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Institutional applications that simply post event hashes on-chain without providing additional security properties.
Goal Two: Maximize Resilience of Ethereum’s Technical and Social Infrastructure
Resilience manifests as:
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Ecosystem autonomy: Not dependent on EF or any single organization;
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Value alignment: Upholding values even under strong external pressure;
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Team diversity: Strong, independent development teams with varied backgrounds;
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Network health: Maintaining activity, censorship resistance, and security even under severe infrastructure stress;
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Decentralization: Eliminating single points of control or failure;
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Proactive risk management: Identifying and mitigating emerging centralization risks over time.
Indicators of poor resilience include:
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Many teams in education, client development, or event organizing, yet fully reliant on EF for funding;
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Bottlenecks caused by high resilience in some areas and low resilience in others (e.g., wallets, ZK provers, or social layers as single points of failure);
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Superficial diversity masking shared vulnerabilities (e.g., 20 clients sharing the same codebase, or 100 regional events run by a single centralized entity).
As we advance these goals, we remain committed to a long-term perspective—viewing Ethereum not just as technology, but as a living ecosystem with the potential to serve humanity across generations.
We envision a future where Ethereum serves as a resilient, neutral global coordination platform. Decentralization must be preserved in both development and governance, innovation will flourish across all protocol layers, and communities worldwide will be able to build and sustain their own adaptive solutions. We believe the network’s technical and social resilience will continue to strengthen, and the Foundation will fulfill its vision and capacity to ensure our shared success.
"The Next Chapter of the Ethereum Foundation" — Hsiao-Wei Wang, Tomasz Stańczak
Hello! This piece is co-authored by Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz. We’ve now served as Co-Executive Directors of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) for nearly a month. The honeymoon phase is over—it’s time to get to work.
A Moment of Transformation and Opportunity
Ethereum has always been a journey: an ever-evolving ecosystem driven by builders who believe in an open and decentralized world. Though EF has existed for ten years, we continue to embrace the courage to reinvent ourselves.
This year, EF adopted a new dual-executive-director leadership model. This structure brings complementary perspectives and enhances our ability to navigate complex challenges. Guided by a commitment to Ethereum’s core values, we move forward with a stewardship mindset, coordination skills, and a long-term vision to meet the opportunities and challenges ahead.
It’s important to emphasize: EF is not a two-headed horse pulling in separate directions. Our partnership is built on mutual respect, trust, and shared values. We collaborate closely, constructively challenge each other, and ultimately advance as a unified team with aligned goals.
Guiding Principles and Key Focus Areas
Looking ahead, our work will center on two pillars: guiding principles (core values) and objectives (impact and resilience). Technical excellence underpins everything we do and is fundamental to fulfilling our mission.
As Executive Directors, our responsibility is to enact EF’s vision in a rapidly changing world. This includes strategic planning, ecosystem stewardship, team leadership, and operational oversight—all in service of Ethereum’s long-term success.
The core values we champion:
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Censorship Resistance: Ensuring Ethereum remains an open network where anyone, anywhere can transact and build without external interference.
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Open-Source Innovation: Advancing collaborative transparency and community-driven progress through shared knowledge and tools.
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Privacy Protection: Enabling private interactions without compromising security, defending personal freedom and autonomy in the digital age.
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Security: Maintaining trust, robustness, and resilience across the Ethereum ecosystem through secure design and ongoing research.
These values guide our technical choices, ecosystem support, and our long-term vision of Ethereum as a public good.
While upholding these values, we have set key directions for the next 12 months:
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Scaling Ethereum mainnet;
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Scaling blob transactions;
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Improving user experience (including L2 interoperability and application layer).
This means enhancing interoperability and coordination between mainnet and L2s, improving UX and DX, giving more visibility to the application layer and L2s at events like Devcon, and amplifying their voices through our communication channels.
Additionally, we recognize the need to accelerate Ethereum adoption among developers, entrepreneurs, and institutions. EF possesses knowledge, leaders, and resources capable of guiding, inspiring, attracting, and nurturing talent.
Tomasz’s Addendum
Ethereum is entering a new chapter. Core values remain unchanged—open source, censorship resistance, privacy, and security—but EF is evolving: becoming an organization that communicates more openly and is willing to engage in difficult conversations without delay.
We will focus on execution speed, accountability, clear goals, and measurable metrics. We are committed to the success of the Ethereum mainnet protocol—it will continue serving as a globally neutral network, a trustworthy protocol because it is trustless. We care not only about mainnet success but also about the prosperity of the entire ecosystem: L2s that drive mass adoption and deliver multiple value propositions to users, with the mainnet acting as a solid, flexible foundation behind every transaction and coordination mechanism. We look forward to this journey—the most inspiring techno-social transformation—walking alongside visionaries and pragmatic builders.
The coming year is the year of scaling: scaling mainnet (L1), enabling successful L2 scaling through optimal architecture, securing the network, and earning user trust. We are committed to unifying the entire chain ecosystem through outstanding engineering, cutting-edge research, and best-in-class user experience, design, and interoperability.
Hsiao-Wei’s Addendum
In the coming months, my focus will be on strengthening EF’s operations to support ecosystem growth. A nimble and efficient foundation can better serve Ethereum’s long-term mission.
While focusing on core priorities, one of our goals is to provide stronger support to the application layer. By improving developer experience, clarifying standards, reinforcing the ecosystem, and streamlining the process from idea to implementation, we aim to empower builders and users alike.
We are refining internal and cross-ecosystem planning, prioritization, and coordination mechanisms within EF to ensure our work aligns with community needs and Ethereum’s cypherpunk ethos. Yet EF’s transformation is only beginning—the true momentum comes from the energy and creativity of the global Ethereum ecosystem.
Building the Future Together
Ethereum is not a monolith. It is a living network of community members, builders, researchers, artists, educators, and dreamers. It is global, diverse, and proud of its decentralization. We are constantly inspired by the ecosystem’s creativity and resilience. The Foundation will continue to show up where most needed, but also step aside when the ecosystem thrives on its own. This is a future led by the community.
The road ahead brims with possibility. Ethereum has already expanded the imagination of what’s possible in technology, finance, and governance. We extend our gratitude to all builders, educators, researchers, experimenters, and future-shapers. Together, we are building something far greater than any single team, project, or generation. We are honored to walk this path with you—and even more excited for the new chapter that lies ahead.
"Management and Board Structure of the Ethereum Foundation" — Ethereum Foundation Board of Directors
Recent appointments of two Co-Executive Directors and a Chair at the Ethereum Foundation are key components of an organizational strengthening initiative. This new governance structure aims to ensure the realization of the Foundation’s vision, balanced strategic execution, clear technical direction, and sustained ecosystem development. This article outlines the specific structure of the management team and board.
New Management Team (Strategy and Operational Execution)
The Co-Executive Directors will lead and execute work alongside other senior managers. In the future, you’ll receive regular updates on management progress across various initiatives, decisions, and transformations:
Co-Executive Directors:
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Hsiao-Wei Wang;
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Tomasz K. Stańczak.
Core Management Team and Responsibilities:
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Bastian Aue: Organizational strategy, talent recruitment and training, Guardian Coordination Program;
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Josh Stark: Project execution, communications and marketing, Guardian Coordination Program.
Board of Directors (Oversight and Vision Guidance)
The Ethereum Foundation Board functions as a “security council” safeguarding the organization’s core values, while ensuring EF operates in compliance as a Swiss entity. The Board sets the vision, oversees whether management’s strategic decisions align with EF’s values, and holds the authority to appoint and remove Executive Directors. Current Board members include:
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Vitalik Buterin (Founder): Continues to provide technical and intellectual guidance to the broader Ethereum ecosystem;
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Aya Miyaguchi (Chair): Collaborates with fellow directors to shape the Foundation’s vision and manage key external relationships;
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Patrick Storchenegger (Swiss Legal Counsel): Swiss representative responsible for legal and compliance matters;
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Hsiao-Wei Wang (Co-Executive Director): Acts as a bridge between the Board and executive management.
The Board has communicated its multi-year vision, guiding principles, and objectives to the management team. We expect to gradually strengthen the Board’s functions to better fulfill its mission.
Structural Design Considerations
Appointing Tomasz and Hsiao-Wei Wang as Co-Executive Directors is unconventional, but given that both the Ethereum ecosystem and the Foundation are at a critical stage of development, this complementary leadership model offers distinct advantages.
Tomasz, while retaining his other professional roles (at Nethermind and associated venture firms), brings deep understanding of community needs and technological trends, enabling him to drive comprehensive and impactful change. The Board and Tomasz have agreed on a two-year term for his role as Co-Executive Director—a crucial window during which Ethereum faces major opportunities—allowing him to fully leverage his proven strategic execution and industry expertise.
Hsiao-Wei Wang’s dual role as both Board member and Executive Director, combined with her research background and deep understanding of EF’s historical trajectory, enables her to accurately assess organizational needs and effectively align Board-level decisions with management execution.
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