TechFlow News, June 19: Trent Van Epps, former Core Developer Coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation, stated that the Foundation’s long-standing “subtraction” strategy—aimed at gradually reducing its relative influence over the ecosystem—has not fully materialized in practice. In reality, the Foundation continues to wield significant institutional influence over branding, credibility, funding, core developer employment relationships, and media resources.
He noted that as the Ethereum Foundation’s treasury continues to shrink and the client incentive program expires in April 2026—with no replacement currently planned—the ecosystem may face a slowly escalating protocol funding crisis over the next three to nine months. This could weaken core development, research, and coordination capacity, posing risks to the network’s long-term reliability.
Van Epps believes the Ethereum Foundation will not serve as the primary steward of Ethereum over the next decade. The ecosystem must urgently explore new social, political, and economic agreements to clarify governance responsibilities for shared resources—including software, networks, and assets—and establish scalable, accountable, and neutral funding mechanisms to support Ethereum’s future scaling, maintenance, and institutional succession.
