Vitalik Is Personally “Dismantling” the Ethereum Foundation
TechFlow Selected TechFlow Selected
Vitalik Is Personally “Dismantling” the Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum’s “Midlife Crisis” and the Ideological Clash Around Vitalik
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsBy Changan and the Biteye Content Team
The past year has been tough for Ethereum. On one front, it’s been relentlessly challenged by high-performance public blockchains; on the other, it’s faced repeated criticism from its own community: “Too slow.”
Early this morning, Vitalik published a lengthy essay directly addressing Web3’s ultimate anxiety—and re-answering a question that determines Ethereum’s very survival:
What, exactly, will enable Ethereum to win?
Higher TPS? Faster transactions? Stronger marketing? Or decentralization, privacy, censorship resistance, and security—values that are harder to articulate but far more enduring?
I. The EF Is Not Vitalik’s “One-Man Show”
To many users and institutions, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) sounds like the “official” body. Combined with Vitalik’s towering personal influence, outsiders often conflate the EF, Vitalik himself, and Ethereum as one and the same. Yet this runs directly counter to Ethereum’s foundational belief in decentralization.
In this essay, Vitalik explicitly states that the EF Board does not operate as a dictatorship—he holds no special privileges internally. Much of the current organizational transformation is being executed by Aya Miyaguchi, while Vitalik himself has returned more purely to technical work.
The EF Board includes members beyond Vitalik, and he holds no greater authority than any other board member. Much of the ongoing transformation is led by Aya Miyaguchi; Vitalik focuses primarily on technical matters.
Thus, the EF’s path forward is not to become an even larger center of Ethereum—but rather to shrink its own sphere of influence: doing deeply what falls within its mandate, and delegating everything else to others across the ecosystem.
II. If Ethereum Becomes Google, It Has Truly Lost
Vitalik notes that since 2025, the EF has made significant improvements in execution, efficiency, and goal focus.
For some time, external criticism of the EF centered on its “slowness,” “weak execution,” and “insufficient attention to applications and commercial partnerships.” Starting in 2025, the EF began operating more efficiently and focusing more sharply on concrete objectives.
But Vitalik says that, this year, the nature of the concern has shifted.
He increasingly hears critiques like: “Vitalik and the EF constantly emphasize decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance—but their actual actions don’t reflect those values.”
Previously, people worried the EF wasn’t moving fast enough. Now, Vitalik worries more about the opposite risk: if the EF simply becomes faster, better at marketing, and more like a conventional tech company, Ethereum may ultimately relegate its founding principles to secondary status.
To illustrate this point, Vitalik draws an analogy to Google.
Google began with strong idealism—for example, its early motto, “Don’t be evil.” But as the company scaled, it increasingly resembled a standard large tech corporation: balancing commercial interests, regulatory pressure, platform power, and user data.
III. The EF’s New Role: Not Ethereum’s Center, but One Node in Its Ecosystem
Vitalik redefines the EF’s role: it is not the center of Ethereum, but merely one node within the Ethereum ecosystem.
Many have historically treated the EF as Ethereum’s core. When problems arise anywhere in the ecosystem, people ask: “Why hasn’t the EF fixed this?”
But Vitalik now stresses: the EF cannot—and should not—do everything.
He also notes: the EF currently holds only ~0.16% of all ETH—less than many individual ETH holders. By contrast, foundations of many other blockchains hold 10%–50% of their native tokens.
This means the EF lacks both substantial funding and organizational capacity—and certainly shouldn’t serve as Ethereum’s permanent steward.
Hence, going forward, the EF will deploy its resources more carefully—allocating funds and talent toward the most foundational, long-term, and commercially unattractive (yet critically important) challenges facing Ethereum.
IV. The EF’s Core Mission: CROPS
A key term recurs throughout Vitalik’s essay: CROPS.
Simply put, CROPS stands for the five values Ethereum prioritizes most: Censorship Resistance, Resistance to Control, Openness (open source), Privacy, and Security.
This is already codified in the EF’s official mandate for this year: its mission isn’t to scale itself into a larger ecosystem corporation, nor to chase more users, higher revenue, or a higher ETH price—but to help Ethereum uphold these foundational commitments.
So Vitalik is further clarifying boundaries: the EF will not expand to cover “everything beneficial to Ethereum.” Instead, it will concentrate squarely on CROPS.
The EF safeguards the most foundational, longest-term, and least commercially viable layers—while applications, marketing, ecosystem growth, asset support, and institutional collaboration must be driven by external teams, capital, and community organizations.
V. Chasing Only TPS Leads to Mediocrity
Vitalik says Ethereum must feel “impressive”—but he doesn’t believe that impressiveness lies solely in 250ms latency, 1M TPS, or faster transaction finality.
Many new L1s are challenging Ethereum precisely on metrics like higher TPS, lower latency, and cheaper fees. Solana, BNB Chain, Hyperliquid, and other emerging L1s all emphasize speed, smoothness, and trading-friendliness.
Vitalik doesn’t deny the importance of scaling. Ethereum absolutely must improve performance—and efforts like L2s, state growth, and reduced slot times will continue.
Because if speed alone were the race, Ethereum could never remain the absolute fastest forever. Other chains will always be willing to sacrifice more decentralization for higher TPS, lower latency, and better short-term UX.
If Ethereum follows that path, it risks becoming merely “a slightly more decentralized high-performance chain”—which is not its goal.
Rather, Vitalik emphasizes that Ethereum’s true strength lies in censorship resistance, resistance to control, openness, privacy, and security.
Speed matters—but speed is not Ethereum’s whole story.
Ethereum’s irreplaceable value lies in continuing to scale performance *while* preserving these harder, longer-term foundational capabilities.
VI. Three Technology Priorities, Personally Endorsed by Vitalik
After explaining why chasing TPS alone is insufficient, Vitalik outlines several technology directions he considers more critical.
1. A Provably Bug-Free Ethereum
The first direction is formal verification.
Put simply, this means using mathematically rigorous, proof-like methods to verify the correctness of Ethereum’s protocol, clients, and related code.
Historically, “proving Ethereum has no bugs” sounded nearly impossible—blockchain systems are too complex, with intricate interactions among code, clients, consensus mechanisms, and smart contracts.
Yet Vitalik believes this is becoming increasingly realistic thanks to AI-assisted formal verification.
This shows he doesn’t treat AI merely as an application-layer trend—but rather as a tool capable of strengthening Ethereum’s foundational security.
2. Available Chain Consensus
The second direction is consensus robustness.
Vitalik highlights Ethereum’s need for a distinctive capability: even under poor network conditions—or if a subset of nodes fails—the system must avoid relying heavily on human coordination, social consensus, or hard forks to recover.
He notes that for some chains, large-scale node outages may still be manageable through coordination among the project team, validators, and the community. But for systems like Ethereum, Bitcoin, and Zcash—which prioritize censorship resistance and neutrality—such reliance is dangerous.
Because once a system depends on a small group of people to coordinate recovery, it exposes a centralization risk.
3. Reducing Reliance on Intermediaries
The third direction is reducing intermediary dependence.
Today, many smart contract wallets and privacy protocols still require intermediaries to submit transactions to-chain—e.g., RPC endpoints, third-party servers, transaction relays, or block-building services.
These intermediaries improve UX—but introduce risks.
For example, if an intermediary refuses your transaction, it may never go through. If a wallet must send your data to a third-party server, your privacy may be compromised.
Vitalik argues this state contradicts Ethereum’s intended direction.
Hence, initiatives like FOCIL, EIP-8141, EIP-7701, and Kohaku—all aim at the same core problem: enabling users to interact with Ethereum more directly, without depending on layers of intermediaries.
VII. ETH Assets Take Center Stage—But the EF Won’t Become an ETH Pumping Organization
Vitalik unusually places ETH assets in a prominent position.
He states that, financially speaking, Ethereum’s most valuable product is ETH itself—and that Ethereum currently secures roughly $250 billion worth of ETH.
He adds that nearly 90% of his personal net worth is held in ETH, with most of the remainder in on-chain stablecoins—already allocated to open-source biotech, software, and hardware projects.
He acknowledges ETH is Ethereum’s most critical asset—and that Ethereum’s security, censorship resistance, privacy, and openness all ultimately shape ETH’s long-term value.
Yet tasks tied to ETH’s value—including marketing, institutional engagement, narrative development, and ecosystem growth—are better handled by teams and organizations outside the EF.
Closing Thoughts
The most notable aspect of Vitalik’s essay is not that the EF will shrink—or that it will sell less ETH—but that he re-answers a deeper, more fundamental question:
What, exactly, should Ethereum become?
His answer is clear: a smaller EF, a more focused Ethereum, and broader responsibility shared across the ecosystem.
This path may sound unglamorous—and may not please short-term market sentiment. But it reaffirms why Ethereum remains unique: its ambition isn’t just speed, cost, or transaction experience—it’s building infrastructure that’s harder to censor, harder to capture, more privacy-respecting, more secure, and more open.
The EF may become a smaller vessel—but Vitalik wants it to safeguard the very things Ethereum must never dilute.
Join TechFlow official community to stay tuned
Telegram:https://t.me/TechFlowDaily
X (Twitter):https://x.com/TechFlowPost
X (Twitter) EN:https://x.com/BlockFlow_News
@BiteyeCN
