we all know that ETH has been struggling recent gains notwithstanding aside from Bitcoin taking center stage and a rise in competing blockchains a major challenge that Ethereum has faced is well Ethereum while everybody has questioned why it's been lagging many have pointed to its leadership and strategy as culprits however things could be looking up in this area thanks to recent changes at the Ethereum Foundation that's why today we'll be zooming in on the Ethereum Foundation looking at recent controversies examining who's in who's out what they're planning next and what this could all mean for ETH's price my name is Guy stay tuned let's begin with a bit of context for those unfamiliar decisions around Ethereum's development are overseen by the Ethereum Foundation a Swiss nonprofit that was created by Ethereum's co-founders back in 2014 the foundation's primary vision is to foster an open-source ecosystem by supporting the development of the Ethereum base chain and its many DAPs layer 2 and other surrounding technologies crucially though the foundation aims to do all of this in a decentralized way the Ethereum Foundation is able to achieve this because it doesn't actually control Ethereum's development not even through governance instead the foundation provides strategic funding through one of its initiatives called the ecosystem support project or ESP now basically the ESP provides funding and support to critical infrastructure projects that support Ethereum's ongoing evolution like those focusing on scalability security or improvements to Ethereum's user experience or UX according to the ESP's website it awards dozens of grants each quarter to support research infrastructure community and education and builder tools as such the foundation operates as one part of a broader ecosystem of developers facilitating Ethereum's organic growth this is in contrast to other more conventional nonprofits that play a larger role in dictating whichever direction their respective projects or companies go in now the Ethereum Foundation focuses on research and development and has coordinated weekly meetings with Ethereum's core developers since its inception known as all core developer calls or AC/DC's these meetings revolve around discussing Ethereum improvement proposals or EIPs and potential hard forks which are basically upgrades or changes to the Ethereum base chain these hard forks typically consist of multiple EIPs being implemented at once for instance the recent PETAR upgrade was actually a hard fork that consisted of 11 EIPs that improve Ethereum's UX and layer 2 scaling capabilities anyhow the foundation also promotes education and awareness around Ethereum's technology and potential and it does this through multiple avenues one of these is the ethereum. org website an educational portal to help onboard users and improve their understanding of Ethereum's tech the foundation also engages with businesses institutions and even policy makers all in an effort to promote Ethereum's innovative technology and drive its institutional adoption by off-chain firms and one way it achieves this is through Etherealize now if you've been keeping up to date with the channel you'll know that Etherealize is a marketing firm that's backed and funded by the Ethereum Foundation and is focused on driving Ethereum's institutional adoption on Wall Street more about that in the description anyway as if that wasn't enough the Ethereum Foundation even organizes various workshops and hackathons including DevCon Ethereum's flagship annual developer conference this event takes place in a different location each year and allows developers and enthusiasts to get together to collaborate network and generally have a good old party there's also the Ethereum Foundation's fellowship program which aims to bridge the gaps between Ethereum's use across different cultures nationalities and economic classes helping to onboard users and attract talent from around the world now it's important to reiterate that while the Ethereum Foundation may coordinate Ethereum's development this development is not determined by the Ethereum Foundation or indeed any individual group even ETH holders don't get a say in Ethereum's development which is a bit of a double-edged sword on the one hand this prevents manipulation by ETH Wales and stops bad actors abusing any governance smart contracts on the other hand having Ethereum's development coordinated by an off-chain organization naturally makes it more opaque and difficult to audit oh and by the way if you're enjoying the video so far show it some love by smashing those like and subscribe buttons and ping that notification bell too so you don't miss our next one and if you're looking to trade ETH or indeed any other cryptos you'll want to check out the Coin Bureau deals page that's because you can get signup bonuses of up to $100,000 trading fee discounts of up to 50% and deposit cash backs of up to 75% on the best crypto exchanges these deals won't be around forever so click the link down below while you still can now as you may have heard the Ethereum Foundation's leadership recently went through a bit of a shakeup which we'll explain in a second first though we need to look at how the Ethereum Foundation was structured beforehand for years the foundation was primarily led by Ya Miguchi who was invited by Ethereum creator Vitalik Berin to become the foundation's executive director back in 2018 under Ya's leadership the Ethereum Foundation focused on decentralization and promoting client diversity ya also helped oversee the merge arguably Ethereum's biggest upgrade which transitioned it from proof of work to proof of stake and Ya's tenure as executive director has been met with a lot of praise most notably from Vitalic who credits her with fostering an environment of innovation however there has been lots of criticism from the Ethereum community who have often questioned her leadership skills especially when Ethereum started losing mind share to Bitcoin and other competing chains like Salana according to the foundation's website AA sits on the executive board alongside Patrick Storchenegger a Swiss legal expert patrick's primary responsibilities include handling legal and compliance and ensuring the foundation operates within Swiss regulations for nonprofits patrick also plays a key role in governance helping set the foundation's long-term vision but of course the person with the most influence is or rather was none other than Vitalik himself as most of you will know Vitalik is widely recognized as the face of Ethereum and he also helped to co-create the foundation alongside the other Ethereum founders back in 2014 as such he's played a key role within the foundation since the very beginning vitalik has led Ethereum's technical direction playing a huge part in shaping its development while communicating its core values to the broader community however his influence on the foundation's decisions has at times been overstated as his formal authority was limited to his board seat reflecting Ethereum's commitment to decentralization anyhow what's strange is that until recently there didn't seem to be much of a core business structure in place not only is it unclear how many people actually work for the Ethereum Foundation but there was also an apparent lack of divide between the foundation's leadership and the rest of its employees this lack of transparency and organizational structure was widely criticized what's crazy though is that there may have been a secret entity pulling the strings behind closed doors all along something that Laura Shin discovered when writing her book on Ethereum The Cryptopians basically she described a so-called shadow government within the foundation a group of individuals who held significant influence over the foundation despite not having any official roles there according to Laura these people wielded so much power that other foundation members were afraid to mention their names or acknowledge their presence at events even if they didn't actually do anything she recalled asking Vitalik about one of these figures to which he simply whistled appearing surprised and uneasy that anyone was even aware of it not suspicious at all we'll leave a link to that video down in the description below by the way the timestamp is around 35 minutes it's definitely worth the watch if you have the time now this brings us to the recent changes within the Ethereum Foundation vitalik announced major changes were coming to the foundation's leadership in January of this year the idea was to increase technical expertise at the top level and improve communication and support between the foundation and builders vitalik added that the foundation wouldn't engage in political lobbying nor would it take a more central role in Ethereum's development regardless this announcement was made after a pretty bad year for Ethereum in 2024 which saw the foundation's spending roadmap goals and even its personnel come under fire from the Ethereum community in the days that followed the announcement some of that community turned surprisingly hostile towards the Ethereum leadership and especially towards Ya some community members began putting the pressure on hoping to bully her out of her position others even resorted to harassment and death threats which Vitalik quite rightly condemned as quote pure evil this anger stemmed from concerns that Ethereum's future was veering off course with critics arguing that its layer 2 ecosystem was cannibalizing the layer 1 base chain many also noted that Ethereum was losing its competitive edge to newer faster blockchains like Salana regardless Vitalik had to step in and reaffirm his authority over the Ethereum Foundation he responded to the toxicity by saying quote "No this is not how this game works. " He also said that quote "You are decreasing the chance I have any interest whatsoever in doing what you want mil.
" Safe to say he wasn't best pleased then more importantly though Vitalik reiterated that the decision on who becomes the foundation's new leader was his alone to make until a proper board had been put together this was in response to calls from the community to make Danny Ryan the new leader of the foundation who'd been instrumental in Ethereum's merge in fact an informal and unofficial survey was taken at the end of January with a simple yes or no vote on whether Dany should be made the sole leader a whopping 99. 98% of wallet owners voted yes in any case all this infighting caused ETH's price to tumble and Ethereum's onchain activity declined by 38% the following week yikes to make matters worse Eric Connor a core Ethereum developer believed that Vitalik's sole decision-making went against the core values of decentralization and that of the community he chose to leave Ethereum as a result focusing instead on AI agent cryptos fast forward to the 1st of March this year when Danny Ryan announced that he would be joining Vivec Raman as a co-founder of Etherealize which you'll recall is an organization that markets Ethereum to institutional investors eth holders were thrilled at the news since Danny would be able to wield his expertise to pitch Ethereum to big investors and that same day the Ethereum Foundation officially announced that it had created an entirely new leadership structure consisting of two co-directors of the foundation these were Shia Wei Wong a core Ethereum Foundation researcher and Thomas Stunch the CEO of Nevermind the second largest execution client on Ethereum then at the end of April the Ethereum Foundation announced that it had restructured its leadership defining the roles and responsibilities of its management team and board of directors notably the announcement said that quote "The EF board is like a security council to protect the heart and soul of EF by outlining Ethereum's vision while also remaining compliant as a Swiss foundation. " Meanwhile the new management will focus on executing strategies to support this vision also joining the foundation's management team is Bastian A who will focus on organizational strategy and Josh Stark who will oversee project execution and marketing efforts and for those wondering Vitalik and Ya remain on the board along with Patrick who mentioned earlier and Shia Wong one of the new co-executives who will bridge the gap between the board and the management team strangely though Thomas Stunchuk the other co-executive wasn't added to the board now obviously the recent leadership shuffle means that Vitalik and Ya will have very different roles ya was named as the Ethereum Foundation's president a position that was basically created for her to fill as the new president she will oversee the foundation's vision while managing external relationships vitalic on the other hand will shift away from day-to-day management and operational duties instead focusing on providing technical and intellectual guidance on the Ethereum ecosystem if these roles seem somewhat vague it's because they appear to be intentionally designed that way granting Vitalik and Ya more symbolic positions that preserve their influence while keeping them less involved in day-to-day operations this shift effectively hands more control to the rest of the foundation aligning with Ethereum's commitment to decentralization this also allows Vitalik to refocus his efforts on researching other ways to improve the Ethereum blockchain which begs the question of what's next for Ethereum under the foundation's new leadership well unless you've been living under a rock you'll have seen that Ethereum recently went through its Perra upgrade which was rolled out onto the mainet on the 7th of May to quickly recap Pectra introduced 11 improvement proposals or EIPs notably these brought some muchneeded UX improvements to Ethereum allowing for safer smart contracts enhanced smart wallet functionality and a smoother staking experience closely following the Pectra upgrade will be Fusaka which is due to be implemented towards the end of 2025 and then Glamsterdam which will be implemented towards the second half of 2026 despite sounding more like a Dutch rock festival than an Ethereum hardfork the Vaka upgrade aims to tackle Ethereum scaling while Glamsterdam aims to make Ethereum faster and cheaper to use finally and by the way you can check out our video on Petra right over here if you want to learn more oh and don't worry i'm sure we'll cover the Fusaka and Glamsterdam upgrades too when they come around and hey if anyone wants to make Glamsterdam happen as an actual Dutch rock festival count me in see you there anyhow Vitalik has also set his sights on some pretty ambitious goals specifically he wants to make Ethereum as simple as Bitcoin over the next few years i'm not sure how feasible that is but hey Vitalik's the gigab brain here so I'm sure he'll figure it out another ambitious goal meanwhile is to improve Ethereum's consensus layer to achieve three slot finality which will drastically speed up transaction confirmations as for the execution layer Vitalic has proposed a shift away from the Ethereum virtual machine or EVM to a ZK friendly virtual machine like RiskV now this sounds like a lot of work but the payoff could be huge it could simplify the protocol and could even result in 100x performance improvements for zero knowledge proofs vitalik has also called for protocol-wide standardization in order to reduce complexity and enhance Ethereum's infrastructure and development he suggested that devs should adopt a max line of code limit to simplify their protocols i'm not sure how we feel about that one to be honest but Vitalik said that quote simplicity is in many ways similar to decentralization again he's the gigabrain here meanwhile the Ethereum Foundation has also restated its own vision the foundation wrote on X that quote "Our role is both to drive forward critical progress ourselves and to help build up others who help lead the ecosystem this requires constant evolution the EF must change with the ecosystem adapting to the community's needs while maintaining our core principles.
