Buterin: Ethereum Foundation will shrink, sell less ETH

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin posted a detailed message on X on Sunday outlining changes at the Ethereum Foundation and the organization’s priorities as it undergoes a reorganization. The message described a narrower focus for the nonprofit and a plan to reduce sales from its ETH reserves.

Buterin wrote that the foundation’s board is expanding and that interim co-executive director Bastian Aue is carrying out much of the transition. He added that his own role at the foundation will continue to shrink and that he supports that outcome.

The post follows a wave of departures. At least eight senior contributors have left or announced plans to leave the foundation in 2026, with five exits announced in May. Tomasz Stanczak stepped down earlier this year as co-executive director, and Protocol Cluster co-lead Alex Stokes is on sabbatical.

Buterin said the foundation will use fewer of its ETH holdings going forward and described the change as a choice to prioritize longevity over broad program coverage. He noted the foundation currently holds about 0.16% of all ETH. At launch, roughly 6 million ETH were allocated to the foundation, equal to about 10% of the coins sold in the 2014 crowdsale and about 8.3% of the genesis supply.

Under the revised approach, the foundation will fund activities it views as critical to Ethereum’s long-term resilience and that would not occur otherwise. Buterin wrote that some well-known contributors and projects will operate outside the foundation so they can access outside capital. He referenced a recent proposal by former foundation developer Dankrad Feist to raise $1 billion for a separate Ethereum advocacy organization.

Buterin outlined three technical priorities for Ethereum’s next phase. First, he urged work toward a ‘‘provably bug-free Ethereum’’ using AI-assisted formal verification, meaning the use of mathematical proofs and automated tools to check protocol code. Second, he emphasized ‘‘available chain consensus,’’ which he described as preserving safety under asynchronous network conditions and resilience against large attackers under synchronous conditions through a lean consensus design. Third, he called for efforts to reduce intermediaries, citing ongoing work on FOCIL, EIP-8141, EIP-7701 and the foundation’s Kohaku wallet framework to simplify interactions and remove unnecessary middlemen.

He rejected the idea that Ethereum should compete primarily on raw speed, writing that “being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity.” He added that it is not acceptable for Ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to recover from major node outages.

Buterin closed by describing the foundation as ‘‘a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one, in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend, but a longer-lasting one.’’ He said the organization’s new structure should stabilize over the next few months.