Ex-Ethereum Developer Proposes $1B Fund to Back ETH

Former Ethereum Foundation developer Dankrad Feist proposed creating a new organization with at least $1 billion in funding to support and promote Ethereum, partly financed by staking and fee revenue. He outlined the plan in a post on X on Thursday and said the group should be governed by a board accountable to the community.

Feist set a minimum funding target of $1 billion and said the organization should have capable leadership and a mandate that includes trying to increase the value of ETH. He wrote that the new entity should be “economically aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it.” The proposal specifies that some funding come from staking returns and fees tied to the protocol.

The proposal comes amid resignations at the Ethereum Foundation. Feist left the foundation last year to join Layer 1 network Tempo. Recent departures from the foundation include researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma. Another former foundation researcher, Danny Ryan, has co-founded Etherealize, an effort focused on institutional marketing and product work for Ethereum.

Feist noted that the Ethereum Foundation holds under 0.1% of all ETH and that the foundation currently receives no direct flow of staking rewards or transaction fees. He proposed that the new organization receive some protocol-linked revenue and be held accountable to the broader Ethereum community.

Feist is known for co-creating the Danksharding design, which aims to improve Layer 2 scalability, and for proposing changes such as EIP-9698 to raise the network gas limit. While at the foundation he served as a strategic advisor on topics including Layer 1 scaling and user experience. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised Feist in a public comment, calling his contributions to the protocol “immensely valuable.”

Ethereum’s market capitalization exceeds $250 billion and the token has been trading near $2,148. Feist did not provide a timeline for fundraising or detail the legal structure of the proposed organization.

The plan leaves open several questions, including how staking and fee revenue would be redirected, who would provide the initial capital and how governance would balance market-focused goals with technical stewardship. Feist described the proposed group as a complement to existing community efforts with a specific focus on economic alignment and accountability.