Envisioning the Future: The Ethereum Foundation’s Path Forward

The power of Ethereum resides in its decentralization — not solely on a technical level, but also socially and structurally. This blog elucidates the EF’s vision, its responsibilities, and priorities as one of the ecosystem’s custodians. We seize this moment as a chance to reaffirm our vision, principles, and values which we persistently uphold as we greet the new management team. These priorities are not a fixed agenda and are mirrored in the strategies outlined by EF’s Co-EDs. By delineating our methodology and concentration, we also aspire to clarify where we channel our efforts — and where we purposefully step back — enabling the ecosystem to continue flourishing with everyone’s involvement.

Vision

To nurture the Infinite Garden — the ecosystem of initiatives, communities, and infrastructure developed around Ethereum — to stay robust amid fluctuating conditions. We uphold Ethereum as humanity’s communal world computer, an open and permissionless platform that is already delivering stability, freedom, and technology-driven collaboration to millions globally. We acknowledge the reality that Ethereum is actively utilized, generating genuine value for communities worldwide.

In that essence, we adopt the metaphor of the Infinite Garden to depict the Ethereum ecosystem: a vibrant, evolving environment where creators, visionaries, and custodians from various parts of the globe can sow ideas and support one another as we create the tools that will redefine finance, identity, and other foundational aspects of our civilization for generations to come.

Our Role

Ethereum’s paramount advantage is its unmatched ecosystem. Numerous teams and organizations external to EF enhance Ethereum by pushing its boundaries forward, through technical advancements, educational events, and by financing public goods. The Ethereum Foundation exists to fortify this advantage and to defend Ethereum’s core principles. We pinpoint gaps, rectify inequities, and endorse critical initiatives — always ensuring that no single entity (including EF) can dominate Ethereum’s progress. We intervene strategically and withdraw purposefully, constantly recalibrating our focus as Ethereum evolves and the landscape changes.

By engaging in mindful subtraction, we’ve enabled others within the ecosystem to assume the bulk of responsibilities. Currently, we perceive our role as twofold:

• We engage in activities that no one else can accomplish today.
• We assist others in doing tomorrow what only we can accomplish today.

This entails concentrating on high-leverage areas where EF’s distinctive position allows us to bolster the ecosystem in ways that few others can — while simultaneously developing capacity and infrastructure so others can eventually take the reins. Below are illustrations of how this is reflected in practice:

Where we intervene to accomplish what no one else can today:

• Financing and sustaining essential Ethereum infrastructure such as client diversity.
• Coordinating core protocol enhancements (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), where neutral stewardship is crucial – both on key initiatives expected to complete within the next 12 months, and on long-term endeavors that will cement Ethereum’s role for the next decade.
• Backing zero-knowledge research and open-source tools that advance privacy-preserving technology.
• Hosting ecosystem-wide events (like Devcon) that gather diverse global contributors.
• Operating ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge resource for newcomers and builders.

Where we’ve assisted others in growing into roles we previously held:

• Funding early-stage public goods projects through grants until they achieve self-sufficiency or community support.
• Open-sourcing educational materials, developer tools, and research for others to build upon.
• Facilitating the emergence of new coordination mechanisms and guiding them towards independent stewardship (e.g. MACI pilots, Protocol Guild, retroactive public goods funding).
• Encouraging geographic decentralization and local leadership through:
  
  • Next Billion Fellowship – Empowering local creators in underserved areas.
  • Grants to grassroots communities – Enhancing local Ethereum ecosystems.
  • Road to Devcon – Engaging and expanding regional communities before Devcon.
  • Devcon Scholars – Offering access and assistance for participants from underrepresented backgrounds.

Our Approach

Adaptive Evolution

We adapt alongside the ecosystem, perpetually reevaluating our role and influence. Our structure and initiatives modify to address Ethereum’s evolving needs while retaining our foundational principles.

Thoughtful Complexity

We accept the inherent complexity of decentralized systems while striving for refined solutions. Our aim is not simplification for its own sake but rather attaining equilibrium through meticulous design.

We support and elevate community-driven initiatives, fostering conditions where independent teams can thrive without ongoing reliance on the Foundation.

Core Principles:

Long-term Orientation

We prioritize Ethereum’s long-term prosperity over immediate gains, assessing every decision for its sustainable, multi-generational effects and recognizing that enduring resilience necessitates perpetual learning, adaptation, and evolution.

Upholding Values

We safeguard and cultivate Ethereum’s core values — censorship resistance, open-source, privacy, and security — while empowering the ecosystem to evolve and expand autonomously. We maintain these integral qualities as the basis for lasting innovation and advancement.

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Intentional Subtraction

Instead of amassing authority, we design for durability by:

• Sustaining a variety of methods, solutions, and teams
• Encouraging diverse engagement
• Promoting cooperation
• Minimizing centralization

Enhancing resilience isn’t merely about reducing efforts. It frequently necessitates the introduction of new mechanisms or intricacies — but always aimed at establishing an anti-fragile ecosystem that widely distributes authority and stewardship.

Future Objectives

As we navigate through a significant period and into the upcoming years, our course is influenced by a distinct vision. Teams are thoroughly engaged, and ongoing projects are already underway to support Ethereum’s continual progression. The task ahead isn’t merely about reaching targets — it’s about channeling our efforts where they hold the most significance. To assist in directing our collective attention, we’ve outlined several impact areas — all tangible results that anyone within the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute to.

These objectives are not fixed; they will adapt alongside the ecosystem and the demands of the surrounding world.

The Ethereum Foundation’s responsibility is to pinpoint high-leverage gaps — the areas where it is uniquely suited to contribute — and steer its efforts toward achieving the maximum positive impact.

Objective: Maximize the number of individuals who (directly or indirectly) utilize Ethereum, in a manner that allows them to benefit from Ethereum’s core values.

What substantive usage can resemble:

• Internet-native financial access: Individuals employing tokenized assets on Ethereum or DeFi for transactions, savings, and wealth accumulation—especially in regions where fiat infrastructure is scarce, unreliable, or imposes exorbitant fees, or where the infrastructure may be trustworthy today yet could easily falter tomorrow.
• Internet-native organizations: Individuals partaking in DAOs with programmable incentive systems that facilitate new modes of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that transcend traditional limitations
• Decentralized social media: Individuals utilizing an Ethereum-based social media platform where content resides in a decentralized network, enabling users to switch clients without sacrificing their social graph
• Decentralized AI: Individuals developing on Ethereum to collaboratively train and supply AI models with verifiable security assurances, while also using Ethereum to establish economic frameworks where AI agents can interact with each other and humans (examples: micro prediction markets)
• Enterprise advantages: Individuals utilizing an institutional application that operates on Ethereum at the backend. If constructed effectively, this could offer benefits like auditability, privacy, interoperability, and “escape hatch” mechanisms even if users typically engage with the app through servers without a wallet (examples: on-chain-enforced limitations on monetary issuance; capability to shift assets to L1 and engage with L1 DeFi; ability to zk-prove credentials to any third-party applications)

What it’s not:

• Custodial wallets that permit only ETH or token transfers to other sanctioned custodial wallets.
• Institutions that post hashes on-chain to signify events, without genuinely providing users with security features that they would not otherwise have.

Objective: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social framework.

What resilience entails:

• Ecosystem independence: flourishing autonomously without reliance on the EF or any other solitary organization
• Value alignment: maintaining focus on its principles, even amidst strong interests pulling in alternate directions
• Team diversity: robustness and plurality of independent development teams
• Network strength: ensuring liveness, censorship resistance, and safety, even when facing highly adverse events impacting considerable portions of the technical infrastructure (including “low levels of the stack” e.g. OS, hardware, internet)
• Decentralization: eradicating single points of control or failure
• Proactive risk management: The ecosystem’s capability to actively recognize and address potential central points of failure that might emerge over time

What it’s not:

• 100 robust teams in education, client development, or event organization, yet all reliant on EF for financial support
• High resilience in certain sectors, but extremely low resilience in others, which subsequently become critical bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single points of failure)
• Performative diversity that conceals underlying common vulnerability (e.g. 20 clients that predominantly share the same codebase; events in 100 nations run by the same centralized body)

As we advance toward these impact areas, we also remain anchored in a long-term viewpoint — one that regards Ethereum not merely as a technology but as a living ecosystem that has the potential to benefit humanity for generations to come.

We foresee a future where Ethereum acts as a resilient, neutral platform for global coordination. This implies that decentralization must be upheld in both development and governance, innovation will prosper at every layer of the stack, and communities worldwide can create and maintain their own adaptive solutions. We are confident that the network’s technical and social resilience will only continue to strengthen, and EF will strive to do everything within its vision and capability to ensure that we collectively succeed.