Nikolas Sargeant
In a move to recalibrate the Ethereum Foundation’s strategy and leadership structure, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin announced significant changes to its top ranks. These shifts are intended to emphasize technical expertise and better communication between the Foundation and the wider Ethereum ecosystem. The announcement, made on January 18, 2025, follows a challenging year for Ethereum’s central organization, which has been plagued by internal controversies and significant shifts within the Ethereum ecosystem itself.
We are indeed currently in the process of large changes to EF leadership structure, which has been ongoing for close to a year. Some of this has already been executed on and made public, and some is still in progress.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) January 18, 2025
What we're trying to achieve is primarily the following…
Foundation Faces 2024 Backlash Amid Conflicts and Layer-2 Surge
2024 was a tumultuous year for the Ethereum Foundation, marked by internal conflict and significant shifts in Ethereum’s structure and revenue dynamics. A key moment came in May 2024 when several Ethereum Foundation researchers, including prominent figures like Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist, accepted paid advisory roles at EigenLayer, a separate entity overseeing the development of Ethereum’s restaking protocol. This raised concerns within the Ethereum community about conflicts of interest and the Foundation's potential bias toward certain projects.
The Dencun upgrade in March 2024 led to a 99% drop in transaction fees on Ethereum’s Layer-2 networks, fueling their rapid growth. However, this caused a significant decline in revenue for Ethereum’s base layer, which fell by 99% in the summer, only to recover by year’s end. This shift raised concerns about the sustainability of Ethereum’s revenue model, with Layer-2 networks seen as potentially cannibalizing base-layer income.
A New Leadership Direction
To address these issues, Buterin’s leadership overhaul will focus on supporting decentralized application (dApp) developers and reinforcing Ethereum's core values of decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance. He emphasized that the Foundation would remain neutral, avoid political lobbying, and maintain a purely technical focus, avoiding ideological shifts.
