Quick take:
- The foundation has been experiencing growing community unrest, which has led to Buterin announcing a restructuring plan.
- He plans to maintain significant control of the foundation while making leadership changes.
- Buterin wants to improve communication, bring in fresh talent, and increase the use of decentralised and privacy tech.
Ethereum (ETH) performance has lagged behind rival ecosystems, Bitcoin, Solana and Tron over the past year, sparking unrest within the community. With ETH’s net gain of about 36% over the past 12 months, it trails Bitcoin (over 150%), Solana (over 170%) and Tron (over 120%), and this has not gone down well with the community, which has been quick to criticize the Foundation’s leadership.
In the past year, the Foundation was accused of being inept and accepting donations, which goes against the whole concept of decentralisation.
However, Buterin has since come out with rebuttals highlighting what is happening in the organisation.
“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,” the Ethereum founder said in a series of posts on the X platform.
According to Buterin, some of the targeted areas of improvement include “technical expertise within EF leadership, two-way communications and ties between EF leadership and the ecosystem actors, and bringing in fresh talent” to improve execution and speed.
The organisation wants to become more actively supportive of app builders, and make sure important values and inalienable rights (esp privacy, open source, censorship resistance) are a reality for users including at the app layer and increase our use of decentralized and privacy tech.
Buterin also maintained that he will be the person deciding the new Ethereum Foundation leadership, adding that until there is a proper board in the Foundation, he’ll be the one making the ‘big calls’.
He even called out one of the community members for posting ‘toxic comments about the leadership’ on social media.
“If you “keep the pressure on”, then you are creating an environment that is actively toxic to top talent. Some of Ethereum’s best devs have been messaging me recently, expressing their disgust with the social media environment that people like you are creating. YOU ARE MAKING MY JOB HARDER,” Buterin posted, quoting a statement by one of the critics EF’s critics on social media.
But the pressure seems to be coming from everywhere, including industry rivals with Tron’s Justin Sun sharing what his vision would be for the Foundation and ETH if he were the leader.
Sun stated in a post on X that his first action would be to stop ETH sales immediately while he optimises revenues for the organisation.
“EF will immediately cease selling ETH for at least three years. Operational costs will be covered through AAVE lending, staking yields, and stablecoin borrowing. This ensures ETH supply remains intact, aligning with our deflationary goals and reinforcing market confidence,” he said.
Sun would achieve this by heavily taxing L2s, which he believes would ensure “Ethereum generates at least $5 billion annually in taxes (whether in stablecoin or tokens).”
He’d then downsize the EF staff, “retaining only the most capable team members,” who will then receive significant salary increases.
He believes this would turn “EF into a purely merit-based system that rewards performance and results.”
With these changes and some other tweaks that include reducing node rewards, increasing fee burns and exclusively focusing on the Ethereum L1, ETH would hit $10k.
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