Dankrad Feist, the Ethereum protocol researcher known for his work on Danksharding and data availability, posted a diagnosis on May 21 arguing that Ethereum is losing ground to a structural coordination problem. In a frank assessment, Feist said no organization today is both economically aligned with ETH's success and accountable for delivering it. His proposed fix: a new entity seeded with at least $1 billion — a sum he called 'very reasonable' for a network with a market cap around $255 billion.
The diagnosis
Feist laid out the problem in a public post. He described a gap in Ethereum's governance: the Ethereum Foundation holds under 0.1% of ETH supply and doesn't earn staking rewards or transaction fees. That means its incentives don't directly mirror the network's health. Meanwhile, no other group has stepped up with both the mandate and the economic stake to drive protocol-level improvements. The result, Feist argued, is slow decision-making and a lack of urgency — exactly when competitors are moving faster.
The proposal
Feist's solution is a new organization with a minimum $1 billion war chest, funded by the community, to act as a dedicated driver of Ethereum's success. The entity would be economically tied to ETH — think staking, holding, or revenue streams — and held publicly accountable for results. Feist framed the figure as modest: $1 billion is less than half a percent of the network's market cap. He didn't name a specific structure, but the idea is clear — create a group that has skin in the game and a mandate to deliver.
Inside the Foundation's finances
The Ethereum Foundation's Arkham-tracked portfolio sat at roughly $270 million across 14 addresses as of April, including ETH and stablecoins. That's well under 0.1% of the total ETH supply. The Foundation completed a 70,000-ETH staking target in early April as part of routine treasury management. It also converts ETH to stablecoins to fund operations under a mid-2025 policy that caps annual spending at 15% of reserves, with a target to bring that down to 5% over five years. The numbers underscore Feist's point: the Foundation isn't designed to be a profit-maximizing entity aligned with ETH's price.
Feist's new role
Feist stepped back from full-time work at the Ethereum Foundation in October 2025, moving to a part-time advisor role. He later joined Tempo — a Layer-1 blockchain backed by Stripe and Paradigm — as an L1 advisor. That gives him an insider's view of how the Foundation operates, and a perch to critique it from the outside. His proposal isn't an official Foundation position; it's a personal take from someone who helped shape Ethereum's roadmap and now sees a gap that needs filling.
The proposal is now public. No official response from the Ethereum Foundation or the broader community has come yet. But Feist has put a price tag on the coordination problem — and a challenge to the ecosystem to fund its own future.
