Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin on Monday laid out plans to slim down the Ethereum Foundation, sharpening its mission around long-term resilience, privacy, security, and capture resistance — and selling fewer ETH in the process. He stressed the foundation now holds just 0.16% of all ETH, and its original job of funding chain development wrapped up in 2022. The changes, Buterin said, are his own views and not an official directive; the board is expanding and his personal influence will shrink.
A smaller ship
Buterin described the foundation as becoming a 'smaller ship' with a more opinionated, narrow focus. Going forward, the EF will only fund work that is critical to Ethereum's censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security — work that wouldn't happen otherwise. That means cutting back on broader ecosystem grants and reducing the frequency of ETH sales to fund operations. The new structure isn't fully settled yet; Buterin expects it to stabilize over the next few months.
The CROPS dimension
Buterin contrasted Ethereum's core value set — which he calls the CROPS dimension, short for censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security — with the race for ultra-low latency and extreme throughput. He called the latter a mistake, arguing that Ethereum shouldn't chase that trade-off. Instead, he highlighted priorities like available chain consensus and minimizing intermediaries through tools such as FOCIL, EIP-8141, EIP-7701, and the Kohaku initiative. He also pointed to AI-assisted formal verification as a potential path toward a provably bug-free Ethereum.
Buterin's own stake
Buterin didn't hedge on his personal conviction. He said ETH is the most high-value product of the Ethereum ecosystem, that it secures roughly $250 billion of ETH, and that nearly 90% of his own net worth is in ETH. The message is clear: he's not diversifying away from the asset, even as the foundation steps back from active market sales.
What comes next
The EF's new long-term structure is expected to take shape over the coming months. Buterin's influence, by design, will decrease as the board expands and the foundation settles into its narrower role. The question hanging over the transition: can a smaller, more opinionated foundation still support the sprawling developer ecosystem that has grown up around Ethereum? Buterin seems to think the answer is yes — as long as it sticks to what only it can do.
