rewrite this title and make it good for SEO Vitalik Defends Leaner Ethereum Foundation After Wave of Criticism

Vitalik Buterin shared his personal views on the new direction of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) in an X post on May 24, amid ongoing debates surrounding the organization’s role, departing staff, treasury management, and its ability to support ETH’s economic value.

According to him, the EF will not attempt to be the “center” of Ethereum. Instead, it will narrow its role to become a smaller, more durable organization that sells less ETH and focuses on core values: censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security.

Vitalik Says EF Is Not Ethereum’s Center

Vitalik emphasized that the post reflects his personal views, not an official statement from the entire Ethereum Foundation board. He noted that the board “is not just me,” that he holds no special power over other members, and that his influence within the organization will continue to decrease as the board expands.

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going.

First of all, this is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My…

— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 24, 2026

Vitalik stated that Aerugo, a CSA operator within the Ethereum Foundation, is executing most of this transition. Vitalik’s own role, according to him, lies primarily in technical matters.

A notable point in Vitalik’s core view is that the EF is not the “center of Ethereum.” Instead, the EF should be “one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes.” This is a direct answer to criticisms that the EF has not acted consistently with the ideals that Ethereum pursues: decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance.

Why the Foundation Is Choosing a Smaller Role

According to Vitalik, the EF has limited resources and organizational capacity, meaning it was not designed to be the “eternal steward” of Ethereum. He said the EF was originally established to complete technical goals during the early phases of the network, from Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis to Serenity, and this work was completed in 2022.

He also pointed out that the EF currently holds only about 0.16% of the total ETH supply, which is much lower than some other blockchains where a central foundation might control 10-50% of the token supply.

Therefore, the EF is choosing “longevity over breadth”: surviving longer, but with a narrower scope. Vitalik made it clear that this also means the EF will sell less ETH.

The EF will become a “smaller ship” but “more opinionated,” even if some positions might be difficult for outsiders to understand. Some valuable activities, or people aligned with Ethereum’s mission, can still exist outside the EF, allowing the ecosystem to self-mobilize more capital and responsibility.

The Feist Proposal and Ethereum’s Economic Gap

Vitalik’s post comes after recent debates surrounding a proposal by former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist for a new ETH-aligned organization with at least $1 billion in initial capital, equivalent to roughly 0.4% of ETH’s market cap on May 24. Feist argued that Ethereum lacks an organization with a clear mandate to defend and promote ETH value accrual, rather than having that expectation default to the EF.

Vitalik did not deny the importance of ETH. In the post, he called ETH the highest financial value “product” of the Ethereum blockchain, while noting that the network protects about $250 billion in value for this asset. He also shared that nearly 90% of his net assets are in ETH, while most of the remainder consists of about $40 million in on-chain fiat allocated to open-source biotech, software, and hardware initiatives.

The difference lies in the scope of the EF. Vitalik said that while certain efforts to support ETH are necessary, they fall outside the scope of the foundation. This indicates that the gap highlighted by Feist, if filled, will likely require a structure external to the EF.

CROPS Becomes the Core of EF’s Mandate

The central focus emphasized by Vitalik is CROPS: censorship/capture resistance, openness, privacy, and security. These values were also included in the Ethereum Foundation Mandate published on March 13, 2026.

Vitalik said Ethereum needs to be “impressive,” but should not define itself by a race for 250ms latency or 1 million TPS. He believes the network still needs to scale, but the differentiation should lie in security, censorship resistance, privacy, and minimizing reliance on intermediaries.

Vitalik also outlined several technical directions aligned with CROPS, including AI-assisted formal verification, available chain consensus, and intermediary minimization. He mentioned FOCIL, EIP-8141, and Kohaku as examples of efforts to reduce reliance on intermediaries at both the protocol and user layers.

What This Means for ETH and Ethereum’s Roadmap

Vitalik’s post clarifies the boundaries of the EF: the focus remains on protocol research, security, privacy, and censorship resistance, but the foundation will not become the hub for every Ethereum growth task or ETH economic strategy.

This makes the role of organizations outside the EF even more critical. If Ethereum needs a group dedicated strictly to ETH value accrual, institutional adoption, or capital formation, that model will likely have to come from outside the foundation.

Regarding the technical roadmap, the message is also quite clear: Ethereum still wants to scale, but it will not define itself solely by throughput or latency. Formal verification, inclusion lists, account abstraction, and privacy-focused wallet infrastructure are areas Vitalik cited as examples of this technical priority.

The remaining question is whether the ecosystem can move fast enough to fill the space the EF is intentionally leaving behind. A smaller EF could help Ethereum become less dependent on a central organization, but that will only be effective if other independent groups truly step up.