Forwarded the Original Title: Leading Projects Unite to Pressure Ethereum Foundation, But It Remains Unmoved

The Ethereum Foundation sold another 100 ETH with a smile…

The Ethereum community has long been frustrated with the Ethereum Foundation (EF).

As disappointment over ETH’s underwhelming performance this cycle continues to accumulate and eventually erupt, calls for reform within EF are growing louder.

Over the past few days, the entire Ethereum community has been actively discussing the EF’s leadership structure, personnel, operational model, and financial planning. The current EF Executive Director, Aya Miyaguchi, has come under heavy criticism, and even Vitalik Buterin has been forced to publicly state that “a major restructuring of EF’s leadership is underway.”

As time came to this Monday, the discussion deepened further. The founders and executives of many leading projects in the Ethereum ecosystem have jumped out to express their opinions and denounced EF for many of its sins. The fierce rhetoric shows that major project parties have also been resentful of Ethereum’s performance for a long time.

Here is a summary of the key viewpoints gathered by Odaily Planet Daily.

Synthetix & Infinex Founder: EF Should Require L2s to Buy Back ETH Using Revenue

Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix and Infinex, took the lead.

On Monday afternoon, Kain posted on X, stating “If I were running EF, I would absolutely pressure Layer 2 networks to use their sequencer revenue to burn ETH. Ethereum has significant leverage in this negotiation…“

Curve Founder: EF Should Abandon L2 Strategy Immediately

Following Kain’s comments, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov also criticized the Layer 2 approach—albeit with stronger words.

On Monday afternoon, Egorov posted on X, arguing that EF’s top priority should be abandoning the Layer 2-centric roadmap and instead focusing entirely on scaling Layer 1.

During discussions with the community, Egorov bluntly stated: “Layer 2s are not a moat; they are band-aid.”

Aave Founder: 12 Steps to Save EF

Later in the evening, Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted a detailed thread on X, highlighting his take on EF’s financial inefficiencies after reviewing its annual budget. He proposed a 12-step reform plan to improve sustainability:

1. Reduce spending from $130 million to $30 million annually.
2. Cut the workforce down to 80 employees.
3. Thoroughly review staff eligibility—removing senior positions, consultants, part-time roles, interns, freeloaders, and “parasites.”
4. Prohibit advisors and eliminate conflicts of interest.
5. Ensure that 80% of employees are technical staff.
6. Split technical teams into small groups of 5, each focusing on a specific domain.
7. Implement a 5-member leadership committee, selected based on performance, with one chairperson to oversee Vitalik Buterin.
8. Establish an internal finance management team.
9. Diversify treasury investments into sustainable assets and profitable DeFi/non-DeFi projects.
10. Convert staking yields into stablecoins and reinvest in DeFi.
11. Manage treasury through borrowing from Aave and strategically selling ETH.
12. Develop a sustainable revenue model through transaction or staking fees to support a reasonable EF budget.

Former Ethena Growth Lead: EF Should Focus on DeFi

The recently resigned former growth lead of Ethena, and former expansion lead at Lido, Seraphim, shared his thoughts on EF reform.

Seraphim mentioned that Ethereum needs two paths to save itself. One is that EF should focus on DeFi, and the other is that Consensys, led by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, should follow MicroStrategy’s approach to BTC. As long as these two things can be done, ETH could soon break through the $6,000 mark.

Wintermute Founder: Ethereum’s Potential Death Spiral

Although Wintermute, the industry’s top market-making institution, is not exclusive to the Ethereum ecosystem, it is directly involved in market making for a large number of Ethereum ecological projects, so its stance also has a significant impact on Ethereum.

In the evening, founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy wrote about the potential death spiral of Ethereum.

Evgeny said that the biggest internal contradiction of Ethereum at present is: the more ETH is used as casino, the more finance related dapps are running on it (Ethereum), the higher the price of ETH and the higher the security. And the reverse is true as well -if there are no casinos, but all ETH is used for is sending in zazulu, the price will be low and security will be low. If ETH’s price falls, more dApps will perceive Ethereum as insecure and migrate to other chains, further driving ETH’s value down—potentially triggering a death spiral.

Gaevoy concluded that blockchain ecosystems must embrace speculation, gambling, and broader financial applications to maintain their relevance and security.

As the Community Protests, EF Sells More ETH…

Amid the widespread backlash from the community, EF made another unexpected move.

At approximately 6:20 PM, an EF wallet used for small-scale, high-frequency ETH sales (address 0xd77…1f4) sold 100 ETH at an average price of $3,364 per ETH.

As a long-time ETH holder, it’s difficult to understand why EF would execute such a symbolically significant yet relatively low-value sale at such a sensitive moment. Especially when the community has been actively suggesting that EF should use staking yields instead of direct sell-offs—an approach that Vitalik himself acknowledged as worth exploring.

You read that right, as the top organization in the Ethereum ecological structure, EF has never staked its ETH holdings. Vitalik explained that EF avoids staking due to: Vitalik’s explanation for this is that one is concerned about regulatory issues; the other is EF’s neutrality issue. If EF self-stakes, it will force them to take a stance on any future controversial hard forks.

Regulatory issues aside, with the overall regulatory environment gradually easing, this is no longer a significant concern.

As for the second point—does this explanation really hold up? With Solana pressing forward and competition reaching a life-or-death stage, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is still avoiding potential future conflicts that may never even arise.

Oh, and it seems EF doesn’t care about competition either—today, the Ethereum community resurfaced a past interview where Aya Miyaguchi stated: “I am trying to train people… to be able to say “no” to the culture of competing and winning.”

I am speechless and hope real reform will come soon.

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