Ethereum Foundation expects 2025-26 to be ‘pivotal’ for the ecosystem as it reforms its treasury management

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) plans to take a more deliberate approach to spending its substantial ETH reserves, part of a broader shift to double down on Ethereum’s role as the leading platform for decentralized applications, the nonprofit said on Wednesday in a blog post.

The new strategy calls for aligning short-term operations with long-term goals, including stepping in to support the ecosystem during downturns or moments the foundation deems “pivotal.” EF wrote that the next year and a half will likely be such a period, warranting “enhanced focus on critical deliverables.”

“The Ethereum Foundation (EF) exists to strengthen Ethereum’s ecosystem and uphold its long-standing non-negotiable objectives: enabling ‘applications that run exactly as programmed without any possibility of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference,’” the nonprofit organization wrote on Wednesday.

According to the new plan, the organization plans to deplete its reserves more thoughtfully — to keep “short-term operations aligned with long-term strategy.” Notably, this means the EF intends to “step up” to support the Ethereum ecosystem during downturns or periods that the EF board determines are “pivotal.”

Over the past several months, the EF has gone through a series of significant changes, largely in response to community backlash over the organization’s apparent lethargy and the rising competition from Solana. In March, the EF hired two new co-directors, EF researcher Hsiao-Wei Wang and Nethermind founder Tomasz Stanczak, to led a reformed organization. 

The EF has also outlined a new “mission,” and redoubled its commitments to core cypherpunk values. (Curiously, as University of Dublin lecturer and Ethereum culture researcher Paul Dylan-Ennis notes, two former key concerns — “decentralization” and “permissionless” — have often fallen off the list of Ethereum goals in recent public communications.)

ETH sales?

The foundation also pledged to be more transparent about its ETH sales, promising quarterly and annual reports on its financial position. As of Oct. 31, 2024, the EF held about $970 million in total assets, including $788.7 million in crypto and $181.5 million in non-crypto investments.

Additionally, continuing a trend of engaging more closely with the DeFi ecosystem, the EF will also pursue funding strategies, including solo staking and supplying wETH to yield-bearing lending protocols. It may also borrow stablecoins and seek higher yields onchain through real-world asset exposure and DeFi allocations. 

The organization is also apparently calling upon staff “involved in treasury management” to also “upskill” by using open-source, privacy-preserving tools. “By taking care to live and breathe Defipunk principles in its own activities, EF will stay on target and gain the capabilities to support the rest of the ecosystem in doing the same,” the EF wrote.

“Through research, advocacy, and strategic capital deployments, the EF can help cultivate an Ethereum-native financial ecosystem that safeguards self-sovereignty and sustains, at scale, ‘an open society in the electronic age,’” it added.

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