Shouting for ETH to surge to $10,000, challenger ECF makes a strong debut.

Original | Odaily Daily Report (@OdailyChina)

Author | Dingdang (@XiaMiPP)

On July 1, at the ETHCC conference in France, Ethereum core developer Zak Cole announced the establishment of the "Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF)" with plans to drive up the price of ETH, shouting the slogan "ETH will rise to $10,000."

ETH's recent price performance has indeed been impressive, especially with a single-day surge of over 40% in early May. The short-term goal of returning to the $3000 mark seems to have become an obsession for the "E Guardian." However, behind this craze lies a deeper story of value attribution and self-repair.

ECF: Voice for Token Holders

Zak Cole does not hide the positioning and ambition of ECF: "It is not an extension of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), but a new force aimed at 'correcting' things. We say what EF dares not say and do what they are unwilling to do. We serve ETH holders because you deserve better."

The mission of ECF is clear: to promote institutional adoption of Ethereum infrastructure, accelerate ETH burn mechanisms, and enhance the market value of ETH.

Currently, ECF has raised millions of dollars in ETH funding, planning to prioritize funding for "neutral, immutable, and non-tokenized" public technology projects, focusing on supporting tokenized real-world assets (RWA) and key infrastructure such as fixing the blob space pricing mechanism.

Despite the limited scale of fundraising, ECF has introduced a "token voting" mechanism in governance to ensure that the flow of funds is open and transparent. Its first funded project is the "Ethereum Validator Association," aimed at providing resources and a voice for the validator community, and offering institutional support for network operators. This initiative not only responds to the community's demand for transparent governance but also injects new vitality into the Ethereum ecosystem.

The Ethereum Foundation's Old Ailments: The Centralization Predicament and Transparency Crisis

The birth of ECF is more like a clear challenge to the long-standing governance issues of the Ethereum Foundation.

The Ethereum Foundation, established for 11 years, has been a solid backing for Ethereum's development. However, in recent years, it has been criticized for being overly focused on long-term research while neglecting the short-term needs of users and developers. Even more frustrating is its centralized governance structure and opaque decision-making process.

Ethereum developer Péter Szilágyi had a dispute with Tomasz Stańczak, the co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation. Szilágyi stated that as a key member of the Geth (Go Ethereum's main client software) development team, the Foundation had proposed multiple times in the past to offer $5 million for the Geth team to separate from the Foundation and operate independently. A similar funding maneuver had also occurred with Parity (another Ethereum client development company). The Ethereum Foundation has long taken a "diversified investment" strategy towards client development, which may be intended to reduce the risk of single point dependency, but this has also intensified friction in internal resource allocation and power negotiation.

The greater governance chaos is reflected in the organizational structure of the Ethereum Foundation itself. Former Galaxy Digital Vice President Christine Kim has publicly questioned the opacity of the EF's organizational structure: Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, and Alex Stokes hold multiple positions, juggling the dual tasks of "coordinating L1 and L2 scaling" and "leading the R&D team." Additionally, Christine has doubts about the details of the organizational chart, such as whether bolded names indicate team leaders, the purposes of highlighted sections, and confusion regarding the logic behind color grouping, such as why the consensus mechanism is grouped with account abstraction but not including stateless consensus; why Testing is grouped with pandaops while Security is not, all of which lack clear explanations.

One point that the Ethereum Foundation has been criticized for is the "selling coins" behavior. As a core supporter of the Ethereum ecosystem, the EF holds a large amount of ETH to maintain operations and fund development. However, community members question why they choose to sell directly instead of earning returns through DeFi staking (such as Aave), especially since the EF's coin-selling behavior often coincides with the price movements of ETH, making market sentiment sensitive and fragile. Some believe that the EF's sell-off is to cope with operational expenses; others worry that this may be a sign of a lack of strategic planning.

Data shows that the Ethereum Foundation's spending reached $134.9 million in 2023, funding projects such as the mainnet upgrade and zero-knowledge proofs, yet it has provided a rather unsatisfactory report on fund transparency.

Struggling Self-Repair: The Transformation Journey of EF

Under a lot of skepticism, the Ethereum Foundation has also begun to actively seek change.

At the beginning of 2025, its internal governance and personnel structure began to loosen. On March 10, Hsiao-Wei Wang officially joined the board of the Ethereum Foundation. This female tech leader, who grew from a core researcher to an Asia-Pacific community ambassador, and then to a co-executive director, forms a complementary partnership with Nethermind founder Tomasz Stańczak, symbolizing EF's transition from "Vitalik's unipolar authority" to a governance model of "technology + infrastructure dual-track system". Hsiao-Wei Wang focuses on sharding scalability and the Asia-Pacific ecosystem, while Tomasz concentrates on client development and MEV mechanism optimization. This combination of "Eastern tech geek + Western infrastructure architect" is seen as EF's proactive choice to address ecological fragmentation. Related reading: "Who will save Ethereum's 'mid-life crisis'? Can Hsiao-Wei Wang help?"

On June 3, the Ethereum Foundation announced a major restructuring of its research and development team, laying off some employees and renaming the department to "Protocol" to focus on the core challenges of protocol design. This adjustment aims to address the ongoing criticism from the community regarding the Foundation's management and strategic direction.

The restructured Protocol team will focus on three main priorities: expanding the scalability of the Ethereum underlying network, advancing the blobspace expansion in data availability strategies, and improving user experience. Additionally, the restructured team will be committed to enhancing the transparency of upgrade timelines, technical documentation, and research.

Although the number of layoffs has not been disclosed, feedback from multiple sources suggests that this is a "self-mutilation for survival" type of organizational restructuring. Wang Xiaowei publicly stated that she hopes the new structure can promote the core projects to move forward more efficiently.

However, regarding the Ethereum Foundation's layoff plan and subsequent development direction, Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani reminded that there is tension between the new goals of the Ethereum Foundation: If layoffs, restructuring, and advancing multiple projects are pursued simultaneously, does it actually weaken focus?

Of course, the reform goes beyond the organizational level. On June 5, the Ethereum Foundation released the latest version of the Fiscal Policy Document, clarifying its asset management strategy, ETH selling mechanism, and long-term commitment to the DeFi ecosystem. The document states that the EF currently sets its annual operating expenses at 15% of total finances, retains a 2.5-year expenditure buffer, and will gradually transition to a long-term expenditure level of 5%, emphasizing increased support during market downturns and restraint during bull markets.

In terms of cryptocurrency asset allocation, EF will prioritize supporting secure, decentralized, and open-source DeFi protocols, utilizing methods such as wETH staking and stablecoin lending to achieve reasonable returns, while also exploring Tokenized RWA (tokenized real assets) allocation. At the same time, EF clearly supports the "Defipunk" concept, encouraging KYC-free, self-custodial, privacy-friendly DeFi protocols, and plans to make privacy standards, decentralized UI, and anti-censorship mechanisms the core evaluation criteria for capital deployment.

EF indicates that its own financial management will gradually adopt decentralized and privacy-friendly tools and workflows to "live out" the crypto values it advocates, continuously providing long-term and robust support for the Ethereum ecosystem.

In the coming year, the Ethereum Foundation's work will focus on two core pillars: core values and strategic objectives, based on technical excellence, to promote the long-term success of the Ethereum ecosystem. Specific focuses include:

1. Expand Ethereum mainnet (L1) and data scaling (Blobs);
2. Improve user experience (UX), enhance L2 interoperability and application layer development;
3. Promote the enhancement of developer experience (DevEx) and strengthen exposure and support for applications and L2 projects on platforms such as Devcon.

In addition, the Ethereum Foundation will accelerate the development of pathways for developers, entrepreneurs, and institutions to build and apply Ethereum, leveraging EF's knowledge and leadership to attract and nurture a new generation of builders.

New Narrative: The Emergence of Ethereum as an "Institutional Asset"

Beyond governance adjustments, what deserves more attention is that Ethereum is undergoing a more grand narrative transformation: ETH is transitioning from "development fuel" to "asset reserve". US-listed companies such as SharpLink, Siebert Financial, and Treasure Global are incorporating ETH into their balance sheets.

At the same time, institutions such as BlackRock's BUIDL Fund, the Securitize platform, and Franklin Templeton's BENJI Fund are also actively building asset channels based on ETH as the underlying architecture, leveraging the Ethereum network to deploy tokenized financial infrastructure.

Under this major trend, the establishment of ECF is not to overthrow EF, but to supplement a power that is closer to market efficiency and more suited to the financial context. While EF is still coordinating documents and research directions, ECF accelerates the appreciation path of ETH through market-oriented mechanisms.

The relationship between the two is not a zero-sum game, but rather a more complex and realistic collaborative tension. On one side is the traditional foundation that self-corrects and tries to rebuild its credibility, while on the other side is the emerging force that calls for efficiency and market mechanisms. When we redirect our attention to Ethereum, it is no longer a project that advances in a single direction, but a more complex and multipolar technological and power structure.