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Anas Hassan

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Ethereum Foundation's Privacy Team Rebrands as PSE, Unveils End-to-End Onchain Privacy Roadmap

The Ethereum Foundation’s Privacy & Scaling Explorations team rebranded as Privacy Stewards for Ethereum (PSE), unveiling an ambitious roadmap to make privacy the default rather than exception across Ethereum’s technical stack.

The transformation shifts focus from cryptography exploration to problem-first solutions addressing Ethereum’s surveillance vulnerabilities.

PSE’s new mission centers on three core tracks: private writes to make on-chain actions as cheap and seamless as public ones, private reads enabling surveillance-free blockchain queries, and private proving for accessible data verification.

The initiative follows Vitalik Buterin’s April advocacy for privacy as essential to Ethereum’s survival as a global settlement infrastructure.

The roadmap warns that without robust privacy protections, Ethereum risks becoming “the backbone of global surveillance rather than global freedom.”

PSE emphasizes that institutions and users will migrate elsewhere if private transactions, identity, and data remain compromised by public blockchain transparency.

From Cryptography Lab to Privacy Stewardship Mission

PSE abandoned its previous approach of pursuing “cool tech” for concrete problem-solving focused on ecosystem outcomes rather than internal projects.

The rebrand includes website updates to pse.dev and restructured team goals with particular emphasis on subtraction by default and problem-driven resource allocation.

The strategy involves continuous problem mapping, execution decisions across lead-support-monitor engagement levels, and public communication through newsletters, community calls, and working groups.

PSE draws inspiration from Protocol and EcoDev announcement simplicity while addressing feedback from Vitalik Buterin, Silviculture Society, and EF management.

Key initiatives include PlasmaFold development for private transfers using PCD and folding, targeting proof-of-concept by Devconnect.

The team continues to develop the Kohaku privacy wallet, focusing on zk account recovery frameworks and keystore implementation for stealth addresses.

Private governance efforts focus on a “State of private voting 2025” report while collaborating with Aragon on protocol integrations.

The Institutional Privacy Task Force launches with the EF EcoDev Enterprise team to unblock adoption through privacy specifications and proof-of-concepts.

Another key aspect of this new direct is PSE’s data portability. It tracks advances in TLSNotary development for production-ready zkTLS protocols, while building SDKs that enable seamless integration across mobile, server, and browser platforms.

Additionally, network privacy initiatives include Private RPC working groups, ORAM solution integration for privacy-preserving state reads, and sphinx mixing protocol implementation for broadcast privacy.

The team has stated that it will methodically study ORAM and PIR state-of-the-art techniques while translating research into practical wallet and browser experiences.

Industry Experts Warn Public Ledgers Threaten Mass Adoption

The privacy push addresses growing concerns from industry veterans about Ethereum’s transparency model.

In an interview with Cryptonews in August, British Gold Trust’s Petro Golovko argues public blockchains expose salaries, business deals, and balance sheets, making crypto “unusable for regular people and impossible for institutions.“

Golovko compares current blockchain transparency to the pre-SSL internet, when users refused to enter credit card numbers due to a lack of encryption.

He maintains that crypto remains stuck in this vulnerable phase, preventing the scaling that transformed e-commerce into a $6 trillion industry.

Institutional adoption concerns center on the exposure of trade secrets and the competitive disadvantage resulting from visible treasury movements.

Golovko warns that no board will approve systems exposing supply chains or financial operations globally, limiting crypto to speculation rather than serious commerce.

Vitalik Buterin’s April privacy advocacy stemmed from similar concerns about AI-driven surveillance and data misuse eroding personal autonomy.

His roadmap outlined four areas for enhancing privacy: anonymous payments, application-level privacy, secure data access, and network obfuscation.

The Ethereum co-founder advocated for wallets to integrate tools like Railgun and Privacy Pools, creating “shielded balances” that enable private-by-default transactions.

He emphasized that separate addresses per dApp would eliminate traceable links between applications while maintaining usability.

European regulatory pressure adds urgency to the development of privacy.

Community member Eugenio Reggianini outlined GDPR compliance practices that require personal data to remain off-chain, with blockchain nodes relaying only encrypted references or proofs, rather than identifiable information.

Looking forward, the team aims to accelerate ecosystem adoption through community initiatives with privacy and robust security at the center of its decentralized identity systems.


]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-privacy-team-rebrands-as-pse-unveils-end-to-end-onchain-privacy-roadmap/feed/ 0 58434 Ethereum Foundation’s New Leadership Structure Causes Confusion https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-new-leadership-structure-causes-confusion/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-new-leadership-structure-causes-confusion/#respond Thu, 12 Jun 2025 20:00:56 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-new-leadership-structure-causes-confusion/

Christine Kim, former Vice President of Research at Galaxy Digital, has shared her concerns about the new leadership structure at the Ethereum Foundation (EF).

She pointed out that key people are now handling too many roles and said the new organizational chart is confusing.

Is The EF Leadership Being Overambitious?

In a July 11 X post, Kim noted that Tim Beiko, Barnabé Monnot, and Alex Stokes are in charge of several things at once. She explained how the three are leading all research and development teams, managing their own, and working on L1 and L2 scaling and user experience improvements for the next 12 months.

Sharing the Ethereum Foundation’s organizational chart, the researcher questioned the purpose of the highlighted sections on it and wondered if Beiko was responsible for both protocol coordination and supervising multiple projects.

“What are the highlights for?” wrote Kim. “Does Tim lead protocol coordination and oversee pas, pandaops, geth, and steel?”

Additional concerns raised included the reasoning behind the color coding, which grouped related functions and teams under different hues, including purple, light blue, light green, and orange.

The former CoinDesk reporter was curious about the exact rationale for the groupings, which she felt was unclear. For example, she asked why consensus was in the same category as account abstraction but not with stateless consensus or peer-to-peer networking, and why testing was next to PandaOps instead of security.

In response, Ethereum researcher Barnabé Monnot explained that the bolded names on the org chart were team leads, with color groupings referring to “whom each team is reporting to.” Nonetheless, he admitted that the chart might contain too much information, suggesting that the current version was somewhat hard to interpret and could benefit from simplification or removal.

Community Reactions

The restructuring comes at a time when the EF has been facing ongoing criticism about its management and overall strategy. Community members had warned that if the organization failed to solve major technical problems, Ethereum could lose its strong position in the market.

The non-profit responded by making changes, starting in early March, when it appointed Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as co-Executive Directors. This was followed by the most recent reorganization, which included staff layoffs and renaming the Protocol Research and Development department to just “Protocol.”

Reaction to the revamp has been mixed. Some people responded positively, with Wang saying she hopes the new setup will help teams stay focused and move key projects forward. On the other hand, Kyle Samani, co-founder of Multicoin Capital, pointed out a possible conflict between growing the network and improving user experience while dismissing staff.

The job cuts follow Ethereum’s recent Pectra upgrade, which has also raised concerns about potential security vulnerabilities. Specifically, EIP-7702 was exploited in phishing attacks that affected over 10,000 addresses. There have also been reports of malicious contracts targeting vulnerable MetaMask users.

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]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-new-leadership-structure-causes-confusion/feed/ 0 41657 Cardano Joins Linux Foundation’s Confidential Computing Consortium https://earlybirdsinvest.com/cardano-joins-linux-foundations-confidential-computing-consortium/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/cardano-joins-linux-foundations-confidential-computing-consortium/#respond Mon, 05 May 2025 09:51:38 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/cardano-joins-linux-foundations-confidential-computing-consortium/

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Cardano has become the newest member of the Linux Foundation’s Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC), a move that positions the open-source blockchain alongside heavyweights such as Microsoft and Amazon in the fast-growing market for hardware-based data-protection standards. The announcement emerged during an hour-long “Midnight Booth” fireside chat at Consensus, where Charles Hoskinson, chief executive of Input Output (IO), and Eran Barak, chief executive of the Midnight development company, sketched out how confidential computing will anchor Cardano’s privacy-first sidechain, Midnight.

“We just recently joined the Confidential Computing Consortium, you know, with Linux Foundation, and we’re right there with Microsoft and Amazon with Nitro. They’re talking about confidential computing and trusted hardware enclaves with GPUs for outsourcing AI data,” Hoskinson told the audience. The CCC sets cross-industry specifications for enclave-based security; its membership signals that Cardano intends to align Midnight’s zero-knowledge roll-ups and decentralized-identifier (DID) stack with emerging hardware standards rather than rely solely on purely cryptographic shields.

“So, Midnight basically clicks into all of those different things and it gives you the ability to reason and think about how do I share, who do I share with, what do I own, what do they own, what’s the semantical value of the data that I’m sculpting, and then ultimately what’s the marketplace look like and how do I be an economic agent in that marketplace and I actually get paid for sharing these things as opposed to it all goes to the Magnificent Seven and they just tell me what I get,” Hoskinson added.

Cardano Takes Next Step In Secure Blockchain

Hoskinson traced Midnight’s origins to “a bar in Tel Aviv” during Eurocrypt 2018, describing how a late-night debate about zero-knowledge proofs eventually matured into a sidechain that combines a programmable Stark-based execution engine (“Kachina”), a dual-token economic model (“Knight” for governance and “dust” for metered capacity) and selective-disclosure controls rooted in W3C DIDs. Yet, according to Barak, technological ingenuity alone is not enough; enterprise adoption hinges on hardware-rooted trust. Confidential computing, he said, supplies that final layer.

“When you think about protecting your data, you really need to think about two pieces—protecting the data itself and protecting the metadata,” Barak explained. “Midnight hopes to be the fabric that enables AI to access personal private data in the right way that doesn’t violate our rights.” By joining the CCC, Cardano gains a seat at the table where those fabric threads are woven into chipset specifications, enclave attestation protocols and open-source reference code.

Much of the session focused on Midnight’s two-asset design, which separates volatile, value-accruing governance (“Knight”) from a stable, non-speculative capacity unit (“dust”). Hoskinson argued that splitting consensus incentives from fee predictability sidesteps the tension regulators see in fully shielded currencies such as Monero. “You get your cake and eat it, too… developers can pay in Bitcoin or Ether or Solana through a capacity exchange, and the end user doesn’t notice that they’re using a different system.”

Confidential computing extends that logic to the hardware layer. Enclave-sealed execution protects wallet keys, zero-knowledge circuits and DID registries from side-channel attacks, while at the same time furnishing auditors with cryptographic attestation that regulatory conditions embedded in smart-contract templates are being met. “Selective disclosure is an absolute necessity,” Hoskinson told a questioner who raised compliance fears. “You bake in the capacity to put disclosure at the smart-contract level and then let exchanges decide their suitability guidelines on a case-by-case basis.”

Cardano’s CCC membership arrived as the conversation turned to tokenized real-world assets—a market Hoskinson sized at “ten plus trillion dollars” today and “a hundred trillion” once small-cap and frontier-market issuers join. Midnight, he maintained, must interoperate with both legacy venues such as the New York Stock Exchange and on-chain liquidity pools. Hardware-verified privacy makes that bridging credible. “You want broker-dealers, compliance, circuit breakers, but you also want blockchain stuff… having infrastructure like Midnight is the only way to really do that,” he said.

Barak reported more than 2,000 early builders on Midnight’s testnet, ranging from dark-pool prototypes and medical-record pilots to carbon-credit tracing for jet engines. Because code and state are encrypted, IO’s own developer-relations team cannot inspect what is being deployed; teams volunteer information only in opt-in calls. “I think if we finally bring blockchain technology that encompasses the privacy elements businesses need, the innovation is just unbelievable,” Barak remarked.

At press time, ADA traded at $0.68.

Cardano price
ADA remains below the red resistance zone, 1-week chart | Source: ADAUSDT on TradingView.com

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

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]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/cardano-joins-linux-foundations-confidential-computing-consortium/feed/ 0 34508 The Ethereum Foundation’s Vision https://earlybirdsinvest.com/the-ethereum-foundations-vision/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/the-ethereum-foundations-vision/#respond Thu, 01 May 2025 05:07:17 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/the-ethereum-foundations-vision/

Ethereum’s strength lies in its decentralization — not just technically, but socially and structurally. This blog articulates the EF’s vision, its role, and priorities as one of the ecosystem’s stewards. We use this moment as an opportunity to restate our vision, principles and values which we continue to uphold as we welcome the new management team. These priorities are not a rigid plan and are reflected in the strategies described by EF’s Co-EDs. By defining our approach and focus, we also aim to clarify where we direct our efforts — and where we intentionally step back — so that the ecosystem can continue to thrive with everyone’s participation.

Vision

To steward the Infinite Garden — the ecosystem of projects, communities, and infrastructure built around Ethereum — to remain resilient amid changing environments. We uphold Ethereum as humanity’s shared world computer, an open and permissionless platform that is already bringing stability, freedom and technologically-empowered collaboration to millions of people worldwide. We honor the fact that Ethereum is already in use, creating real value for communities across the globe.

In that spirit, we embrace the metaphor of the Infinite Garden to describe the Ethereum ecosystem: a living, evolving space where builders, dreamers, and stewards from around the world can plant ideas and support each other as we build the tools that will redefine finance, identity and other roots in the soil of our civilization for decades to come.

Our Role

Ethereum’s greatest advantage is its unparalleled ecosystem. There are many teams and organizations outside of EF that contribute to Ethereum by pushing its boundaries forward, through technical innovations, educational events, and by funding public goods. The Ethereum Foundation exists to strengthen this advantage and to uphold Ethereum’s core values. We identify gaps, correct imbalances, and support critical initiatives — always ensuring that no single actor (including EF) can dominate Ethereum’s evolution. We step in strategically and step out intentionally, continuously adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the environment evolves.

By practicing purposeful subtraction, we’ve empowered others in the ecosystem to take on the majority of responsibilities. Today, we see our role as twofold:

  • We do what no one else can do today.
  • We help others do tomorrow what only we can do today.

This means focusing on high-leverage areas where EF’s unique position allows us to support the ecosystem in ways few others can — while also building capacity and infrastructure so others can eventually take the lead. Below are examples of how this shows up in practice:

Where we step in to do what no one else can today:

  • Funding and maintaining critical Ethereum infrastructure like client diversity.
  • Coordinating on core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), where neutral stewardship is essential – both on critical initiatives that will complete within the next 12 months, and on longer-term efforts that will define Ethereum’s role for the next decade.
  • Supporting zero-knowledge research and open-source tooling that pushes the frontier of privacy-preserving tech.
  • Hosting ecosystem-wide gatherings (like Devcon) that bring together diverse global contributors.
  • Operating ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge hub for new users and builders.

Where we’ve helped others grow into roles we once held:

  • Seeding early-stage public goods projects through grants until they become self-sustaining or community-funded
  • Open-sourcing educational content, developer tooling, and research to be built upon by others.
  • Helping new coordination mechanisms emerge and guiding them toward independent stewardship (e.g. MACI pilots, Protocol Guild, retroactive public goods funding).
  • Supporting geographic decentralization and local leadership through:

    • Next Billion Fellowship – Empowering local builders in underserved regions.
    • Grants to grassroots communities – Strengthening local Ethereum ecosystems.
    • Road to Devcon – Engaging and growing regional communities ahead of Devcon.
    • Devcon Scholars – Providing access and support for participants from underrepresented communities.

Our Approach

Adaptive Evolution

We evolve alongside the ecosystem, continuously reassessing our role and impact. Our structure and initiatives adapt to serve Ethereum’s changing needs while maintaining our core principles.

Thoughtful Complexity

We embrace the necessary complexity of decentralized systems while striving for elegant solutions. Our goal is not simplification for its own sake but rather achieving balance through careful design.


We support and amplify community-led initiatives, helping create conditions where independent teams can succeed without ongoing dependency on the Foundation.

Core Principles:

Long‑term Thinking

We optimize for Ethereum’s long‑term success over short‑term gains, evaluating every decision for its sustainable, multi‑generational impact and recognizing that lasting resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation, and evolution.

Stewardship of Values

We protect and nurture Ethereum’s core values — censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security — while empowering the ecosystem to grow and evolve independently. We preserve these essential qualities as the foundation for lasting innovation and progress.

Purposeful Subtraction

Rather than accumulate power, we design for resilience by:

  • Maintaining a plurality of approaches, solutions, and teams
  • Enabling diverse participation
  • Facilitating collaboration
  • Reducing centralization

Building resilience isn’t about doing less. It often requires adding new mechanisms or complexity — but always with the goal of creating an anti‑fragile ecosystem that distributes power and ownership broadly.

Goals Ahead

As we move through a pivotal time and into the years ahead, our direction is shaped by a clear vision. Teams are deeply engaged, and active projects are already in motion to support Ethereum’s continued evolution. The work ahead isn’t about hitting benchmarks — it’s about focusing our energy where it matters most. To help guide our collective focus, we’ve outlined a few impact areas — tangible outcomes that anyone in the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute toward.

These goals are not static; they will continue to evolve alongside the ecosystem and the needs of the world around us.

The Ethereum Foundation’s role is to identify high-leverage gaps — the places where it is uniquely positioned to contribute — and direct its efforts toward the greatest possible impact.

Goal: Maximize the number of people who (directly or indirectly) use Ethereum, in such a way that they benefit from Ethereum’s underlying values.

What meaningful usage can look like:

  • Internet-native financial access: People using tokenized assets on Ethereum or DeFi for payments, savings and wealth building – particularly where fiat infrastructure is limited, unreliable or charges extortionate fees, or where the infrastructure is reliable today but can easily become unreliable tomorrow.
  • Internet-native organizations: People participating in DAOs with programmable incentive structures that enable new forms of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that transcend the limitations of traditional approaches
  • Decentralized social media: People using an Ethereum-based social media platform where content is stored in a decentralized network, allowing users to switch clients without giving up their social graph
  • Decentralized AI: People building on Ethereum to collectively train and provide AI models with verifiable security guarantees, and also using Ethereum to create economic frameworks where AI agents can coordinate with each other and human beings (examples: micro prediction markets)
  • Enterprise benefits: People using an institutional application that uses Ethereum on the backend. If built correctly, this can provide benefits such as auditability, privacy, interoperability and “escape hatch” mechanisms even if users normally interact with the app through servers without a wallet (examples: on-chain-enforced limits to monetary issuance; ability to exit assets to L1 and interact with L1 DeFi; ability to zk-prove credentials to arbitrary third-party apps)

What it’s not:

  • Custodial wallets that only allow ETH or token transfers to other approved custodial wallets.
  • Institutions that post hashes onchain to represent events, without actually giving users security properties that they wouldn’t otherwise have.

Goal: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.

What resilience looks like:

  • Ecosystem autonomy: thriving independently of the EF or any other single organization
  • Value alignment: staying focused on its values, even in the face of strong interests pulling in other directions
  • Team diversity: strength and plurality of independent development teams
  • Network robustness: maintaining liveness, censorship resistance, safety even in the face of highly adverse events toward large parts of technical infrastructure (including “low levels of the stack” e.g. OS, hardware, internet)
  • Decentralization: eliminating single points of control or failure
  • Proactive risk management: The ecosystem’s ability to proactively identify and mitigate central points of failure that may arise over time

What it’s not:

  • 100 strong teams in education, client development, or organizing events, yet all dependent on EF for funding
  • High-resilience in some sectors, but very low-resilience in others, which then become critical bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single points of failure)
  • Performative diversity that masks underlying common vulnerability (e.g. 20 clients that actually use most of the same code base, events in 100 countries that are run by the same centralized organization)

As we work toward these impact areas, we also remain grounded in a long-term perspective — one that sees Ethereum not just as a technology, but as a living ecosystem with the potential to serve humanity for generations to come.

We envision a future where Ethereum serves as a resilient, neutral platform for global coordination. That means that decentralization must remain preserved in both development and governance, innovation will flourish at every layer of the stack, and communities around the world can craft and sustain their own adaptive solutions. We believe the network’s technical and social resilience will only continue to grow stronger, and EF will do everything within its vision and ability to ensure that we succeed together.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/the-ethereum-foundations-vision/feed/ 0 33740 Is Ethereum Foundation’s 30,000 ETH Really At Risk? Here’s The Truth https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-ethereum-foundations-30000-eth-really-at-risk-heres-the-truth/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-ethereum-foundations-30000-eth-really-at-risk-heres-the-truth/#respond Wed, 12 Mar 2025 04:58:33 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-ethereum-foundations-30000-eth-really-at-risk-heres-the-truth/

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Ethereum (ETH), the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, has experienced renewed downward pressure amid a widespread market crash. After reaching a mid-December high of $4,107—still below its November 2021 all-time high of $4,868—ETH slipped below $1,800, marking a 53% drop from its December peak. But while traders scramble to assess the depth of this current downturn, a new on-chain development has momentarily stolen the spotlight.

Is It Really The Ethereum Foundation?

A transaction flagged by on-chain analytics service Lookonchain raised alarms this week, suggesting an alleged liquidation risk for the Ethereum Foundation (EF). Lookonchain reported via X: “A wallet suspected to be Ethereum Foundation deposited 30,098 ETH ($56.08M) to Maker to lower the liquidation price 5 hours ago. Currently, this wallet has 100,394 ETH ($182M) on Maker, and the liquidation price is $1,127.06.”

The magnitude of the transaction—reportedly worth $56.08 million in ETH deposits—sparked widespread speculation about EF’s potential exposure. Lookonchain’s data implied that 30,098 ETH (approximately $182 million) was being used to back a MakerDAO vault with a liquidation threshold hovering around $1,127, a pivotal level givenETH’s recent price crash.

Chinese crypto news outlet Wu Blockchain was among the first to circulate the story. However, shortly thereafter, Wu Blockchain offered a clarification based on analytics from Arkham Intelligence.

The updated analysis indicates that the wallet’s connections to the Ethereum Foundation may have been overstated. The address, it appears, belongs to an early ETH investor who once interacted with EF’s official wallets but has since managed funds independently. The deposit of 30,098 ETH was presumably a strategic move to shore up collateral and lower the MakerDAO vault’s liquidation price during a market downturn.

Wu Blockchain noted via X: “Correction: Although 0x22…1246 was flagged by Arkam as a suspected Ethereum Foundation address, on-chain data confirms otherwise. While this address received a 4M DAI transfer from the Ethereum Foundation ETH Sale in May 2022, its transaction behavior and initial ETH funding trace back to jonny.eth (0xb76), indicating that it is more likely an early ETH investor rather than the Foundation itself. This address deposited 30,098 ETH into the MakerDAO vault today, with an outstanding debt position of 78,035,224.7182 DAI.”

While the liquidation price remains $1,127—a level that some observers believe could be tested if market pressures persist—there is currently no official evidence linking the vault to the Ethereum Foundation. Consequently, rumors of an EF liquidation seem to be unfounded, given the clarifications brought forth by Wu Blockchain based on Arkham data.

At press time, ETH traded at $1,925.

Ethereum price
ETH holds above the 0.236 Fib, 1-week chart | Source: ETHUSDT on TradingView.com

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com

Editorial Process for bitcoinist is centered on delivering thoroughly researched, accurate, and unbiased content. We uphold strict sourcing standards, and each page undergoes diligent review by our team of top technology experts and seasoned editors. This process ensures the integrity, relevance, and value of our content for our readers.

]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/is-ethereum-foundations-30000-eth-really-at-risk-heres-the-truth/feed/ 0 24648 Uniswap founder criticizes Ethereum Foundation’s new advisory group amid community concerns https://earlybirdsinvest.com/uniswap-founder-criticizes-ethereum-foundations-new-advisory-group-amid-community-concerns/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/uniswap-founder-criticizes-ethereum-foundations-new-advisory-group-amid-community-concerns/#respond Sat, 01 Mar 2025 05:45:23 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/uniswap-founder-criticizes-ethereum-foundations-new-advisory-group-amid-community-concerns/

Uniswap founder Hayden Adams criticized the newly founded Ethereum Foundation’s (EF) advisory group, titled “Silviculture Society.”

He said the initiative was not what the community was looking for and called on the Foundation to improve its communication by taking a clearer and more direct approach.

He said in a Feb. 28 X post:

“Honest, direct feedback: flowery language and a counsel of random people on twitter is not what people have been asking for.”

Adams added that he is not criticizing the 15 names chosen for the advisory group but rather the idea and message behind the initiative, which he believes does not allay the community’s recent concerns.

The Ethereum community has voiced concerns over the perceived disconnect between the Foundation’s current initiatives and the practical, transparent communication they expect.

There is also unease about the ongoing structural changes and treasury management practices, which many feel have direct implications on ETH’s market performance.

Direct and clear communication

According to an EF statement, the Silviculture Society comprises names from outside the Foundation who have been picked to provide “informal counsel.” The goal is to ensure the Foundation maintains its “core values of open source, privacy, security, and censorship resistance.”

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s (ETH) co-founder, responded to Adams’ post, saying:

“It is an experimental effort to create more channels for builders and other community voices to influence the EF, and in this case the scope is core cypherpunk and regen values. They have already given advice on timely and critical topics such as wallet security.”

He added that the EF does not pay the Silviculture Society, and the group has a one-year term. Additionally, Buterin shared that more initiatives and structures will be formed to capture community feedback.

Following Buterin’s explanation, Adams called the initiative “reasonable.” However, reiterated that EF needs to communicate in a “more direct and clear” format like Buterin’s response.

Restructuring efforts

The creation of the Silviculture Society comes amid a broad movement to restructure the Ethereum Foundation, which has consequently led to concerns among the community regarding its stability and long-term vision.

On Feb. 25, Aya Miyaguchi stepped down from her role as EF executive director and moved to a new position as the Foundation’s president. The Foundation has yet to name a replacement.

Miyaguchi and Buterin also mentioned creating a new “leadership structure” for EF but did not share further details about the plan.

The community has scrutinized the EF over the past few months for ETH’s underperformance in 2024 compared to other major cryptocurrencies. 

The frequent selling of ETH raised questions about the effectiveness of the EF’s treasury management, as the public realization of these assets has impacted ETH’s price.

Mentioned in this article
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]]> https://earlybirdsinvest.com/uniswap-founder-criticizes-ethereum-foundations-new-advisory-group-amid-community-concerns/feed/ 0 22557 Ethereum Foundation’s Aya Miyaguchi steps into new leadership role amid governance shift https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-aya-miyaguchi-steps-into-new-leadership-role-amid-governance-shift/ https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-aya-miyaguchi-steps-into-new-leadership-role-amid-governance-shift/#respond Tue, 25 Feb 2025 18:32:06 +0000 https://earlybirdsinvest.com/ethereum-foundations-aya-miyaguchi-steps-into-new-leadership-role-amid-governance-shift/

Ethereum Foundation (EF) executive director Aya Miyaguchi will step down from her current role and transition into a new position as the foundation’s president amid a revamp of its leadership structure.

Miyaguchi announced the change in a Feb. 25 statement and said a new governance model is expected soon. She added that her new role as president will focus on strengthening institutional relationships and expanding Ethereum’s (ETH) broader vision and culture.

She described the transition as an opportunity to reflect on Ethereum’s decentralized ethos, especially in light of recent debates surrounding the network’s performance and ETH’s market value.

She added that Ethereum’s strength lies in its permissionless nature, where open discourse contributes to resilience rather than division. 

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, acknowledged Miyaguchi’s contributions during her tenure, emphasizing her role in fostering an environment conducive to innovation. He shared on X:

“As I see it, the role of an ED is to create an environment where others can shine and do their best work, and so every success of the EF – the steady execution of Ethereum hard forks, client interop workshops, Devcon, Ethereum’s culture and steadfast commitment to its mission and values, and more – is in part a result of Aya’s stewardship.”

Independent from entities

Miyaguchi reaffirmed that the foundation’s role is not to exert control over Ethereum but to uphold its principles of credible neutrality.

She emphasized the organization’s philosophy of subtraction, a design approach that seeks to reduce systemic imbalances rather than impose rigid structures. This strategy has guided the foundation’s decision-making process and helped ensure that Ethereum remains decentralized and adaptable.

Key examples of this philosophy in action include the “All Core Dev” calls to enable community-driven technical decision-making, promoting client diversity to mitigate single points of failure, and facilitating research and development.

Additionally, the foundation coordinated The Merge, Ethereum’s transition to proof of stake, as a decentralized and collaborative effort.

Miyaguchi assessed that Ethereum operates through a decentralized leadership model, mainly through events like Devcon and Devconnect, which are gatherings to drive progress in their respective ecosystems. 

In this landscape, EF’s approach prioritizes nurturing leadership across diverse communities, fostering organic collaboration without centralized oversight.

She also noted that Ethereum’s continued success hinges on its ability to adapt without resembling traditional corporate structures. The EF’s strategic focus has shifted from direct execution to broader facilitation, ensuring that Ethereum’s growth remains aligned with its decentralized principles.

Pressure over ETH’s performance

Based on CryptoSlate data, Ethereum climbed 42% in 2024, but its performance was heavily overshadowed by Bitcoin’s (BTC) and Solana’s (SOL), which climbed 112% and 73%, respectively, during the year.

The Ethereum Foundation has faced criticism for ETH’s underperformance due to its constant sales on public trading platforms. As of Jan. 27, EF had sold nearly $1 million in ETH via three different transactions.

In response to the community’s concerns, the foundation allocated 50,000 ETH to different decentralized applications to earn yields based on their treasury instead of selling their Ether stash as part of their new management model.

Miyaguchi also received criticism for allegedly failing to sufficiently foster Ethereum’s growth, which contributed to its underperformance in 2024.

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