Ethereum’s power lies in its decentralization — not simply technically, however socially and structurally. This weblog articulates the EF’s imaginative and prescient, its position, and priorities as one of many ecosystem’s stewards. We use this second as a chance to restate our imaginative and prescient, rules and values which we proceed to uphold as we welcome the brand new administration group. These priorities aren’t a inflexible plan and are mirrored within the strategies described by EF’s Co-EDs. By defining our method and focus, we additionally intention to make clear the place we direct our efforts — and the place we deliberately step again — in order that the ecosystem can proceed to thrive with everybody’s participation.
Imaginative and prescient
To steward the Infinite Backyard — the ecosystem of tasks, communities, and infrastructure constructed round Ethereum — to stay resilient amid altering environments. We uphold Ethereum as humanity’s shared world laptop, an open and permissionless platform that’s already bringing stability, freedom and technologically-empowered collaboration to thousands and thousands of individuals worldwide. We honor the truth that Ethereum is already in use, creating actual worth for communities throughout the globe.
In that spirit, we embrace the metaphor of the Infinite Backyard to explain the Ethereum ecosystem: a residing, evolving area the place builders, dreamers, and stewards from around the globe can plant concepts and help one another as we construct the instruments that can redefine finance, id and different roots within the soil of our civilization for many years to return.
Our Position
Ethereum’s biggest benefit is its unparalleled ecosystem. There are lots of groups and organizations outdoors of EF that contribute to Ethereum by pushing its boundaries ahead, by means of technical improvements, academic occasions, and by funding public items. The Ethereum Basis exists to strengthen this benefit and to uphold Ethereum’s core values. We determine gaps, appropriate imbalances, and help important initiatives — at all times making certain that no single actor (together with EF) can dominate Ethereum’s evolution. We step in strategically and step out deliberately, repeatedly adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the atmosphere evolves.
By training purposeful subtraction, we’ve empowered others within the ecosystem to tackle nearly all of tasks. In the present day, we see our position as twofold:
- We do what nobody else can do immediately.
- We assist others do tomorrow what solely we will do immediately.
This implies specializing in high-leverage areas the place EF’s distinctive place permits us to help the ecosystem in methods few others can — whereas additionally constructing capability and infrastructure so others can finally take the lead. Beneath are examples of how this exhibits up in observe:
The place we step in to do what nobody else can immediately:
- Funding and sustaining important Ethereum infrastructure like shopper range.
- Coordinating on core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), the place impartial stewardship is important – each on important initiatives that can full inside the subsequent 12 months, and on longer-term efforts that can outline Ethereum’s position for the following decade.
- Supporting zero-knowledge analysis and open-source tooling that pushes the frontier of privacy-preserving tech.
- Internet hosting ecosystem-wide gatherings (like Devcon) that carry collectively various world contributors.
- Working ethereum.org as a impartial public information hub for brand new customers and builders.
The place we’ve helped others develop into roles we as soon as held:
- Seeding early-stage public items tasks by means of grants till they change into self-sustaining or community-funded
- Open-sourcing academic content material, developer tooling, and analysis to be constructed upon by others.
- Serving to new coordination mechanisms emerge and guiding them towards unbiased stewardship (e.g. MACI pilots, Protocol Guild, retroactive public items funding).
- Supporting geographic decentralization and native management by means of:
- Subsequent Billion Fellowship – Empowering native builders in underserved areas.
- Grants to grassroots communities – Strengthening native Ethereum ecosystems.
- Highway to Devcon – Partaking and rising regional communities forward of Devcon.
- Devcon Students – Offering entry and help for individuals from underrepresented communities.
Our Strategy
Adaptive Evolution
We evolve alongside the ecosystem, repeatedly reassessing our position and impression. Our construction and initiatives adapt to serve Ethereum’s altering wants whereas sustaining our core rules.
Considerate Complexity
We embrace the mandatory complexity of decentralized methods whereas striving for elegant options. Our purpose will not be simplification for its personal sake however quite attaining stability by means of cautious design.
We help and amplify community-led initiatives, serving to create circumstances the place unbiased groups can succeed with out ongoing dependency on the Basis.
Core Rules:
Lengthy‑time period Considering
We optimize for Ethereum’s lengthy‑time period success over brief‑time period positive factors, evaluating each choice for its sustainable, multi‑generational impression and recognizing that lasting resilience requires steady studying, adaptation, and evolution.
Stewardship of Values
We shield and nurture Ethereum’s core values — censorship resistance, open supply, privateness, and safety — whereas empowering the ecosystem to develop and evolve independently. We protect these important qualities as the inspiration for lasting innovation and progress.
Purposeful Subtraction
Quite than accumulate energy, we design for resilience by:
- Sustaining a plurality of approaches, options, and groups
- Enabling various participation
- Facilitating collaboration
- Lowering centralization
Constructing resilience isn’t about doing much less. It typically requires including new mechanisms or complexity — however at all times with the purpose of making an anti‑fragile ecosystem that distributes energy and possession broadly.
Targets Forward
As we transfer by means of a pivotal time and into the years forward, our course is formed by a transparent imaginative and prescient. Groups are deeply engaged, and lively tasks are already in movement to help Ethereum’s continued evolution. The work forward isn’t about hitting benchmarks — it’s about focusing our power the place it issues most. To assist information our collective focus, we’ve outlined a couple of impression areas — tangible outcomes that anybody within the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute towards.
These targets aren’t static; they may proceed to evolve alongside the ecosystem and the wants of the world round us.
The Ethereum Basis’s position is to determine high-leverage gaps — the locations the place it’s uniquely positioned to contribute — and direct its efforts towards the best potential impression.
Aim: Maximize the quantity of people that (instantly or not directly) use Ethereum, in such a method that they profit from Ethereum’s underlying values.
What significant utilization can seem like:
- Web-native monetary entry: Folks utilizing tokenized belongings on Ethereum or DeFi for funds, financial savings and wealth constructing – significantly the place fiat infrastructure is proscribed, unreliable or fees extortionate charges, or the place the infrastructure is dependable immediately however can simply change into unreliable tomorrow.
- Web-native organizations: Folks collaborating in DAOs with programmable incentive constructions that allow new types of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that transcend the constraints of conventional approaches
- Decentralized social media: Folks utilizing an Ethereum-based social media platform the place content material is saved in a decentralized community, permitting customers to modify shoppers with out giving up their social graph
- Decentralized AI: Folks constructing on Ethereum to collectively prepare and supply AI fashions with verifiable safety ensures, and likewise utilizing Ethereum to create financial frameworks the place AI brokers can coordinate with one another and human beings (examples: micro prediction markets)
- Enterprise advantages: Folks utilizing an institutional utility that makes use of Ethereum on the backend. If constructed appropriately, this may present advantages resembling auditability, privateness, interoperability and “escape hatch” mechanisms even when customers usually work together with the app by means of servers and not using a pockets (examples: on-chain-enforced limits to financial issuance; capacity to exit belongings to L1 and work together with L1 DeFi; capacity to zk-prove credentials to arbitrary third-party apps)
What it’s not:
- Custodial wallets that solely enable ETH or token transfers to different accredited custodial wallets.
- Establishments that submit hashes onchain to signify occasions, with out truly giving customers safety properties that they would not in any other case have.
Aim: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.
What resilience appears to be like like:
- Ecosystem autonomy: thriving independently of the EF or some other single group
- Worth alignment: staying centered on its values, even within the face of sturdy pursuits pulling in different instructions
- Group range: power and plurality of unbiased improvement groups
- Community robustness: sustaining liveness, censorship resistance, security even within the face of extremely adversarial occasions towards massive elements of technical infrastructure (together with “low ranges of the stack” e.g. OS, {hardware}, web)
- Decentralization: eliminating single factors of management or failure
- Proactive threat administration: The ecosystem’s capacity to proactively determine and mitigate central factors of failure that will come up over time
What it’s not:
- 100 sturdy groups in training, shopper improvement, or organizing occasions, but all depending on EF for funding
- Excessive-resilience in some sectors, however very low-resilience in others, which then change into important bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single factors of failure)
- Performative range that masks underlying frequent vulnerability (e.g. 20 shoppers that truly use many of the identical code base, occasions in 100 nations which are run by the identical centralized group)
As we work towards these impression areas, we additionally stay grounded in a long-term perspective — one which sees Ethereum not simply as a know-how, however as a residing ecosystem with the potential to serve humanity for generations to return.
We envision a future the place Ethereum serves as a resilient, impartial platform for world coordination. That signifies that decentralization should stay preserved in each improvement and governance, innovation will flourish at each layer of the stack, and communities around the globe can craft and maintain their very own adaptive options. We consider the community’s technical and social resilience will solely proceed to develop stronger, and EF will do all the things inside its imaginative and prescient and talent to make sure that we succeed collectively.
