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Flagship Project Community Plans "Palace Intrigue," Community Outrage Sweeps Over Ethereum Foundation

ODAILY星球日报

2025-01-21 11:38

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Original Title: "Top Projects Jointly Pressure Ethereum Foundation, No Response"

Original Author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has been in a world of suffering for a long time.

As disappointment with ETH's weak performance in this cycle gradually accumulated within the community and finally erupted, the calls for reforming the EF grew louder.

Over the past few days, the entire Ethereum community has been discussing EF's leadership structure, personnel composition, operational mode, and financial plans. The current EF Executive Director, Aya Miyaguchi, has been criticized by the community, and even Vitalik himself, under heavy pressure, had to publicly declare a "large-scale restructuring of the EF leadership."

By the time Monday came, the discussion deepened further. Founders and executives of several top Ethereum ecosystem projects one after another made statements, denouncing various wrongdoings of the EF. The intensity of their remarks shows that major project parties have also long been dissatisfied with Ethereum's performance.

Below is a collection of various opinions compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

Synthetix, Infinex Founder: EF Should Require L2 to Use Revenue for ETH Buyback

Synthetix, Infinex founder Kain Warwick was the first to challenge.

On Monday afternoon, Kain posted on X, saying: "If I were to operate the EF, I would definitely put pressure on Layer 2, requiring them to use sequencer revenue to burn ETH. Ethereum has a significant advantage in this negotiation...".

Curve Founder: EF Should Immediately Abandon L2 Strategy

Following Kain, Curve Finance founder Michael Egorov also came out attacking Layer 2, but his wording was more aggressive.

On Monday afternoon, Egorov posted on X, stating that EF's top priority should be to abandon the L2-centric roadmap and instead focus on expanding Layer 1.

In a discussion with the community later, Egorov also bluntly stated, "Layer 2 is not a moat, but a Band-Aid."

Aave Founder: 12 Steps to Rescue EF

Later in the evening, Aave founder Stani Kulechov posted a lengthy article on X stating that he had read the EF Annual Budget Report and believed that the EF needed thorough reform in 12 areas to achieve better sustainability:

1. Immediately reduce the burn rate from $130 million to $30 million;

2. Reduce the number of employees to 80;

3. Carefully review who can stay. Remove senior positions, advisors, any part-time roles, interns, freeloaders, cockroaches, and parasites;

4. Prohibit advisors or any conflicts of interest;

5. Ensure that 80% of employees are technical personnel;

6. Split all technical teams into small 5-person teams, each focusing on specific areas and expertise;

7. The leadership should be a 5-person committee, selected based on performance, with one serving as chairman, responsible to VB;

8. Part of the non-technical team should focus on financial management (handled internally);

9. Diversify finances into various Long-term Sustainable Tokens (LRSTs), as well as fundamentally sound and profitable DeFi and non-DeFi projects built on Ethereum;

10. Diversify staking rewards into stablecoins and invest funds in DeFi;

11. Manage the financials with Aave borrowings and sell periodically when ETH outperforms other assets;

12. Create a sustainable revenue model from transaction or staking fees to fund a reasonable EF budget.

Former Growth Lead at Ethena: EF Should Focus on DeFi

Recently resigned Former Growth Lead at Ethena, also the former Expansion Lead at Lido, Seraphim, also shared his views on EF reform.

Seraphim mentioned that Ethereum needs two paths to self-rescue: first, the EF should focus on DeFi, and second, Consensys, led by Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, should emulate Microstrategy's approach to BTC. As long as these two points can be achieved, ETH will quickly surpass $6000.

Wintermute Founder: Ethereum's Potential Death Spiral Risk

Industry-leading market maker Wintermute, while not exclusive to the Ethereum ecosystem, has directly provided liquidity to many Ethereum ecosystem projects, making its stance equally impactful on Ethereum.

Last night, founder and CEO Evgeny Gaevoy wrote about the potential death spiral risk for Ethereum.

Evgeny stated that Ethereum's biggest internal contradiction currently is: the more ETH is used for "gambling," and the more finance-related dApps run on Ethereum, the higher the price of ETH and the higher the security; conversely, if there is no gambling behavior and ETH is only used for transfers on Zazulu, then the price of ETH would be very low, and the security would also be low. As the price of ETH drops, dApps that still consider Ethereum secure will increasingly move to other chains, further lowering the price of ETH, which could lead to a significant death spiral.

Therefore, any blockchain must consider gambling, speculation, and broader financial applications as part of its product, or else it will be seen as insecure.

Amidst Public Outrage, EF Once Again Chooses to Sell...

During a period of community outcry and unrelenting public anger, the EF has once again made a surprising move.

At around 6:20 PM, the address 0xd77...1f4, known for small-value high-frequency ETH sales, once again sold 100 ETH at an average price of $3364.

As a long-time ETH holder, I find it hard to understand why the EF would make such a "low-value but highly symbolic" move at such a sensitive time, especially when the community actively suggested that the EF use staking rewards instead of direct selling, and this proposal was also acknowledged by Vitalik as something to explore further.

You read that right; as the top-level organization in the Ethereum ecosystem, the EF hasn't even staked its ETH holdings. Vitalik's explanation for this is firstly concern about regulatory issues, and secondly, the EF's neutrality issue, as if the EF were to stake on its own, it would force them to take a stance on any future contentious hard fork.

Not much to say about regulatory issues. In fact, with the overall relaxation of the regulatory environment, this has gradually become a non-issue.

As for the second point, does this explanation really hold water? With Solana breathing down their neck, competition has reached a do-or-die stage, yet the EF is still seemingly "avoiding suspicion" for some hypothetical future scenario.

Oh, by the way, the EF seems to be indifferent to competition — today the Ethereum community dug up Aya Miyaguchi's previous statement in an interview: "I am training people to say no to a culture of competition and winning."