Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published goals for the Ethereum Foundation (EF), which is engaged in the development and growth of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Almost simultaneously, EF's blog published a series of posts about changing the management structure of the foundation and plans to focus on attracting new users to Ethereum. However, experts doubt that these changes will have a positive impact on the price of ETH.

The two main goals of EF now include plans to expand the use of Ethereum by providing benefits to users, as well as strengthening resilience and decentralization by eliminating the project's weaknesses. In EF's blog, they also emphasized the importance of adhering to the project's values: resistance to censorship, open-source development, privacy, and security.

At the beginning of 2025, the organization behind the development of Ethereum faced criticism for the lack of activity in the functioning of the second-largest cryptocurrency — several developers also left EF, and the leadership changed. At the end of January, Buterin personally took responsibility for the future structure and strategy of the foundation.

The Ethereum ecosystem remains a leader in terms of applications based on smart contract technology. It ranks first in the volume of user deposits in decentralized finance applications (DeFi) with a share of over 51% ($51.2 billion, according to Defillama). Its token ETH ranks second in market capitalization at $220 billion, according to Coinmarketcap as of April 29.

Ethereum is also the second crypto asset after Bitcoin, based on which exchange-traded funds (ETFs) were approved (in mid-2024) in the USA. The total assets under the management of these funds amount to $6.2 billion.

However, these indicators do not align with the price dynamics of ETH. For example, the head of The Bitcoin Bond Company, Pierre Rochard, in a comment on EF's published goals, suggested that this does not help ETH's price growth and that it is all trivial. Moreover, he proposed that the foundation completely abandon the idea of decentralization in favor of issuing shares and going public on an exchange like the American NASDAQ. He also suggested a transition to a strategy of issuing convertible bonds to accumulate more ETH.

Unlike many large cryptocurrencies, the prices of which reached their historical highs in 2024 and early 2025, the absolute price peak for ETH remains at $4,900 since the end of 2021.

Since mid-2024, prices have tested the $4,000 level three times but have fallen back down by tens of percent each time. As of April 29, ETH is priced at around $1,820, the same level observed at the end of 2023. The drop since the beginning of 2025 has been over 45%.

This sharply contrasts with the price dynamics of Bitcoin, which has risen 2% since the beginning of 2025 to $94.8 and nearly 250% since October 2023 — the time when Ethereum was priced similarly to now.

Management issues

The Ethereum Foundation positions itself as a non-profit organization that supports the Ethereum ecosystem and funds protocol development. EF received 12 million ETH coins during the ICO in 2015. Half of these funds were distributed among 85 early project participants, and an additional 3 million coins were allocated to 50 employees who worked on Ethereum from September 2014 to March 2015.

Part of the remaining 3 million ETH has been gradually sold by the organization over the years to fund ecosystem projects, as well as to allocate grants for protocol development, event organization, and other initiatives. According to EF's latest financial report dated December 31, the organization's balance is approximately $970.2 million, with $788.7 million in cryptocurrencies and $181.5 million in investments in other assets.

Until February 2025, the foundation never publicly used its funds to participate in decentralized finance applications or investment activities. All known sales of ETH were directed towards salaries for EF participants, donations to developers, and startups based on Ethereum.

In mid-February 2025, EF reported the transfer of 45,000 ETH (almost $120 million at prices on February 13) to DeFi applications from the lending sector, including the largest protocols Aave and Compound. Additionally, part of the funds was reserved by the organization for similar initiatives in the future.

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