The Ethereum Foundation has announced a restructuring of its management structure and new development goals
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has published the goals for the Ethereum Foundation (EF), which is engaged in the development and advancement of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Almost simultaneously, the EF blog published a series of posts about changes to the fund's management structure, as well as plans to focus on attracting new users to Ethereum. However, experts doubt that the changes will have a positive impact on the price of ETH.
The EF's two main goals now include plans to expand the use of Ethereum by offering benefits to users and strengthening its sustainability and decentralization by addressing the project's weaknesses. The EF blog also noted the importance of upholding the project's values: resistance to censorship, open-source development, privacy, and security.
In early 2025, the organization behind Ethereum's development faced criticism for its lack of activity in the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization — several developers also left the EF, and its leadership changed. At the end of January, Buterin personally took responsibility for the future structure and strategy of the fund.
The Ethereum ecosystem remains the leader in terms of applications based on smart contract technology. It ranks first in terms of user deposits in decentralized finance (DeFi) applications, with a share of over 51% ($51.2 billion, according to Defillama).
Ethereum is also the second cryptocurrency after Bitcoin to be approved (in mid-2024) for exchange-traded funds (ETFs) in the US. These funds have total assets under management of $6.2 billion.
However, these figures do not correspond to the price dynamics of ETH. For example, Pierre Rouchard, head of The Bitcoin Bond Company, commented on EF's published goals, suggesting that this does not help the price of ETH in any way and that it is all just platitudes. Moreover, he suggested that the fund abandon the idea of decentralization altogether in favor of issuing shares and listing on an exchange such as the US NASDAQ. He also proposed switching to a strategy of issuing convertible bonds to accumulate more ETH.
Unlike many major cryptocurrencies, which reached new all-time highs in 2024 and early 2025, ETH's absolute price peak has remained at $4,900 since the end of 2021.
Since mid-2024, prices have tested the $4,000 level three times, but each time they fell by tens of percent. The decline since the beginning of 2025 has been more than 45%.
This contrasts sharply with the price dynamics of Bitcoin, which has risen 2% since the beginning of 2025 to $94.8 and nearly 250% since October 2023, when Ethereum was worth the same as it is now.
Management problems
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 its ICO in 2015. Half of these funds were distributed among 85 early project participants, and another 3 million coins were allocated to 50 employees who worked on Ethereum from September 2014 to March 2015.
The company has gradually sold some of the remaining 3 million ETH over the years to fund ecosystem projects and has also awarded grants for protocol development, event organization, and other initiatives. According to the EF's latest financial report dated December 31, the organization's balance sheet totals approximately $970.2 million, of which $788.7 million is in cryptocurrencies and $181.5 million is in investments in other assets.
Until February 2025, the fund had never publicly used its funds to participate in decentralized financial applications or investment activities. All known ETH sales were used to pay salaries to EF participants and donations to Ethereum-based developers and startups.
In mid-February 2025, EF reported transferring 45,000 ETH (almost $120 million at February 13 prices) to DeFi applications in the lending sector, including the largest protocols Aave and Compound. The organization reserved part of the funds for similar initiatives in the future.
