Author: Zen, PANews
Once upon a time, the rise of ETH to $10,000 almost became a consensus among cryptocurrency industry practitioners and investors. The reality is, Bitcoin has stood out in this cycle, while ETH's price has remained hovering around $2,000, even dipping below $1,500 at one point.
Faced with the downturn of token prices, many in the community have directed their anger at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), criticizing it from multiple angles, including but not limited to weakness and inaction, centralized governance, low transparency, lack of brand maintenance, bloated organizational structure, and lack of strategic vision, among others. In response to the above controversies, EF announced a strategic reorganization in June this year, but remains under scrutiny.
In light of ETH's stagnation and the prevailing sentiment of 'suffering from EF for too long', in July of this year, at the eighth Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC 8) held in Cannes, France, Ethereum core developer Zak Cole initiated the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF). 'ECF will say what the Ethereum Foundation cannot say and do what the Ethereum Foundation is unwilling to do.' Cole introduced at the conference that ECF is positioned as an independent organization, with the core mission of 'supporting Ethereum in the form of assets' and is committed to pushing ETH's price up to $10,000.
Who is Zak Cole, the leader of ECF?
As the initiator of ECF, Zak Cole has a rich and diverse background. Zak received training as a network engineer in the U.S. Marine Corps, and during the 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' from 2007 to 2008, he and his team were responsible for constructing critical mission data infrastructure in Al Anbar Province, Iraq.
After retiring from the Marine Corps, Zak, who became a network engineer, started engaging with Bitcoin and continued to work in network development, network engineering, and applied cryptography, eventually founding multiple companies in the fields of ad tech, web hosting, and cybersecurity, and ultimately arriving in the Ethereum ecosystem and the broader blockchain space.
In 2017, Zak judged that the market lacked commercial and easy-to-use blockchain system development tools, so he founded Whiteblock, which initially provided testing services and later decided to transform and productize the testing services into a SaaS platform. According to early materials released by Whiteblock, its clients include the U.S. Department of Defense, ConsenSys, Beam, RChain, Syscoin, and the Ethereum Foundation.
In addition to Whiteblock, Zak is also active in several influential Web3 projects and organizations. He is one of the co-founders of the smart contract security competition platform Code4rena, and previously served as co-founder and CTO of Slingshot Finance, focusing on decentralized trading experiences, and has also been a mentor at the ETC Labs accelerator. Furthermore, he is the chairman of the testing working group of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, providing technical consulting for several projects like DeFi Pulse and Syscoin.
What truly made Zak Cole famous was the recent initiation of the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF). He mentioned in his speech that 'ETH reaching $10,000 is not a meme, but a demand, a benchmark, a directive.' This statement excited many members of the Ethereum community.
Currently, apart from Zak as the leader, the other core team members and supporters of ECF have not yet been publicly disclosed, and the specific organizational structure and leadership lineup are pending further announcement.
How to make ETH great again?
The ECF official website states: 'ETH's price has been overlooked for too long, and our mission is to enhance its value through education, funding, outreach, and ecological support.' To achieve this goal, ECF plans to fund a batch of projects that can enhance Ethereum's underlying infrastructure, while also focusing on increasing ETH's burn rate, expanding public goods contributions, and promoting network expansion. Zak stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has not placed enough importance on ETH as an asset, to seek benefits for all ETH holders.
At its inception, ECF already received community and funding support. The foundation has raised millions of dollars worth of ETH to fund projects that align with its goals. These funds primarily come from anonymous Ethereum holders and community donors. ECF has set strict funding criteria: it only supports 'no-token, immutable' projects, and requires all selected projects to directly promote ETH burn, thereby enhancing ETH's economic value. This approach is described as a 'credible neutrality' project funding strategy, avoiding any models that dilute value through the issuance of new tokens.
On the technical and ecological level, ECF has initiated several collaborative initiatives. Its first major funding project is the Ethereum Validator Association (EVA). EVA aims to provide a voice for network validators, allowing them to vote and prioritize the protocol upgrade path through staked ETH.
Cole pointed out that EVA will 'introduce validator representatives', allowing validators to influence Ethereum's client development and monetary policy direction based on performance. ECF also actively promotes cooperation and communication with governments, regulatory agencies, and traditional financial institutions, hoping to facilitate institutional adoption of Ethereum. The foundation emphasizes that all grants and decisions will maintain 'Radical Transparency'; the community can participate in the decision-making of grant directions through a 'coin voting' mechanism, and all funding movements and project progress will be publicly disclosed.
Regarding the initiatives undertaken by ECF as described above, some crypto KOLs and users believe that this funding model focused on no-token, public chain infrastructure helps to return to Ethereum's original values, enhancing network security and reliability; others question the completely no-token incentive model, worrying about the sustained motivation for project maintenance and rewards for developers.
Despite the widespread attention that the establishment of the ECF has garnered, whether it can truly achieve the goal of 'ETH returning to $10,000' remains to be seen over time. Whether it is to promote token value or to reconstruct the governance and funding logic of the Ethereum ecosystem, this road will not be easy. The key to its fate is whether ECF can continue to attract developers and funding support while maintaining credible neutrality.
However, regardless of success or failure, the very emergence of ECF releases a positive signal: the Ethereum ecosystem still has the ability to self-renew and there are developers willing to step up who refuse to remain silent. This emergence of diverse voices and new forces offers a new hope for Ethereum, which is at a critical turning point.
