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Note: Under the pressure of long-term downturn in ETH prices, Ethereum Fund accelerated its adjustment pace in 2025. On February 25, 2025, Aya Miyaguchi officially became the chairman of the Ethereum Foundation, and on March 17, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak served as co-executive directors of Ethereum.On April 28, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation published a series of articles on its official website, from the new management to the Ethereum vision, and then to the focus of the next year, re-establishing the Ethereum Foundation’s determination to set out again.
1. Management and board structure
The Ethereum Foundation recently appointed two co-executive directors and one chairman.
New management (strategy and operational execution)
Ethereum’s co-executive directors will co-led and execute with other management members.
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Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-executive Director
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Tomasz K. Stańczak, Co-executive Director
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Bastian Aue, focus areas: organizational strategy, recruitment and training, joint managers
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Josh Stark, key areas: project execution, communication and marketing, joint managers
Board of Directors (Supervision and Vision)
The Ethereum Board, like a security committee, guards the core and soul of EF and ensures its compliance as a Swiss foundation.The board of directors develops a vision to monitor whether the management’s senior strategies and decisions are in line with the Foundation’s values.The board of directors is also responsible for selecting executive directors and termination of senior executive appointments if necessary.Current board members include:
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Vitalik Buterin, Founder – Continues to provide technical and knowledge guidance to the wider Ethereum ecosystem
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Aya Miyaguchi, Chairman – Working with other board members to develop the vision of the Ethereum Foundation.Responsible for managing some important external relationships.
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Patrick Storchenegger, Swiss Legal Counsel – serves as Swiss Legal and Compliance Representative
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Hsiao-Wei Wang, co-executive director—as a bridge between the board, executives and management
The Board has shared the vision, guiding principles and goals for the next few years with the management team.We look forward to further strengthening the board of directors so that it can better fulfill its mission.
Appointing Tomasz and Hsiao-Wei Wang as co-directors was an unconventional decision, but allowed them to complement each other during the busy Ethereum ecosystem and EF periods.
Tomasz will help the Ethereum Foundation (EF) drive strong and comprehensive change with his knowledge of community and technology needs, while he will continue to participate in the operations of other companies (Nethermind and Venture Capital Alliance).The Board and Tomasz have agreed that he will serve as co-director of EF for a two-year term to leverage its proven strategic execution expertise and experience, especially in the context of the significant opportunities that will bring to Ethereum in the coming years.
Hsiao-Wei’s dual identity as a board and executive director, coupled with her research experience, will help her act as a bridge between the board and management, and focus on the needs of the organization, and gain an in-depth understanding of the history and status of the organization.
2. Ethereum Foundation Vision by Aya Miyaguchi and Vitalik Buterin
Vision
Guarding the Infinite Garden – an ecosystem of projects, communities and infrastructure built around Ethereum – keeps it resilient in a changing environment.Adhering to the philosophy of Ethereum as a shared world computer for humans, it is an open and license-free platform that has brought stable, free and technologically empowered collaboration to millions of people around the world.We respect the fact that Ethereum is put into use and creates real value for the global community.
In this spirit, we use the metaphor of Infinite Garden to describe the Ethereum ecosystem: a vibrant, evolving space where builders, dreamers and managers from around the world can sow ideas, support each other, build tools together to redefine other roots in the soil of finance, identity, and civilization in the decades to come.
The role of Ethereum Fund
The biggest advantage of Ethereum is its unparalleled ecosystem.In addition to the Ethereum Foundation (EF), there are many teams and organizations that contribute to Ethereum through technological innovation, educational activities, and fund public products, and continue to expand its boundaries.The Ethereum Foundation’s existence is designed to strengthen this advantage and maintain the core value of Ethereum.We identify gaps, correct imbalances, and support key initiatives—always ensure that no single player, including EF, can dominate Ethereum’s evolution.We step in and consciously exit, constantly adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the environment evolves.
By targeted “subtraction”, we empower other members of the ecosystem to take most of the responsibility.Today, we think our role is dual:
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What we do is something that no one else can do at the moment.
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We help others accomplish things tomorrow that we can only accomplish today.
This means we focus on high leverage areas where EF’s unique position allows us to support the ecosystem in ways other agencies cannot do, while also building capacity and infrastructure so that other agencies can eventually lead.Here are examples of how this is reflected in practice:
We are able to do things that no one else can do at the moment:
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Fund and maintain critical Ethereum infrastructure such as client diversity.
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Coordinate core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), where neutral management is crucial—including both key initiatives to be completed in the next 12 months, and long-term efforts to identify Ethereum’s role in the next decade.
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Support zero-knowledge research and open source tools to promote the development of privacy protection technology.
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Hold ecosystem-wide gatherings (such as Devcon) to bring together diverse contributors from around the world.
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Operate ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge center for new users and builders.
We help others grow into roles they once had:
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Funding early-stage public goods projects through grants until they can be self-sustained or funded by the community
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Open educational content, development tools and research for other people’s reference.
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Help new coordination mechanisms emerge and guide them towards independent management (e.g., MACI pilots, protocol associations, retrospective public goods funding).
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Support geographical decentralization and local leadership in the following ways:
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Next Billion Scholarship – Support local builders in underserved areas.
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Provide funding to grassroots communities – strengthening the local Ethereum ecosystem.
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The Road to Devcon – Attract and grow regional communities before Devcon.
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Devcon Scholars – Provide opportunities and support for participants from underrepresented communities.
Our Method
Adaptive evolution:We develop with the ecosystem and constantly reevaluate our role and influence.Our architecture and initiatives are constantly adapting to adapt to Ethereum’s ever-changing needs while adhering to our core principles.
Deliberate complexity:We embrace the complexity necessary for decentralized systems while striving to provide elegant solutions.Our goal is not to simplify for simplicity, but to achieve balance through careful design.
Community Empowerment:We support and expand community-led initiatives to help create conditions that enable independent teams to succeed without the need to rely on the foundation on a continuous basis.
Core principles:
Long-term considerations:We optimize Ethereum’s long-term success rather than short-term gains, evaluate the sustainable, multigenerational impact of each decision, and recognize that lasting resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation and development.
Guarding values:We protect and cultivate the core values of Ethereum – censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security – while empowering the ecosystem to develop independently.We uphold these basic qualities as the cornerstone of lasting innovation and progress.
Purposeful subtraction
Instead of accumulating power, we design flexibility by:
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Keep multiple approaches, solutions and teams
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Achieve diversified participation
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Promote cooperation
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Reduce centralization
Building resilience does not mean doing less.It often requires the addition of new mechanisms or complexities—but always aims to create an anti-fragile ecosystem that can widely distribute power and ownership.
Future goals
At this critical moment, looking forward to the future, a clear vision will lead us in the direction we are moving forward.The team is actively participating and several projects have been launched to support the continued development of Ethereum.Future work is not about excellence, but about focusing our energy on what is most important.To guide our shared goals, we outline several areas of influence—the tangible results that everyone in the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute to.
These goals are not set in stone; they will continue to evolve with the needs of the ecosystem and the world around us.
The role of the Ethereum Foundation is to identify high leverage gaps—that is, where it has unique advantages to contribute—and direct its efforts to the maximum impact possible.
Goal 1: Maximize the number of people using Ethereum (directly or indirectly) so that they can benefit from the underlying value of Ethereum.
The meaningful usage is this:
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Internet Native Financial Access: People use tokenized assets on Ethereum or DeFi for payments, savings and wealth accumulation—especially when statutory infrastructure is limited, unreliable or overcharged, or when infrastructure is reliable today but easily becomes unreliable tomorrow.
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Internet native organizations: People participating in DAO have programmable incentive structures that enable new types of coordination, decision-making and capital formation beyond the limitations of traditional methods
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Decentralized social media: People use Ethereum-based social media platforms whose content is stored in a decentralized network, allowing users to switch clients without giving up on their social graphs
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Decentralized AI: People train collectively on Ethereum and provide verifiable security for AI models while using Ethereum to create an economic framework in which AI agents can coordinate with each other and coordinate with humans (e.g., micro-predictive markets)
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Enterprise-level advantages: Users who use Ethereum as an institutional-level application for the backend.If built correctly, users can provide advantages such as auditability, privacy, interoperability and “security export” mechanisms, even if they usually interact with the application through servers without wallets (e.g., forced on-chain currency issuance; the ability to exit assets to and interact with Layer-1 DeFi; the ability to perform zero-knowledge proofs to any third-party application).
It’s not:
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Hosted wallets, only allow transfer of ETH or tokens to other approved custodial wallets.
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The institution publishes hash values on the chain to represent events, but does not actually provide users with security attributes that they would not have otherwise had.
Goal 2: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum technology and social infrastructure.
What is toughness like:
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Ecosystem autonomy: thrives independently of EF or any other single organization
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Consistent values: Even if you face strong interests from other directions, you must stick to your own values
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Team diversity: the strength and diversity of independent development teams
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Network robustness: Even in the face of extremely unfavorable events against most technological infrastructures (including the “lower layers of the stack” such as operating systems, hardware, the Internet)
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Decentralization: Eliminate single point of control or failure
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Active risk management: The ability of ecosystems to proactively identify and mitigate central failure points that may occur over time
It’s not:
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100 strong teams of education, client development or organizational activities, but all rely on EF to provide funding
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Some areas are highly resilient, but others are very low, which becomes a key bottleneck (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK prover, social single point failure)
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Performance diversity masks potential common weaknesses (e.g., activity in 100 countries operated by the same centralized organization, using 20 clients that actually use most of the same code base)
As we strive to achieve these areas of impact, we always stand in a long-term perspective—not only regarding Ethereum as a technology, but also as a life ecosystem with potential to serve future generations.
We envision Ethereum becoming a resilient and neutral global collaboration platform in the future.This means that decentralization must be retained in terms of development and governance, innovation will thrive at every level of the stack, and communities around the world can build and maintain their own adaptive solutions.We believe that the technological and social resilience of the Ethereum network will only continue to grow, and the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will do its best within its vision and capabilities to ensure that we succeed together.
3. The next chapter of the Ethereum Foundation
We are Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz, who are co-writing this blog post.We have been serving as the new co-executive director for almost a month.The honeymoon period is over, and it’s time to take action.
Moment of transformation and opportunity
Ethereum has always been a journey: a growing ecosystem driven by those who are committed to building a more open, decentralized world.Although the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a decade old, it still has the courage to reshape itself.
This year, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has launched a new leadership model of dual executive directors.This design brings a diverse and complementary perspective, enhancing our ability to deal with complex challenges.We are looking forward to the opportunities and challenges of the future, and uphold our firm commitment to the core values of Ethereum and our vision based on management, coordination and long-term thinking.
Importantly, the EF is not a two-headed carriage, each heading in a different direction.Our relationship is based on mutual respect, trust and shared values.We work closely together, challenge each other, and ultimately move forward with a united team with common goals.
Our Principles and Areas of Focus
Looking ahead, we will uphold two pillars: guiding principles (our core values) and goals (our pursuit of influence and resilience).Excellent technology is the cornerstone of all our work and the cornerstone of our mission.
As executive directors, it is our role to carry out the Ethereum Foundation (EF) vision in a changing world.Our responsibilities include strategic planning, ecosystem management, team leadership and operational oversight.All of this is to support the long-term success of Ethereum.
Values we advocate:
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Resisting censorship: Ensure that Ethereum remains an open network where anyone can trade and build anywhere without any obstacles or external control.
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Open Source Innovation: Promote collaboration, transparency and community-driven development through open shared knowledge and tools.
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Privacy protection: Enable private interaction without sacrificing security, protecting individual freedom and autonomy in the digital world.
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Security: Maintain trust, robustness and resilience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem by prioritizing security design and ongoing research.
These values are the basis for guiding our technology choices, our support for the ecosystem, and our long-term vision for Ethereum as a public product.
While keeping these values in mind, we have set the main directions for the next 12 months:
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Expand the Ethereum main network
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Blob expansion
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Improve user experience, including L2 interoperability + application layer
Overall, this means improving the interoperability and coordination between mainnet and L2, UX, DevEx, allowing applications and L2 to gain more presence and attention on Devcon, and expanding their information through communication channels.
In addition, we know that we need to accelerate the process of developers, founders and institutions building and applying on Ethereum.The Ethereum Foundation has extensive knowledge and leaders who are able to guide, lead, attract and guide talent.
Tomasz:
Ethereum has opened a new chapter.Its values remain the same: open source, censorship resistance, privacy and security.The Ethereum Foundation will transform – to become a more open-ended organization, an organization willing to start difficult conversations immediately.
We will focus on speed of execution, accountability, clear goals, goals and traceable metrics.We will focus on the success of the Ethereum mainnet protocol.The Ethereum mainnet will always be a global neutral network, a trustworthy trustless protocol.We will focus on the success of the Ethereum mainnet and the entire ecosystem – L2 will bring large-scale adoption and many benefits to users, and the mainnet will serve as a solid cornerstone and flexible network behind all transactions and coordination mechanisms.We are looking forward to this journey – one of the most inspiring technological and social changes we have ever experienced – and we will join hands – visionary and down-to-earth builders – on this journey.
Our expansion efforts for the next year include: expanding the Ethereum mainnet (Layer1), and supporting its successful expansion by providing the best architecture for the Layer2 chain, ensuring its network security, and enhancing user confidence.Our goal is to bring the entire blockchain ecosystem together by providing the best user experience, design and interoperability while scaling through superior engineering and cutting-edge research.
Hsiao-Wei:
My top priority over the next few months will be to strengthen the operations of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) to support the development of the ecosystem.A foundation with strong adaptability and ability will help us better serve Ethereum’s long-term mission.
As we grow more focused, one of our goals is to better support the application layer of Ethereum.We will support developers and users by improving the developer and user experience, clarifying standards, strengthening the ecosystem, and simplifying the entire process from creativity to practical applications.
We are working to improve the way the Ethereum Foundation (EF) internal teams and the ecosystem as a whole are planned, prioritized, and coordinated to ensure that our work is aligned with the needs of the community and the crypto-punk spirit of Ethereum.Strengthening EF is only part of the transformation.The real driving force comes from the vitality and creativity of the global Ethereum ecosystem.
The future of joint construction
Ethereum is not a behemoth.It is a vibrant network of communities, builders, researchers, artists, educators and dreamers.It is global, diversified, and proud of decentralization.We are constantly inspired by ecosystem creativity and resilience.Ethereum will continue to emerge where we are most needed, and will also make room for the ecosystem itself to flourish.This is a community-led future.
The road ahead is full of infinite possibilities.Ethereum has completely changed the possibilities in areas such as technology, finance, and governance.To all those who are building, teaching, researching, experimenting and imagining a new future: Thank you!We work together to create and achieve far more than any team, project or generation.We are honored to be standing side by side with you and are full of expectations for the future.
