we all know that ETH has been struggling recent
gains notwithstanding aside from Bitcoin taking center stage and a rise in competing blockchains
a major challenge that Ethereum has faced is well Ethereum while everybody has questioned why it’s
been lagging many have pointed to its leadership and strategy as culprits however things could be
looking up in this area thanks to recent changes at the Ethereum Foundation that’s why today
we’ll be zooming in on the Ethereum Foundation looking at recent controversies examining who’s
in who’s out what they’re planning next and what this could all mean for ETH’s price my name
is Guy stay tuned let’s begin with a bit of context for those unfamiliar decisions around
Ethereum’s development are overseen by the Ethereum Foundation a Swiss nonprofit that was
created by Ethereum’s co-founders back in 2014 the foundation’s primary vision is to foster
an open-source ecosystem by supporting the development of the Ethereum base chain and
its many DAPs layer 2 and other surrounding technologies crucially though the foundation
aims to do all of this in a decentralized way the Ethereum Foundation is able to achieve this
because it doesn’t actually control Ethereum’s development not even through governance
instead the foundation provides strategic funding through one of its initiatives
called the ecosystem support project or ESP now basically the ESP provides funding and
support to critical infrastructure projects that support Ethereum’s ongoing evolution like those
focusing on scalability security or improvements to Ethereum’s user experience or UX according
to the ESP’s website it awards dozens of grants each quarter to support research infrastructure
community and education and builder tools as such the foundation operates as one part of a broader
ecosystem of developers facilitating Ethereum’s organic growth this is in contrast to other more
conventional nonprofits that play a larger role in dictating whichever direction their respective
projects or companies go in now the Ethereum Foundation focuses on research and development and
has coordinated weekly meetings with Ethereum’s core developers since its inception known as all
core developer calls or AC/DC’s these meetings revolve around discussing Ethereum improvement
proposals or EIPs and potential hard forks which are basically upgrades or changes to the Ethereum
base chain these hard forks typically consist of multiple EIPs being implemented at once for
instance the recent PETAR upgrade was actually a hard fork that consisted of 11 EIPs that improve
Ethereum’s UX and layer 2 scaling capabilities anyhow the foundation also promotes education
and awareness around Ethereum’s technology and potential and it does this through multiple
avenues one of these is the ethereum.org website an educational portal to help onboard users and
improve their understanding of Ethereum’s tech the foundation also engages with businesses
institutions and even policy makers all in an effort to promote Ethereum’s innovative technology
and drive its institutional adoption by off-chain firms and one way it achieves this is through
Etherealize now if you’ve been keeping up to date with the channel you’ll know that Etherealize
is a marketing firm that’s backed and funded by the Ethereum Foundation and is focused on driving
Ethereum’s institutional adoption on Wall Street more about that in the description anyway as if
that wasn’t enough the Ethereum Foundation even organizes various workshops and hackathons
including DevCon Ethereum’s flagship annual developer conference this event takes place
in a different location each year and allows developers and enthusiasts to get together to
collaborate network and generally have a good old party there’s also the Ethereum Foundation’s
fellowship program which aims to bridge the gaps between Ethereum’s use across different cultures
nationalities and economic classes helping to onboard users and attract talent from around
the world now it’s important to reiterate that while the Ethereum Foundation may coordinate
Ethereum’s development this development is not determined by the Ethereum Foundation or
indeed any individual group even ETH holders don’t get a say in Ethereum’s development which
is a bit of a double-edged sword on the one hand this prevents manipulation by ETH Wales and stops
bad actors abusing any governance smart contracts on the other hand having Ethereum’s development
coordinated by an off-chain organization naturally makes it more opaque and difficult to audit oh
and by the way if you’re enjoying the video so bit of a shakeup which we’ll explain in a second
first though we need to look at how the Ethereum Foundation was structured beforehand for years
the foundation was primarily led by Ya Miguchi who was invited by Ethereum creator Vitalik Berin
to become the foundation’s executive director back in 2018 under Ya’s leadership the Ethereum
Foundation focused on decentralization and promoting client diversity ya also helped oversee
the merge arguably Ethereum’s biggest upgrade which transitioned it from proof of work to proof
of stake and Ya’s tenure as executive director has been met with a lot of praise most notably
from Vitalic who credits her with fostering an environment of innovation however there has been
lots of criticism from the Ethereum community who have often questioned her leadership skills
especially when Ethereum started losing mind share to Bitcoin and other competing chains like
Salana according to the foundation’s website AA sits on the executive board alongside Patrick
Storchenegger a Swiss legal expert patrick’s primary responsibilities include handling legal
and compliance and ensuring the foundation operates within Swiss regulations for nonprofits
patrick also plays a key role in governance helping set the foundation’s long-term vision but
of course the person with the most influence is or rather was none other than Vitalik himself as
most of you will know Vitalik is widely recognized as the face of Ethereum and he also helped to
co-create the foundation alongside the other Ethereum founders back in 2014 as such he’s played
a key role within the foundation since the very beginning vitalik has led Ethereum’s technical
direction playing a huge part in shaping its development while communicating its core values
to the broader community however his influence on the foundation’s decisions has at times been
overstated as his formal authority was limited to his board seat reflecting Ethereum’s commitment
to decentralization anyhow what’s strange is that until recently there didn’t seem to be much of
a core business structure in place not only is it unclear how many people actually work for
the Ethereum Foundation but there was also an apparent lack of divide between the foundation’s
leadership and the rest of its employees this lack of transparency and organizational structure
was widely criticized what’s crazy though is that there may have been a secret entity pulling the
strings behind closed doors all along something that Laura Shin discovered when writing her
book on Ethereum The Cryptopians basically she described a so-called shadow government within
the foundation a group of individuals who held significant influence over the foundation despite
not having any official roles there according to Laura these people wielded so much power that
other foundation members were afraid to mention their names or acknowledge their presence at
events even if they didn’t actually do anything she recalled asking Vitalik about one of these
figures to which he simply whistled appearing surprised and uneasy that anyone was even aware
of it not suspicious at all we’ll leave a link to that video down in the description below by
the way the timestamp is around 35 minutes it’s definitely worth the watch if you have the time
now this brings us to the recent changes within the Ethereum Foundation vitalik announced major
changes were coming to the foundation’s leadership in January of this year the idea was to increase
technical expertise at the top level and improve communication and support between the foundation
and builders vitalik added that the foundation wouldn’t engage in political lobbying nor would it
take a more central role in Ethereum’s development regardless this announcement was made after a
pretty bad year for Ethereum in 2024 which saw the foundation’s spending roadmap goals and
even its personnel come under fire from the Ethereum community in the days that followed
the announcement some of that community turned surprisingly hostile towards the Ethereum
leadership and especially towards Ya some community members began putting the pressure
on hoping to bully her out of her position others even resorted to harassment and death
threats which Vitalik quite rightly condemned as quote pure evil this anger stemmed from concerns
that Ethereum’s future was veering off course with critics arguing that its layer 2 ecosystem was
cannibalizing the layer 1 base chain many also noted that Ethereum was losing its competitive
edge to newer faster blockchains like Salana regardless Vitalik had to step in and reaffirm
his authority over the Ethereum Foundation he responded to the toxicity by saying quote “No
this is not how this game works.” He also said that quote “You are decreasing the chance I have
any interest whatsoever in doing what you want mil.” Safe to say he wasn’t best pleased then
more importantly though Vitalik reiterated that the decision on who becomes the foundation’s new
leader was his alone to make until a proper board had been put together this was in response to
calls from the community to make Danny Ryan the new leader of the foundation who’d been
instrumental in Ethereum’s merge in fact an informal and unofficial survey was taken at the
end of January with a simple yes or no vote on whether Dany should be made the sole leader a
whopping 99.98% of wallet owners voted yes in any case all this infighting caused ETH’s price to
tumble and Ethereum’s onchain activity declined by 38% the following week yikes to make matters worse
Eric Connor a core Ethereum developer believed that Vitalik’s sole decision-making went against
the core values of decentralization and that of the community he chose to leave Ethereum as a
result focusing instead on AI agent cryptos fast forward to the 1st of March this year when Danny
Ryan announced that he would be joining Vivec Raman as a co-founder of Etherealize which you’ll
recall is an organization that markets Ethereum to institutional investors eth holders were thrilled
at the news since Danny would be able to wield his expertise to pitch Ethereum to big investors and
that same day the Ethereum Foundation officially announced that it had created an entirely
new leadership structure consisting of two co-directors of the foundation these were Shia
Wei Wong a core Ethereum Foundation researcher and Thomas Stunch the CEO of Nevermind the
second largest execution client on Ethereum then at the end of April the Ethereum Foundation
announced that it had restructured its leadership defining the roles and responsibilities of its
management team and board of directors notably the announcement said that quote “The EF board is
like a security council to protect the heart and soul of EF by outlining Ethereum’s vision while
also remaining compliant as a Swiss foundation.” Meanwhile the new management will focus on
executing strategies to support this vision also joining the foundation’s management team
is Bastian A who will focus on organizational strategy and Josh Stark who will oversee project
execution and marketing efforts and for those wondering Vitalik and Ya remain on the board along
with Patrick who mentioned earlier and Shia Wong one of the new co-executives who will bridge the
gap between the board and the management team strangely though Thomas Stunchuk the other
co-executive wasn’t added to the board now obviously the recent leadership shuffle means
that Vitalik and Ya will have very different roles ya was named as the Ethereum Foundation’s
president a position that was basically created for her to fill as the new president she will
oversee the foundation’s vision while managing external relationships vitalic on the other hand
will shift away from day-to-day management and operational duties instead focusing on providing
technical and intellectual guidance on the Ethereum ecosystem if these roles seem somewhat
vague it’s because they appear to be intentionally designed that way granting Vitalik and Ya more
symbolic positions that preserve their influence while keeping them less involved in day-to-day
operations this shift effectively hands more control to the rest of the foundation aligning
with Ethereum’s commitment to decentralization this also allows Vitalik to refocus his efforts
on researching other ways to improve the Ethereum blockchain which begs the question of what’s
next for Ethereum under the foundation’s new leadership well unless you’ve been living under
a rock you’ll have seen that Ethereum recently went through its Perra upgrade which was rolled
out onto the mainet on the 7th of May to quickly recap Pectra introduced 11 improvement proposals
or EIPs notably these brought some muchneeded UX improvements to Ethereum allowing for safer smart
contracts enhanced smart wallet functionality and a smoother staking experience closely following
the Pectra upgrade will be Fusaka which is due to be implemented towards the end of 2025 and then
Glamsterdam which will be implemented towards the second half of 2026 despite sounding more like
a Dutch rock festival than an Ethereum hardfork the Vaka upgrade aims to tackle Ethereum scaling
while Glamsterdam aims to make Ethereum faster and cheaper to use finally and by the way you can
check out our video on Petra right over here if you want to learn more oh and don’t worry i’m sure
we’ll cover the Fusaka and Glamsterdam upgrades too when they come around and hey if anyone wants
to make Glamsterdam happen as an actual Dutch rock festival count me in see you there anyhow Vitalik
has also set his sights on some pretty ambitious goals specifically he wants to make Ethereum
as simple as Bitcoin over the next few years i’m not sure how feasible that is but hey
Vitalik’s the gigab brain here so I’m sure he’ll figure it out another ambitious goal meanwhile is
to improve Ethereum’s consensus layer to achieve three slot finality which will drastically speed
up transaction confirmations as for the execution layer Vitalic has proposed a shift away from the
Ethereum virtual machine or EVM to a ZK friendly virtual machine like RiskV now this sounds like a
lot of work but the payoff could be huge it could simplify the protocol and could even result in
100x performance improvements for zero knowledge proofs vitalik has also called for protocol-wide
standardization in order to reduce complexity and enhance Ethereum’s infrastructure and development
he suggested that devs should adopt a max line of code limit to simplify their protocols i’m not
sure how we feel about that one to be honest but Vitalik said that quote simplicity is in many
ways similar to decentralization again he’s the gigabrain here meanwhile the Ethereum Foundation
has also restated its own vision the foundation wrote on X that quote “Our role is both to drive
forward critical progress ourselves and to help build up others who help lead the ecosystem this
requires constant evolution the EF must change with the ecosystem adapting to the community’s
needs while maintaining our core principles.” In the thread the Ethereum Foundation also outlined
its key objectives which aimed to tackle three primary challenges scaling Ethereum at the
layer 1 base chain scaling data availability through blobs the data attachments introduced in
the Denune upgrade and improving Ethereum’s UX these objectives aim to combat some of Ethereum’s
biggest challenges such as its high transaction costs and network congestion to help on board and
retain developers and users to the ecosystem so then this brings us to the big question what do
all of these developments mean for ETH’s price well from our perspective the recent changes to
the Ethereum Foundation could bring new life to Ethereum’s development which could actually become
the catalyst ETH needs to see an explosion to the upside this is anything but guaranteed but
the price action after the PRA upgrade was promising to say the least from our perspective
ETH could continue to see further upside from here and that’s for several reasons the first is
Bitcoin dominance there’s no denying that Bitcoin dominance has been going up only but eventually
that trend will change and history suggests that when it does this trend changes very quickly more
importantly history suggests that a significant amount of capital could rotate out of BTC into
other large caps when Bitcoin dominance does start to fall and ETH is the first in line simply
because it’s the second largest crypto by market cap in fact we’d say that at today’s prices ETH is
severely undervalued consider that we’ve just had the Petra upgrade which went off without a hitch
by the way there’s also Fusaka and Glamsterdam two major upgrades that will take place over
the next year or so ethereum is also the chain that will likely see the most institutional
adoption even if some alternatives are better on a technical level that’s because Ethereum is the
most secure smart contract blockchain out there it also hosts the largest ecosystem has the most
DeFi activity and is the preferred chain for tokenized realworld assets or RWAs not to mention
that the actual president of the United States has been buying ETH and will be launching a DeFi
protocol on Ethereum as such ETH could take many skeptics by surprise and could enjoy one hell of a
recovery rally this could take ETH to new all-time highs and could even attract more speculative
retail investors to the broader altcoin market the question is will investors even give ETH
a chance after so many have abandoned it for chains like Salana or Sooie only time will tell
okay if you enjoyed that video smash those like and subscribe buttons and show it some love if you
want to learn more about Etherealize then check out the video right over here and if you want to
hear our bull case for ETH you can check out the video right over here okay thank you for watching
and I’ll see you next time this is Guy signing off