Buterin Shrinks Role at Ethereum Foundation as ETH Sales Slow

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin will step back from a central role on the Ethereum Foundation board as the organization narrows its mandate and slows ETH sales to support a concentrated technical agenda called CROPS, focused on censorship resistance, openness, privacy and security. The foundation will expand its board to dilute any single member’s influence and will shift some community support to outside organizations.

Buterin framed the foundation as one node in a larger ecosystem rather than its main coordinator. He wrote that the foundation has been retreating from a more central coordinating position partly in response to criticism that some actions conflicted with public commitments to decentralization and privacy. Aya Miyaguchi, the foundation’s president, is leading much of the transition, which the board expects to stabilize over several months.

Under the new mandate, the foundation will reduce direct ETH sales and concentrate spending on a narrower set of technical priorities. In a statement, Buterin wrote, “today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH).” The policy is intended to free resources for work the foundation describes as unlikely to be replicated by competing networks.

Specific technical priorities include building provably bug-free components using AI-assisted formal verification, improving consensus safety under asynchronous network conditions and in 49% attacker scenarios, and reducing reliance on intermediaries through proposals such as FOCIL and EIP-8141. The foundation also supports wallet-layer work like the Kohaku project aimed at reducing dependence on third-party servers. A recent staking program for the treasury has already lowered the need to sell ETH for operations.

The foundation’s treasury report earlier this year showed 99.1% of reserves remain held in ether. The foundation currently holds about 0.16% of the total ether supply, a stake smaller than several individual holders and far below the reserve levels common at some rival chain foundations. Buterin has stated that nearly 90% of his personal net worth is held in ether, with the remainder allocated to open-source biotech, software and hardware efforts.

The foundation plans to provide seed support to organizations that take over activities it will no longer fund directly, but officials have not detailed those partnerships. By narrowing its scope, the foundation expects other groups in the ecosystem to take on responsibilities related to supporting ETH as an asset and running community-facing programs. The board and staff aim to operate under the clarified mandate after the transition period, which is expected to last several months. At the time of the report, ETH traded near $2,100.