Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin mentioned the Ethereum Foundation will select “longevity over breadth,” cut back ETH gross sales and slender its focus to CROPS: censorship resistance, seize resistance, openness, privateness and safety.
In a prolonged put up on X, Buterin detailed that the Ethereum Foundation holds roughly 0.16% of all ETH, properly beneath the ten% to 50% he mentioned it’s widespread for the central foundations of different blockchains to carry.
Practically 90% of his personal web price sits in ETH, with the remaining roughly $40 million in onchain fiat already earmarked for open-source biotech, software program and {hardware} initiatives, Buterin added.
His affect throughout the EF will proceed to lower because the board expands, aligning along with his need to be much less influential there. Nonetheless, he additionally hedged his phrases, saying, “This is only my own view. The board is not just me, and I have no extra special powers on the board that the other board members do not.”
He framed the EF as “one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes,” not the middle of Ethereum. Addressing throughput, Buterin mentioned it might be a mistake for Ethereum to maximise it.
“Being as fast and as scalable as possible, and only a small epsilon more decentralized than the others, is a route to mediocrity, and if we try it, we will lose.”
As a substitute, Buterin pointed to Ethereum striving to be “deeply impressive” in what he referred to as the “CROPS dimension.” That includes making Ethereum provably bug-free, which is argued to be inside attain given AI-powered verification.
The put up landed after no less than 8 senior EF contributors left or introduced departures in 2026, 5 in Might alone, reigniting debate over the muse’s path.
Crypto neighborhood reacts
Distinguished Ethereum voices have been supportive of Buterin.
Anthony Sassano, an unbiased Ethereum educator, angel investor and advisor, replied on to the put up, thanking Buterin. A separate quote tweet from Sassano centered on Buterin’s framing of ETH as essentially the most high-value “product” of the Ethereum blockchain.
Creator and early Ethereum advisor William Mougayar quote-tweeted the put up: “Basically, Ethereum just got its own Clarity Act over the weekend. It was a crystal clear message, and the road ahead is super clear. Ethereum is untouchable.”
Developer Suhail Kakar additionally replied instantly, calling the put up “bullish.” “A foundation voluntarily shrinking its own power is the rarest thing in crypto. genuinely the most cypherpunk thing I’ve read in a long time.”
In the meantime, core builders picked on the CROPS framework.
Go-Ethereum developer Marius van der Wijden replied that safety was being underdiscussed: “When people talk about CROPS, they seem to focus on the CR, OS and Privacy part. The security part is in my opinion the most important! Without a secure L1 none of this makes any sense and we have taken Ethereum’s base layer security for granted by now.”
Consensus layer developer Potuz adopted up within the thread, noting that “one of Ethereum’s biggest selling points is the no downtime since genesis” and that the document made each fork a concentrated danger.
Laura Shin, host of Unchained, requested the governance query the put up left open: “What’s the process for adding new members to the board?” Buterin didn’t publicly reply on the time of writing. DeFiPrime founder Nick Sawinyh famous the EF now sounded “less like a cathedral and more like a protocol commons operator.”
Others criticized the cryptocurrency’s efficiency. Ether has fallen almost 60% in opposition to bitcoin during the last 5 years, to 0.02738 BTC. Over that interval, bitcoin’s worth almost doubled from $35,600 to $77,500 on the time of writing.
Learn extra: Ethereum’s id disaster is deepening after high-profile ‘mind drain’ frustrates the neighborhood
