The Ethereum Foundation published three articles: restating its vision, confirming its direction, and disclosing its management structure.

This article is from: Ethereum Foundation

Compiled by｜Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina); Translator｜Azuma (@azuma_eth)

Editor’s Note: The Ethereum Foundation (EF) published three articles last night. The three articles are: "The Vision of the Ethereum Foundation" written by Vitalik Buterin himself and EF Chair Aya Miyaguchi; "The Next Chapter of the Ethereum Foundation" written by the two new executive directors Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak; and "The Management and Board Structure of the Ethereum Foundation" released by the board of the Ethereum Foundation.

The three articles are not too long, but they reiterate the vision and work direction of the EF from a higher level, and emphasize the planning of EF's delegation of authority in certain areas, which can be seen as a landmark node on EF's path of self-reform.

The following is the full text of three articles, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily.

! Ethereum Foundation issued three articles in a row: restatement of vision, confirmation of direction, disclosure of management structure

"The Vision of the Ethereum Foundation" — Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi

Ethereum's power stems from its decentralized nature – not only technically, but also socially and structurally. This article explains the vision, role, and focus of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) as one of the ecological guardians. As we take up the role of our new management team, we reaffirm the vision, principles and values we have always upheld. These priorities are not rigid plans, but are reflected in the strategies outlined by EF's two co-executive directors. By clarifying our working methods and priorities, we want to clarify the direction of our efforts, but also indicate that we will deliberately withdraw from certain areas** to ensure that the ecosystem can continue to thrive with the participation of all.

Vision

Guarding the "Infinite Garden" — this ecosystem, composed of projects, communities, and infrastructure built around Ethereum, maintains resilience in a changing environment. We see Ethereum as a world computer shared by humanity; this open, permissionless platform has brought stability, freedom, and technological empowerment to millions of people around the globe. We cherish the real value that Ethereum is creating.

Therefore, we use the metaphor of "Infinite Garden" to describe the Ethereum ecosystem: a space that is eternally thriving and continuously evolving, where builders, dreamers, and guardians from around the world sow creativity, support each other, and collaboratively create tools that will reshape the foundations of civilization such as finance and identity for decades to come.

character positioning

The greatest advantage of Ethereum lies in its unparalleled ecosystem. Beyond EF, numerous teams are pushing the boundaries through technological innovation, educational initiatives, and public goods funding. The mission of EF is to strengthen this advantage and safeguard core values: we fill gaps, correct imbalances, and support key initiatives, always ensuring that no single entity, including EF, can dominate the evolution of Ethereum. We strategically intervene, consciously withdraw, and continuously adjust our focus as Ethereum matures and the environment evolves.

Through "purposeful subtraction," we empower ecosystem members to take on primary responsibilities. Our role today is dual:

• We do what no one can do today;
• We will also help others to do what only we can do tomorrow.

This means focusing on high-leverage areas, where EF's unique position allows us to support the ecosystem in ways that are difficult for other organizations to achieve, while building the capacity and infrastructure so that others can ultimately take the lead. Here are some practical examples:

We are doing what no one can do today:

• Fund and maintain critical Ethereum infrastructure, such as client diversity.
• Coordinate core protocol upgrades (e.g., Merge, Dencun), where neutral management is critical – including projects completed over the next 12 months and long-term efforts to define Ethereum's role over the next decade.
• Support zero-knowledge research and open-source tools to push the frontier of privacy-preserving technologies.
• Organize ecosystem-wide gatherings (such as Devcon) to bring together diverse contributors from around the world.
• Operate ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge center for new users and builders.

We are still helping others grow to take on the roles we once had:

• Fund early public goods projects until they can be self-sustaining or funded by the community.
• Open source educational content, developer tools, and research for others to continue development.
• Help new coordination mechanisms emerge and guide them towards independent management (e.g., MACI pilot, protocol guilds, retrospective public goods funding).
• Support geo-decentralization and local leadership through: Next Billion Scholarship to empower local builders in underserved areas; Grassroots community funding to strengthen the local Ethereum ecosystem; The Devcon Road, which engages and grows regional communities before Devcon; The Devcon Scholars program, which provides support and opportunities for participants from underrepresented communities.

Work Method

Adaptive Evolution: We evolve alongside the ecosystem, continuously reassessing our roles and impacts. Our structure and initiatives adapt to the ever-changing demands of Ethereum while maintaining our core principles.

Thoughtful Complexity: We embrace the complexity required by decentralized systems while pursuing elegant solutions. Our goal is not to simplify for the sake of simplification, but to achieve balance through careful design.

Community Empowerment: We support and encourage community-led initiatives that help create the conditions for independent teams to succeed without relying on the Foundation.

Core Principles

Long-termism: Focus on the long-term success of Ethereum rather than short-term gains, evaluate the sustainability and multi-generational impact of each decision, and recognize that lasting resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation, and evolution.

Value Guardianship: Defending the core values of Ethereum—anti-censorship, open source, privacy, and security, while empowering ecological self-development. Taking these qualities as the cornerstone of lasting innovation.

Purposeful subtraction, rather than accumulating power, strengthens resilience by:

• Maintain diversity in methods, solutions, and teams.
• Facilitate widespread participation.
• Promote collaboration.
• Reduce centralization.

Strengthening resilience does not mean doing less; it often requires adding new mechanisms or complexity — but always with the goal of creating an antifragile ecosystem that widely distributes power and ownership.

Future Goals

At this critical moment and in the coming years, our direction is shaped by a clear vision. The team is deeply engaged, and existing projects are driving the continuous evolution of Ethereum. Future work is not about reaching certain benchmarks, but rather focusing our energy on the most important matters. To guide our collective attention, we have outlined several areas of impact—specific outcomes that any participant in the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute to.

These goals are not static; they will continually evolve in response to the needs of the ecosystem and the surrounding world.

The role of EF is to identify high leverage gaps - areas where it can effectively fill the void - and concentrate its efforts to create the maximum impact.

Goal 1: Maximize the user base benefiting from the underlying value of Ethereum.

Meaningful scenarios include:

• Internet-native finance: Using tokenized assets/DeFi for payments, savings, and wealth accumulation in regions where fiat currency infrastructure is limited or may become unreliable in the future;
• Internet-native organizations: Participate in DAOs with programmable incentive structures to achieve collaboration, decision-making, and capital formation beyond traditional methods;
• Decentralized Social: Use an Ethereum-based social platform where content is stored on a decentralized network, allowing users to switch clients without losing their social graph;
• Decentralized AI: Collective training of AI models with verifiable security guarantees based on Ethereum, creating an economic framework for AI agents to coordinate with humans (e.g., micro prediction markets);
• Enterprise Applications: Institutional applications using Ethereum on the backend can still provide auditability, privacy, interoperability, and the "lifeboat" mechanism even when interacting through non-wallet interfaces.

Non-target scenarios include:

• Only supports custodial solutions for transfers between custodial wallets;
• Institutional applications that only put event hashes on the chain without providing additional security attributes.

Goal 2: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum technology and social infrastructure.

Resilience is reflected as:

• Ecological autonomy: not relying on EF or any single organization;
• Value Consistency: Adhering to values even in the face of strong temptations;
• Team Diversity: A strong and diverse independent development team;
• Network Resilience: Maintaining activity, censorship resistance, and security during severe shocks to infrastructure;
• Decentralization: Eliminate single points of control or failure;
• Proactive risk management: able to identify and mitigate centralized failure points that arise over time.

Non-resilient performance:

• Although there are many teams in education, client development, or event organization, funding relies entirely on EF;
• The bottleneck formed by high toughness in some areas and low toughness in other areas (such as wallets, ZK provers, and social single points of failure);
• The surface diversity that masks common vulnerabilities (e.g., 20 clients sharing the same codebase, activities in 100 countries operated by the same central agency).

As we pursue these goals, we also maintain a long-term perspective – viewing Ethereum not just as a technology, but as a living ecosystem with the potential to serve generations of humanity.

We envision a future where Ethereum serves as a resilient, neutral global coordination platform. Decentralization must be maintained in both development and governance, and innovation will thrive at every layer of the protocol, enabling communities around the world to build and sustain their own adaptive solutions. We believe that the network's technical and social resilience will continue to grow, and the foundation will do its utmost to ensure our collective success.

"The Next Chapter of the Ethereum Foundation" - Hsiao-Wei Wang, Tomasz Stańczak

Hello! This article is co-authored by Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz. We have been serving as co-executive directors of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) for nearly a month. The honeymoon period is over, and it's time to take action.

A moment where transformation and opportunities coexist

Ethereum has always been a journey: this ever-evolving ecosystem is driven by a group of builders who firmly believe in an open and decentralized world. Although the EF has been established for ten years, we have always maintained the courage for self-renewal.

This year, EF adopted a new leadership model with dual executive directors. This design brings diverse and complementary perspectives, enhancing our ability to tackle complex challenges. We will embrace future opportunities and challenges with a steadfast commitment to the core values of Ethereum, guided by the spirit of guardianship, coordination, and long-term vision.

It is important to emphasize that EF is not a double-headed horse that goes its own way. Our partnership is built on mutual respect, trust, and shared values. We work closely together, constructively challenging each other, and ultimately move forward as a unified team with a common goal.

Work Principles and Key Areas

Looking ahead, we will focus on two major pillars: guiding principles (core values) and objectives (pursuit of impact and resilience). Excellent technology is the foundation of all our work and the fundamental guarantee for achieving our mission.

As executive directors, our responsibility is to implement the vision of EF in a rapidly changing world. This includes strategic planning, ecological guardianship, team leadership, and operational oversight — all serving the long-term success of Ethereum.

The core values we advocate:

• Censorship Resistance: Ensures that Ethereum is always an open network where anyone, anywhere can trade and build without external control.
• Open Source Innovation: Promote collaborative transparency and community-driven development through open sharing of knowledge tools.
• Privacy Protection: Achieve private interactions without compromising security, safeguarding personal freedom and autonomy in the digital age.
• Security: Maintaining the trust, robustness, and resilience of the entire Ethereum ecosystem through secure design and ongoing research.

These values guide our technology choices, ecological support, and the long-term vision of using Ethereum as a public good.

While adhering to these values, we have set our main direction for the next 12 months:

• Expand the Ethereum mainnet;
• Scaling Blob transactions;
• Enhancing user experience (including L2 interoperability and application layer).

This means that we need to improve the interoperability and coordination mechanisms between the mainnet and L2, as well as the user experience and developer experience. At the Devcon conference, provide more opportunities for the application layer and L2 to showcase themselves, and amplify their voices through communication channels.

In addition, we recognize the need to accelerate the Ethereum adoption journey for developers, entrepreneurs, and institutions. EF has the knowledge base and leaders capable of guiding, leading, attracting, and nurturing talent.

Tomasz's supplement

Ethereum will embark on a new chapter. The core values remain unchanged - open source, anti-censorship, privacy, and security, but the EF is changing - it will become an organization that communicates more openly and is willing to engage in difficult dialogues without delay.

**We will focus on speed of execution, accountability, clear goals, and quantifiable metrics. Focus on the success of the Ethereum mainnet protocol – it will continue to serve as a globally neutral network, a protocol that can be trusted because it is "trustless". We are as focused on the success of the mainnet as we are about the prosperity of the ecosystem as a whole: L2 that brings mass adoption creates multiple values for users, and the mainnet serves as the solid and flexible cornerstone behind all transactions and coordination mechanisms. We look forward to this journey – experiencing the most inspiring technological societal change, with visionaries and pragmatic builders.

The next year will be a year of expansion: expanding the mainnet (L1), successfully scaling L2 by providing optimal architectural support, ensuring network security, and gaining user trust. We will be committed to integrating the entire chain ecosystem through excellent engineering and cutting-edge research, offering the best user experience, design, and interoperability.

Hsiao-Wei's supplement

In the coming months, my focus will be on strengthening EF operations to support ecological growth. A flexible and efficient foundation can better serve Ethereum's long-term mission.

While focusing on the core, one of our goals is to provide better support for the application layer. By improving the developer experience, clarifying standards, strengthening the ecosystem, and streamlining the process of bringing ideas to fruition, we aim to assist builders and users.

We are improving the planning, prioritization, and coordination mechanisms within the EF and across ecosystems to ensure that our work aligns with community needs and the spirit of Ethereum's cypherpunk ethos. However, the transformation of the EF is just the beginning; the real momentum comes from the energy and creativity of the global Ethereum ecosystem.

Build the Future

Ethereum is not a monolith; it is a vibrant network made up of community members, builders, researchers, artists, educators, and dreamers. It is global, diverse, and proud of its decentralization. We are constantly inspired by the creativity and resilience of the ecosystem. The foundation will continue to show up where it is most needed, but will also give space when the ecosystem thrives on its own. This is a community-led future.

The road ahead is full of possibilities. Ethereum has changed the boundaries of imagination in technology, finance, governance, and more. Special thanks to all builders, educators, researchers, experimenters, and future visionaries. What we are building together is a great undertaking that transcends any team, project, or generation. It is an honor to walk alongside you, and I look forward to the new chapters that are about to unfold.

"Management and Board Structure of the Ethereum Foundation" - Board of Directors of the Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation's recent move to appoint two co-executive directors and chairs is an important part of its organizational strengthening plan. This new governance structure aims to ensure that the Foundation's vision is realized, the strategy is balanced, the technical direction is clear, and the ecosystem is sustainable. This article will clarify the specific structure of the management team and the board.

New Management (Strategy and Operations Execution)

The co-executive directors will lead and execute the work together with other members of the management team. In the future, you will be informed of the progress made by the management team on various plans, decisions, and new changes through regular updates.

Co-Executive Director:

• Hsiao-Wei Wang；
• Tomasz K. Stańczak.

Core management team members and their responsibilities:

• Bastian Aue: Organizational Strategy, Talent Recruitment and Training, Collaborative Guardian Program;
• Josh Stark: Project execution, dissemination and marketing, collaborative guardian program.

Board of Directors (Supervision and Vision Guidance)

The Ethereum Foundation board acts as a "security committee" that safeguards the core values of the organization while ensuring that the foundation operates in compliance as a Swiss entity. The board is responsible for establishing the vision, overseeing whether the management's strategic decisions align with the foundation's values, and exercising the power to appoint and dismiss executive directors. The current board members include:

• Vitalik Buterin (Founder): Continuously providing technical and ideological guidance for the broader Ethereum ecosystem;
• Aya Miyaguchi (Chairman): Develop the foundation's vision in collaboration with other board members and manage key external relationships;
• Patrick Storchenegger (Swiss legal advisor): Responsible for legal compliance matters in Switzerland;
• Hsiao-Wei Wang (Co-Executive Director): Acts as a bridge between the board of directors and the executive management.

The board has communicated its vision, guiding principles, and goals for the coming years to the management team. We expect to gradually enhance the functions of the board to better fulfill its mission.

architectural design considerations

The appointment of Tomasz and Hsiao-Wei Wang as joint executive directors, while not a traditional decision, holds special value at a time when both the Ethereum ecosystem and the foundation are at a critical stage of development.

Tomasz retains his other corporate roles (Nethermind and venture capital associates) while leveraging his deep understanding of community needs and technology trends to drive comprehensive and powerful change at the Foundation. The Board has agreed with Tomasz that his co-executive director is expected to serve a two-year term – a critical window of opportunity for Ethereum, leveraging his proven strategic execution and industry experience.

Hsiao-Wei Wang holds dual roles as a board member and an executive director, and his research background along with a thorough understanding of the foundation's historical context enables him to accurately grasp organizational needs and effectively connect board decisions with management execution.