Ethereum’s energy lies in its decentralization — not simply technically, however socially and structurally. This weblog articulates the EF’s imaginative and prescient, its position, and priorities as one of many ecosystem’s stewards. We use this second as a chance to restate our imaginative and prescient, ideas and values which we proceed to uphold as we welcome the brand new administration workforce. These priorities are usually not a inflexible plan and are mirrored within the strategies described by EF’s Co-EDs. By defining our method and focus, we additionally goal to make clear the place we direct our efforts — and the place we deliberately step again — in order that the ecosystem can proceed to thrive with everybody’s participation.
Imaginative and prescient
To steward the Infinite Backyard — the ecosystem of initiatives, communities, and infrastructure constructed round Ethereum — to stay resilient amid altering environments. We uphold Ethereum as humanity’s shared world pc, an open and permissionless platform that’s already bringing stability, freedom and technologically-empowered collaboration to hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide. We honor the truth that Ethereum is already in use, creating actual worth for communities throughout the globe.
In that spirit, we embrace the metaphor of the Infinite Backyard to explain the Ethereum ecosystem: a dwelling, evolving house the place builders, dreamers, and stewards from world wide can plant concepts and assist one another as we construct the instruments that can redefine finance, id and different roots within the soil of our civilization for many years to come back.
Our Function
Ethereum’s biggest benefit is its unparalleled ecosystem. There are various groups and organizations exterior of EF that contribute to Ethereum by pushing its boundaries ahead, via technical improvements, instructional occasions, and by funding public items. The Ethereum Basis exists to strengthen this benefit and to uphold Ethereum’s core values. We establish gaps, appropriate imbalances, and assist vital initiatives — at all times guaranteeing that no single actor (together with EF) can dominate Ethereum’s evolution. We step in strategically and step out deliberately, repeatedly adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the atmosphere evolves.
By working towards purposeful subtraction, we’ve empowered others within the ecosystem to tackle nearly all of tasks. At this time, we see our position as twofold:
- We do what nobody else can do right this moment.
- We assist others do tomorrow what solely we are able to do right this moment.
This implies specializing in high-leverage areas the place EF’s distinctive place permits us to assist the ecosystem in methods few others can — whereas additionally constructing capability and infrastructure so others can finally take the lead. Beneath are examples of how this exhibits up in observe:
The place we step in to do what nobody else can right this moment:
- Funding and sustaining vital Ethereum infrastructure like shopper variety.
- Coordinating on core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), the place impartial stewardship is important – each on vital initiatives that can full inside the subsequent 12 months, and on longer-term efforts that can outline Ethereum’s position for the following decade.
- Supporting zero-knowledge analysis and open-source tooling that pushes the frontier of privacy-preserving tech.
- Internet hosting ecosystem-wide gatherings (like Devcon) that carry collectively various world contributors.
- Working ethereum.org as a impartial public data hub for brand spanking new customers and builders.
The place we’ve helped others develop into roles we as soon as held:
- Seeding early-stage public items initiatives via grants till they grow to be self-sustaining or community-funded
- Open-sourcing instructional content material, developer tooling, and analysis to be constructed upon by others.
- Serving to new coordination mechanisms emerge and guiding them towards unbiased stewardship (e.g. MACI pilots, Protocol Guild, retroactive public items funding).
- Supporting geographic decentralization and native management via:
- Subsequent Billion Fellowship – Empowering native builders in underserved areas.
- Grants to grassroots communities – Strengthening native Ethereum ecosystems.
- Highway to Devcon – Partaking and rising regional communities forward of Devcon.
- Devcon Students – Offering entry and assist for individuals from underrepresented communities.
Our Method
Adaptive Evolution
We evolve alongside the ecosystem, repeatedly reassessing our position and influence. Our construction and initiatives adapt to serve Ethereum’s altering wants whereas sustaining our core ideas.
Considerate Complexity
We embrace the required complexity of decentralized methods whereas striving for elegant options. Our purpose shouldn’t be simplification for its personal sake however reasonably attaining steadiness via cautious design.
We assist and amplify community-led initiatives, serving to create situations the place unbiased groups can succeed with out ongoing dependency on the Basis.
Core Rules:
Lengthy‑time period Pondering
We optimize for Ethereum’s lengthy‑time period success over quick‑time period beneficial properties, evaluating each resolution for its sustainable, multi‑generational influence and recognizing that lasting resilience requires steady studying, adaptation, and evolution.
Stewardship of Values
We shield and nurture Ethereum’s core values — censorship resistance, open supply, privateness, and safety — whereas empowering the ecosystem to develop and evolve independently. We protect these important qualities as the inspiration for lasting innovation and progress.
Purposeful Subtraction
Reasonably than accumulate energy, we design for resilience by:
- Sustaining a plurality of approaches, options, and groups
- Enabling various participation
- Facilitating collaboration
- Lowering centralization
Constructing resilience isn’t about doing much less. It usually requires including new mechanisms or complexity — however at all times with the purpose of making an anti‑fragile ecosystem that distributes energy and possession broadly.
Objectives Forward
As we transfer via a pivotal time and into the years forward, our path is formed by a transparent imaginative and prescient. Groups are deeply engaged, and lively initiatives are already in movement to assist Ethereum’s continued evolution. The work forward isn’t about hitting benchmarks — it’s about focusing our vitality the place it issues most. To assist information our collective focus, we’ve outlined just a few influence areas — tangible outcomes that anybody within the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute towards.
These objectives are usually not static; they are going to proceed to evolve alongside the ecosystem and the wants of the world round us.
The Ethereum Basis’s position is to establish high-leverage gaps — the locations the place it’s uniquely positioned to contribute — and direct its efforts towards the best doable influence.
Aim: Maximize the quantity of people that (instantly or not directly) use Ethereum, in such a manner that they profit from Ethereum’s underlying values.
What significant utilization can seem like:
- Web-native monetary entry: Individuals utilizing tokenized property on Ethereum or DeFi for funds, financial savings and wealth constructing – significantly the place fiat infrastructure is proscribed, unreliable or costs extortionate charges, or the place the infrastructure is dependable right this moment however can simply grow to be unreliable tomorrow.
- Web-native organizations: Individuals taking part in DAOs with programmable incentive buildings that allow new types of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that transcend the restrictions of conventional approaches
- Decentralized social media: Individuals utilizing an Ethereum-based social media platform the place content material is saved in a decentralized community, permitting customers to change shoppers with out giving up their social graph
- Decentralized AI: Individuals constructing on Ethereum to collectively practice and supply AI fashions with verifiable safety ensures, and likewise utilizing Ethereum to create financial frameworks the place AI brokers can coordinate with one another and human beings (examples: micro prediction markets)
- Enterprise advantages: Individuals utilizing an institutional utility that makes use of Ethereum on the backend. If constructed accurately, this will present advantages akin to auditability, privateness, interoperability and “escape hatch” mechanisms even when customers usually work together with the app via servers with out a pockets (examples: on-chain-enforced limits to financial issuance; capacity to exit property to L1 and work together with L1 DeFi; capacity to zk-prove credentials to arbitrary third-party apps)
What it’s not:
- Custodial wallets that solely enable ETH or token transfers to different permitted custodial wallets.
- Establishments that publish hashes onchain to characterize occasions, with out truly giving customers safety properties that they would not in any other case have.
Aim: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.
What resilience seems to be like:
- Ecosystem autonomy: thriving independently of the EF or every other single group
- Worth alignment: staying targeted on its values, even within the face of sturdy pursuits pulling in different instructions
- Group variety: energy and plurality of unbiased growth groups
- Community robustness: sustaining liveness, censorship resistance, security even within the face of extremely opposed occasions towards giant components of technical infrastructure (together with “low ranges of the stack” e.g. OS, {hardware}, web)
- Decentralization: eliminating single factors of management or failure
- Proactive danger administration: The ecosystem’s capacity to proactively establish and mitigate central factors of failure that will come up over time
What it’s not:
- 100 sturdy groups in schooling, shopper growth, or organizing occasions, but all depending on EF for funding
- Excessive-resilience in some sectors, however very low-resilience in others, which then grow to be vital bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single factors of failure)
- Performative variety that masks underlying frequent vulnerability (e.g. 20 shoppers that truly use many of the identical code base, occasions in 100 nations which are run by the identical centralized group)
As we work towards these influence areas, we additionally stay grounded in a long-term perspective — one which sees Ethereum not simply as a know-how, however as a dwelling ecosystem with the potential to serve humanity for generations to come back.
We envision a future the place Ethereum serves as a resilient, impartial platform for world coordination. That signifies that decentralization should stay preserved in each growth and governance, innovation will flourish at each layer of the stack, and communities world wide can craft and maintain their very own adaptive options. We imagine the community’s technical and social resilience will solely proceed to develop stronger, and EF will do all the pieces inside its imaginative and prescient and talent to make sure that we succeed collectively.