Nikolay

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

Some of my perspective on where the @ethereumfndn is going.

First of all, 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. @aerugoettinea is the one executing much of this transition. My input has been largely on technical questions. The board is in the process of expanding, and my own power within the org will continue to decrease, which is honestly what I want.

The 2025 era brought many important improvements to EF and its ability to execute. Many issues were resolved, and EF continues to benefit from its improved efficiency and greater focus on concrete goals to this day. And so with those problems resolved, early this year, the largest remaining hole that I perceived was something different nagging at me: I would regularly spot people saying things like "vitalik says these beautiful things about ethereum needing to be decentralized, and have privacy, and be a sanctuary technology, but why do the EF's actions not reflect that?"

Now, you may have been hearing something different. You may not have been sensing a feeling of crisis at all, and maybe were hearing people saying that finally we were taking execution and BD seriously and the main task for us is to keep going that way and be even better and faster. Then probably there is genuine difference between you and me, in what kinds of criticism I take most seriously, and what kinds of critics through their criticism are most able to make me feel pain.

As an analogy, let's briefly switch over to a different domain.

One belief you can have about Google is that it is a success story, and has brought a lot of good to humanity in organizing the world's information. Another belief you can have about Google is that they had a beautiful idealistic beginning, but at some point the corruption of mainstream corporate attitudes seeped in, and they slowly bit by bit completely abandoned the "don't be evil" slogan.

My belief on Google specifically is probably somewhere between the two. BUT, if you had taken me back in time to ~2008, and offered me a button to press to make Google one or two standard deviations more "dogmatic", eg. give Richard Stallman permanent veto power over some key policies, I would immediately press it.

Why? Because a choice for one company is not a choice for the world, or even one country. Google existed and exists in the context of a technology industry generally drifting away from early idealistic don't-be-evil roots and toward greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craven capitulation to (or worse, active participation in) government pressure for ideological control, surveillance and war. And so *one company* doing something different, positioning itself to be what George Bernard Shaw calls the Unreasonable Man, resisting the trend of the times, would have been better for freedom, balance of power and stability of society as a whole, than *all* large companies bending to dominant trends. This is a part of my version of pluralism.

This line of thinking is not just mine, but I also is not too far off from what Aya and others had in mind with the Mandate.

Now how does this all get to the role of the EF?

EF is not a "center of Ethereum", rather EF is "one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes". We've always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem (and even within the EF) wanted us to be the former. Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter.

This is particularly important because EF is a limited organization, with limited resources and limited organizational capacity. The EF has only ~0.16% of all ETH (less than many other individual ETH holders), whereas among other blockchains it's common for "the central foundation" to have 10-50%. Fiscally, the EF was originally designed to fulfill a limited work scope defined in the token sale docs and other pre-launch materials (building the chain software; getting through Frontier, Homestead, Metropolis, Serenity), which was fully completed in 2022; it was not designed to be an eternal steward.

And so today, the EF is choosing to use its remaining resources to pursue longevity over breadth (yes, this means we sell less ETH). The EF focuses *specifically* on those activities critical to the success of ethereum as a censorship/capture-resistant, open, private and secure system, that would not happen otherwise. This means making hard choices, and in some cases even activities that we highly approve of and people that we highly respect becoming outside of the EF. People of great technical talent, public respect and even alignment with the mission and CROPS being outside of the EF is in fact necessary if we want important tasks to be able to attract outside capital. This also means the EF taking opinionated stands culturally.

This is all intended in cooperation with all other parts of ethereum. We recognize that many other parts of the ethereum world highly respect CROPS and related values. But highly respecting is not the same as choosing to specialize and totally dedicate to a domain (Compare in a different domain: I think reducing animal cruelty is important, and I like vegan food, but am not full unconditional vegan myself)

EF is still in a transition period, and we expect its new long-term form to stabilize over the next few months. What are the guiding principles of this new form? Again, I am only one person, but I can give my answer from a technical perspective (there are also critical non-technical aspects).

At the core, *Ethereum must be impressive*. We are living in an age of highly intelligent AI and all kinds of other technological acceleration. "Status quo EVM, with a hard fork or two a year to optimize for short-term needs of users" is not interesting.

To some, "impressive" means: 250ms latency and 1M TPS. I think Ethereum trying to go that route is a mistake. 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.

I think Ethereum should scale. But I think Ethereum should strive the hardest to be deeply impressive in a different dimension: the CROPS dimension. This means things like:

* Provably bug-free Ethereum. This is a goal that all cybersecurity researchers would have thought is absurd and impossible, up until roughly 6 months ago. Now, it's on the cusp of being possible, thanks to AI-assisted formal verification. So we should be frontrunners in doing this.

* Available chain consensus. Ethereum is, and with lean consensus will cotninue to be, the ONLY chain that has both (i) traditional-BFT style properties that it's safe under asynchrony up to a high level of fault tolerance, and (ii) the bitcoin PoW-style property that under synchrony it's safe up to 49% attackers. As far as I can tell, literally no other chain has this or is planning for it; bitcoin goes for (ii) only and most other chains go for (i) only. Some will remember I fought hard for this, Unreasonably insisting that it is not OK for ethereum to rely on social consensus and hard forks to rescue ethereum from 34% of nodes going offline. It's OK for chains like hyperledger, bnb, solana, tempo, etc. It's not OK for bitcoin or ethereum or eg. zcash.

* Intermediary minimization. The fact that smart contract wallets, protocols like railgun, etc have to send transactions through intermediaries to get included onchain is honestly embarrassing, and it's a constant point of fragility. Hence the work on FOCIL and EIP-8141 (and 7701 and years of work before) to make transaction sending intermediary-minimized with public mempool and strong inclusion properties, in a truly general-purpose way, that covers not just eg. secp256r1, but also privacy protocols and much more. Kohaku is pushing intermediary minimization at the user layer, pulling Ethereum away from the dystopian status quo world where our wallets don't even verify the chain, send our private data out to a dozen third-party servers, and toward a brighter CROPS future.

Some of these goals are Unreasonable - maybe Ethereum would be "fine" getting only 50% of the way - what if we depend on intermediaries, but make it easy to switch? But going 50% of the way would not make Ethereum Deeply Impressive in the CROPS way. So we push for 100%.

Fortunately all these goals are compatible with high TPS, this is a major focus of research (esp. on scaling the state). Well-designed L2s can also help, especially L2s optimized for specific applications (eg. high-volume trading, privacy...). These goals are even compatible with significantly lower slot times, thanks to Raul's work on erasure-coded P2P, and many other optimizations.

The most high-value "product" of the ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is ETH the asset. Ethereum secures $250 billion of ETH. The types of properties of Ethereum that I mentioned above are very good for ETH the asset. Nearly 90% of my net worth is in ETH, and most of the remainder is ~$40m of onchain fiat of which every dollar has already been allocated for some open-source biotech or software or hardware initiative. That said, there are aspects of supporting ETH the asset - *necessary* aspects even - that are outside the scope of the EF. This is where we need other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than the EF does) to step in and help. EF has been recently thinking more about how it will relate to other such organizations, and give them needed initial support.

EF will be a smaller ship than in previous years, a more opinionated one - in some cases more opinionated in ways that might be difficult to comprehend - but a longer-lasting one, and one suited to making sure that ethereum brings something meaningful to the world. We are grateful to all those inside and outside the EF who are helping to make this happen.

[binji @binji_x]

the eth core devs don’t tweet a lot about just how hard the work that they do is so let’s talk about it:

1. every line of code they merge can move more money than most banks process in a quarter. there is no staging server for that.

2. they swap consensus logic for a 400B + dollar economy without scheduling downtime. ever.

3. they coordinate hundreds of researchers, auditors, and client teams across time zones, cultures, and philosophies, yet ship like a single mind.

4. they do it all in public, with every decision dissected by the loudest peanut gallery on the internet, and still keep the vibe collaborative.

5. they design for attackers who have nine figure incentives and infinite patience. then they sleep anyway.

6. they keep six independent clients in perfect sync so the same block lives at the same height for every node in the world.

7. they turn bleeding edge research into production code while preserving backwards compatibility for machines that went online before defi even had a name.

8. they debug issues that only happen once a year on a single archive node because someone somewhere will rely on that edge case.

9. they write cryptography that must stay unbroken for decades while the math itself evolves beneath their feet.

10.when the upgrade lands smooth the outside world shrugs. inside ethereum we know it was a minor miracle. every successful fork proves that decentralized coordination can outperform the world’s best hierarchies and shows that open internet capital markets are now the default.

thank you, truly.
we owe you everything.

[MariusVanDerWijden @vdWijden]

Didn't even manage to make it the whole weekend, but it was very healing!
Now I'm back and more bullish than ever. Ethereum needs to stand for something and I want to be part of it. Part of something that matters, that cuts through the bullshit and slop, that empowers humans in

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

@RyanSAdams ETH is a store of value and one of the most important apps on ethereum.

[Token Terminal 📊 @tokenterminal]

BREAKING: The stablecoin transfer volume on @ethereum surpassed $8 trillion in Q4, marking a new all-time high.

[Evan Van Ness @evan_van_ness]

5 Facts That Might Make You View Peter's Memo Differently

1. When Peter says his compensation in his first 6 years was 625k (in ETH), ETH was in single digits for at least a year or so of those 6, and then ETH was under $300 for about 60% more of that time.

See screenshot below.

While I can’t be sure, I have very strong reason to suspect that “the first 6 years at 625k” cuts off right when he got a very large (and overdue!) raise.

It’s not that he has been getting paid $100k a year for the last couple years, as most of the engagement baiters tried to make people believe.

2. Geth was under 10% market share among miners in q3 2018.

Parity had an absolute stranglehold on market share in q3 2018 among miners.

Now, to his credit, the Geth team turned it around. It was a pretty bad situation to have 90% of block production be on a client whose leaders had already left for Polkadot.

Anyway, the point here is that Geth was not dominant for most of the 6 years where Peter says he was making $100k a year.

Of course under Peter's leadership, Geth did turn it around and become such a performant and reliable client that it’s STILL extremely underrated how it underlies most layer2s and alt-L1s. Certainly once the turnaround became apparent, Peter and the entire Geth team was extremely underpaid relative to the value created, but the turnaround didn’t fully come to fruition until around the back quarter of this 6 year period.

3. It was surprisingly hard for EF leadership to get Geth to take more money

As part of EF leadership around this time (2019-2021), I always advocated for raising salaries for developers in EF. I’ve been consistent on this for years, probably because my dad was a developer for my entire life.

I never dealt with Geth directly, but I asked lots of questions because I was continually baffled by how hard it was to simply raise their salaries. And then Peter's rants on Twitter were often taken out of context by engagement baiters, so Geth salaries was often the subject of conversation.

One problem was that EF asked Geth to submit budgets with big raises in them, and every time i checked in, I was told that Geth hadn’t submitted them. This never made any sense to me.

Why wasn’t it happening? Well among other factors, It turns out that some senior members of the Geth team were pretty against getting paid more and thought they were paid quite adequately.

“Why didn’t EF just give Geth more money?” A valid question and one I asked at the time. One problem was that if we gave everyone a 50% raise, then it might actually offend some outperformers that they got the same bump as others and backfire and be counterproductive.

Anyway, generally speaking, there’s a bunch of context here. Geth became such a great piece of software that it was indispensable not just to Ethereum, not just to the wider ecosystem of VC-backed ETH layer 2s, but also to most of the alt-L1s competing with Ethereum.

Obviously the Geth team did not capture even 0.1% of the value created there (much of it outside Ethereum). That's a shame and I think one thing that stuck in Peter's craw.

However:

4. Peter turned down millions from Avalanche

As was widely rumored at the time, Avalanche (a Geth fork) was trying to poach Geth, and Peter specifically. I never really got the full story but multiple members of the Geth team confirmed to me at the time that they had offered Peter and/or Geth millions.

Having observed Peter for years, and having heard reports of friends who talk to Peter and even reading his May 2024 essay that he published this week, my sense is that CryptoTwitter™ misunderstands Peter. It’s not that he is particularly upset about his own pay, it’s more that he is upset at how much money sloshes around crypto generally and particularly to people he doesn’t think are deserving.

Especially investooors and VCooors

5. Peter is fine with ETH becoming irrelevant.

Peter thinks we should be singularly idealistic and be willing to let SQLchains surpass Ethereum, rather than be pragmatic and continually improve Ethereum.

I’ve often had this sense that Peter feels this. And then he recently said it explicitly in his talk at EthCluj:

"that's one of the problems where if you're not willing to sacrifice- I mean Ethereum is kind of #2 blockchain forever and if you're always living in the fear that oh my god. I'm going to lose that status. I must never lose that status, then you're always going to make decisions where it's it's not the best solution, but it's the best we have now and just roll it out and then we'll just fix it later. And I think this is the mentality that I I would change a bit. I think it's better to fall down to #3, #4, fifth place"

If you take Peter’s comments at face value, he thinks we should be happy if ETH went down to $800 right now - because that’s what we’d be priced at in fifth place.

This mentality is insane and would put Ethereum’s very existence at risk. Why fight for decentralization if SQL is more valuable? Just use AWS and gaslight like all the SQLchains do.

As I told Vitalik somewhere around the time of his memo, Peter got a lot of adoration from the Ethereum community. I can’t think of a single person not named Vitalik who got as much adoration. But Peter never seemed to care about it, he wanted attention from Vitalik. He never got it; we even saw as such this week.

Sometimes good things just come to an end.

[PhiMarHal @PhiMarHal]

This is insane revisionism.

Polygon branded itself as a sidechain to get the Ethereum users on it. It worked.

Despite that, their marketing strategy was to regularly trash Ethereum.

Sandeep himself personally dumped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of MATIC on holders.

[curb 🐂🀄️ @CryptoCurb]

🚨 JUST IN: $BNB IS NOW DOWN 20% SINCE “BOYCOTT BINANCE” STARTED TRENDING ON X AND CUSTOMERS WITHDRAWING $20,000,000,000+ IN FUNDS OUT OF THE EXCHANGE

THIS IS ALL IN RESPONSE TO @BINANCE FAULTY INTERNAL PRICE ORACLES DEPEGGING, CAUSING A FLASH CRASH AND $100B+ IN LIQUIDATIONS

[Nikolay @ns_raykov]

@gnosisdao @gnosispay Daily card

[Nikolay @ns_raykov]

@aboutcircles Let's go Circles!

[Nikolay @ns_raykov]

Just created my Circles profile! Looking to get trusted by someone who’s already in the network. @aboutcircles
https://t.co/Y6zHlvcYcX
https://t.co/pPgqz23z3b

[Circles @aboutcircles]

Introducing Circles — an ambitious experiment on money.

For the first time ever, you can create your own money without needing a bank or a government. 🧵

[Shanaka Anslem Perera ⚡ @shanaka86]

4:30pm: Whale opens $100M+ BTC short
4:50pm: Trump announces 100% China tariffs
5:20pm: RECORD $19.3 BILLION liquidations
That whale’s profit: $192 MILLION in 50 minutes.
This wasn’t luck. This was insider trading.
Subpoena the exchange logs. Name the desks. Prove markets are fair … or admit they’re not.
RT if you want answers.

[koeppelmann @koeppelmann]

It annoys me to live in a culture where you can spout factless bullshit and still enjoy a reputation as an expert of some sorts.

[Will Corcoran @corcoranwill]

lean ethereum thread:

PQ workshop (Cambridge, UK) started hours ago. this thread will be updated with presentation recordings (and slides) as they occur

🧵

[Signal @signalapp]

We are alarmed by reports that Germany is on the verge of a catastrophic about-face, reversing its longstanding and principled opposition to the EU’s Chat Control proposal which, if passed, could spell the end of the right to privacy in Europe.

https://t.co/015qmQnIS2

[Kira Sama @Kira_sama]

Tether literally wants Ethereum dead.

Yet they are forced to issue on ethereum because that's what buyers/institutions demand.

Check mate and f you tether.

The ticker is ETH.

[Clouted @CloutedMind]

the only thing solana seems to accelerate is the downfall of society

everyday they fund and produce even more brainless dystopic shit

what is this housewives that shit on eth content r u kidding me 😹

[brantly @BrantlyMillegan]

holy shit we're there: ETH has now outperformed BTC on every single timescale on TradingView 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[matze | growthepie 🥧 @web3_data]

"no one even considers building Ethereum L2s anymore"

ehm, what?