Buterin says the Ethereum Foundation is not the ‘hub’ of Ethereum.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin responded to growing criticism of the Ethereum Foundation's role in the Ethereum ecosystem, pushing back against critics who want the organization to play a more active role in supporting the token's prices and transactions.
Buterin said the foundation will focus on censorship resistance, open source software code, long-term research, cybersecurity and decentralization of the Ethereum protocol, as outlined in its mandate. And so he said.
“EF is not ‘the center of Ethereum', rather EF is ‘a node, with a specific purpose, with other nodes. We always say that EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem, and even in EF, want us to be the former.
The Ethereum Foundation's mandate was published in March 2026. Source: Ethereum Foundation
“Now we're taking steps to make sure we're the latter,” he added, adding that the Ethereum Foundation wants to strengthen Ethereum's cybersecurity and code base, but not compete with top chains or scale to 1 million transactions per second.
The comments were followed by several large ETH holders selling their entire ETH position and high-profile departures from the Ethereum Foundation, as the cryptocurrency's current price, about $2,094, is 50% below the $5,000 peak reached in August 2025.
“EF only owns 0.16% of all ETH,” he said, adding that it is common for other foundations to hold 10-50% of their native tokens.
Related: Blockchain Researcher Defends Ethereum Foundation, Says It's Doing Its Job ‘Right'
Under pressure when the token price falls
“I think Ethereum's original sin was that it didn't take tokennomics into account with every move it made from Denkun,” said cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin.
The Denkun update was a major protocol update released in March 2024 that significantly reduced network fees for Layer-2 transactions and subsequently caused a drop in Ethereum base layer revenue.
In March 2024, fees on the Ethereum layer-1 blockchain network were significantly reduced after the Denkun update. Source: Token Terminal
Most investors “don't want to believe in something, they don't put points on the scoreboard,” Shin said of ETH.
Buterin said on Sunday that the foundation will focus on “longevity” and expand its funds to finance research, which means that it will sell less ETH in the future.
In May, the foundation released 21,270 ETH from the Lido liquid staking platform as part of its treasury strategy.
Unloading ETH means that those holdings will no longer yield to the Ethereum Foundation, but it is not a guarantee that the organization will sell those tokens.
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