On May 24, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin shared a post on X (formerly Twitter), where he talked about ongoing discussion around the Ethereum Foundation (EF)’s future. This statement from the co-founder comes amid a series of departures from the organization, which sparked discussion in the entire crypto community.
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…
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 24, 2026
Why Ethereum Must Be “Deeply Impressive”?
In the last few months, major numbers of team members have left the EF. This list of departed people includes researchers Carl Beekuizen and Julian Ma, protocol figures such as Barnabe Monnot and Tim Beiko, and others like Josh Stark, Trent Van Epps, and former co-executive director Tomasz Stanczak.
Among all these departures, most people left the organization in April and May. The community has raised concerns about whether the team is facing any internal conflict after the organization released its Mandate document in March 2026.
Vitalik stated in the post on X, saying that “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 largely been 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.”
Amid the buzz in the community, former EF researcher Dankrad Feist has proposed creating a new independent organization that will be economically aligned. He suggested that the new organization could be funded by at least $1 billion worth of ETH tokens. The main purpose of this new organization would be to boost Ethereum to a competitive position for the value of ETH. Feist has mentioned that there are many loopholes in Ethereum, especially in terms of economic alignment.
In the latest tweet, Vitalik has responded to the ongoing discussion and clarified his position. He has mentioned that the recent changes in EF are the evolution instead of a crisis. He mentioned that his views are personal and that the board, which is now expanding with AerugoetTinea through the transition.
In the post, Vitalik Buterin has compared the EF with the early days of the tech giant, Google. He mentioned how the “idealism” that organizations start with can slowly be wiped out under the constant business pressure.
“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,” stated in the post on X.
Buterin has also refuted the claim that EF is the center of Ethereum. Instead, he is saying that it should work as one node with a clear purpose and work with other nodes.
He mentioned that the foundation is currently only about 0.16% of all Ethereum tokens due to limited resources. According to Vitalik, this is far less than many individuals or foundations in other blockchain ecosystems. He said, “whereas among other blockchains it’s common for’ the central foundation’ to have 10-50%.”
This is the reason why EF is changing its approach to create a lasting impact instead of doing many things at the same time. In the new approach, EF will focus on selling new tokens. “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,” Vitalik said.
On May 18, Vitalik Buterin revealed his views on the AI-based formal verification process under the blog post titled “A shallow dive into formal verification.”
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