Ethereum Foundation Enhances Transparency, Vitalik Responds to Community Concerns

Recently, the funding usage of the Ethereum Foundation has attracted widespread attention from the crypto community. In response to the concerns, the foundation released its official expenditure details at the end of August.

The data shows that "new institutions" account for the largest share of foundation expenditures, reaching 36.5%. This category is primarily used to fund various organizations with the aim of strengthening the Ethereum community in the long term. Following closely is L1 development, which accounts for 24.9% of total expenditures, including funding for external client teams and internal researchers.

The remaining expenses of the foundation cover various aspects such as community development ( 12.7% ), zero-knowledge applications ( 10.4% ), internal operations ( 17.7% ), developer platform ( 16.5% ), and L2 research and development ( 11.4% ). It is worth noting that the foundation has maintained the publication of reports on external expenditures or funding activities for the past four years.

Regarding the fund management plan, the foundation plans to spend 15% of the remaining funds each year, which means its influence will gradually decrease over time. A foundation member estimated that the foundation still has about 10 years of operating funds, but the specific situation will change with fluctuations in the price of Ether.

In the recent ETH sale event, Vitalik explained that this was an automatic order set up earlier, and stated that this might be the last similar transaction. He emphasized that all the proceeds from the sales are used to fund projects and not for personal profit.

In response to the doubts in the DeFi field, Vitalik reiterated his long-term commitment to decentralized finance, but stated that he would not invest in short-term or unsustainable projects. Foundation member Dankrad Feist believes that while DeFi is important, it is not everything for Ethereum. He particularly emphasized the value of decentralized stablecoins in the Ethereum ecosystem.

In terms of technology research and development, the Ethereum Foundation is actively exploring multiple areas, including zero-knowledge proofs, verifiable delay functions, and maximum extractable value. Vitalik and other members also discussed the possibility of adopting binary hash trees instead of Verkle trees in the future.

Regarding the value accumulation of ETH, the foundation members believe it is crucial for the success of Ethereum. They emphasize that the value of ETH will be realized through total fees and currency premiums, not just relying on single transaction fees.

In response to the centralization issues of Layer 2, Vitalik proposed a standard for decentralized L2 solutions and plans to only publicly mention L2 projects that meet or exceed this standard starting next year.

Despite facing some doubts, the Ethereum team is still actively responding to various challenges. As a leading application public chain, the fundamentals of Ethereum remain solid. Currently, although industry applications are encountering bottlenecks, the low transaction fees of L2 are creating conditions for the explosion of new applications. With the improvement of liquidity in the capital market, the adoption rate in the crypto industry is expected to accelerate, and the development prospects of Ethereum are still worth looking forward to.