Ethereum’s power 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 should not a inflexible plan and are mirrored within the methods 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 tasks, communities, and infrastructure constructed round Ethereum — to stay resilient amid altering environments. We uphold Ethereum as humanity’s shared world laptop, 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 residing, evolving area the place builders, dreamers, and stewards from world wide can plant concepts and help one another as we construct the instruments that can redefine finance, identification and different roots within the soil of our civilization for many years to return.
Our Function
Ethereum’s best benefit is its unparalleled ecosystem. There are lots of groups and organizations outdoors 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 determine gaps, right imbalances, and help vital initiatives — all the time making certain 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 the vast majority of duties. Immediately, we see our position as twofold:
- We do what nobody else can do at this time.
- We assist others do tomorrow what solely we will do at this time.
This implies specializing in high-leverage areas the place EF’s distinctive place permits us to help the ecosystem in methods few others can — whereas additionally constructing capability and infrastructure so others can ultimately take the lead. Under are examples of how this reveals up in observe:
The place we step in to do what nobody else can at this time:
- Funding and sustaining vital Ethereum infrastructure like consumer variety.
- Coordinating on core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), the place impartial stewardship is important – each on vital initiatives that can full throughout the subsequent 12 months, and on longer-term efforts that can outline Ethereum’s position for the subsequent 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 tasks via grants till they develop into 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.
- Street to Devcon – Partaking and rising regional communities forward of Devcon.
- Devcon Students – Offering entry and help for members from underrepresented communities.
Our Method
Adaptive Evolution
We evolve alongside the ecosystem, repeatedly reassessing our position and affect. 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 programs whereas striving for elegant options. Our objective is just not simplification for its personal sake however quite attaining stability via cautious design.
We help and amplify community-led initiatives, serving to create circumstances the place unbiased groups can succeed with out ongoing dependency on the Basis.
Core Rules:
Lengthy‑time period Considering
We optimize for Ethereum’s lengthy‑time period success over brief‑time period positive factors, evaluating each determination for its sustainable, multi‑generational affect and recognizing that lasting resilience requires steady studying, adaptation, and evolution.
Stewardship of Values
We defend 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
Fairly 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 all the time with the objective 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 energetic tasks are already in movement to help Ethereum’s continued evolution. The work forward isn’t about hitting benchmarks — it’s about focusing our power the place it issues most. To assist information our collective focus, we’ve outlined just a few affect areas — tangible outcomes that anybody within the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute towards.
These targets should 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 determine high-leverage gaps — the locations the place it’s uniquely positioned to contribute — and direct its efforts towards the best potential affect.
Objective: 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 appear to be:
- Web-native monetary entry: Folks utilizing tokenized property on Ethereum or DeFi for funds, financial savings and wealth constructing – notably the place fiat infrastructure is proscribed, unreliable or costs extortionate charges, or the place the infrastructure is dependable at this time however can simply develop into unreliable tomorrow.
- Web-native organizations: Folks collaborating in DAOs with programmable incentive buildings that allow new types of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that transcend the constraints of conventional approaches
- Decentralized social media: Folks 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: Folks constructing on Ethereum to collectively practice and supply AI fashions with verifiable safety ensures, and in addition utilizing Ethereum to create financial frameworks the place AI brokers can coordinate with one another and human beings (examples: micro prediction markets)
- Enterprise advantages: Folks utilizing an institutional software that makes use of Ethereum on the backend. If constructed appropriately, this may present advantages akin to auditability, privateness, interoperability and “escape hatch” mechanisms even when customers usually work together with the app via servers with no 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 permit ETH or token transfers to different accepted custodial wallets.
- Establishments that put up hashes onchain to characterize occasions, with out truly giving customers safety properties that they would not in any other case have.
Objective: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum’s technical and social infrastructure.
What resilience seems like:
- Ecosystem autonomy: thriving independently of the EF or some other single group
- Worth alignment: staying centered on its values, even within the face of robust pursuits pulling in different instructions
- Workforce variety: power 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 determine and mitigate central factors of failure which will come up over time
What it’s not:
- 100 robust groups in schooling, consumer growth, or organizing occasions, but all depending on EF for funding
- Excessive-resilience in some sectors, however very low-resilience in others, which then develop into vital bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single factors of failure)
- Performative variety that masks underlying widespread vulnerability (e.g. 20 shoppers that really use a lot of the similar code base, occasions in 100 international locations which can be run by the identical centralized group)
As we work towards these affect areas, we additionally stay grounded in a long-term perspective — one which sees Ethereum not simply as a know-how, however as a residing ecosystem with the potential to serve humanity for generations to return.
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 every thing inside its imaginative and prescient and talent to make sure that we succeed collectively.
