Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has unveiled sweeping changes to the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership, emphasizing the need for enhanced technical expertise and stronger communication between the Foundation and ecosystem developers. In a January 18 post on X, Buterin outlined ambitious goals for the Foundation’s restructuring, aiming to better support decentralized application developers while upholding Ethereum’s core principles of decentralization, privacy, and censorship resistance. Buterin made it clear that the Foundation would steer clear of political lobbying or taking a central role in the ecosystem’s development, signaling a renewed focus on maintaining the network’s decentralized ethos. These changes come in response to criticism from the Ethereum community following a turbulent 2024, a year marked by controversy over spending, roadmap execution, and ethical concerns. Ethereum Leadership Overhaul One of the key challenges the Ethereum Foundation faced in 2024 was its handling of conflicts of interest. In May 2024, the Foundation introduced a conflict of interest policy after several researchers, including Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist, accepted paid advisory roles with the EigenLayer Foundation, an organization overseeing Ethereum’s restaking protocol. While the advisory positions were intended to guide the EigenLayer Foundation, they sparked community backlash. Drake eventually resigned from his role in November 2024 and issued a public apology, pledging not to take on similar positions in the future. This overhaul seeks to rebuild trust by ensuring the Foundation remains impartial and focused on the ecosystem’s technical progress. Layer-2 Expansion Another issue the Foundation aims to address is the rapid expansion of Ethereum’s layer-2 networks following the Dencun upgrade in March 2024 . The upgrade significantly reduced transaction fees on layer-2 networks, making them more accessible but causing a proliferation of rollups. According to L2Beat, there are now 55 active layer-2 networks in the ecosystem. While this growth showcases Ethereum’s scalability, it has also led to concerns over cannibalization of revenue on the base layer. Data from Token Terminal revealed a 99% drop in Ethereum base layer revenues during the summer of 2024, before recovering by year-end. The post Ethereum Foundation Leadership Overhaul to Prioritize Ecosystem Decentralization appeared first on TheCoinrise.com .
