Faced with application influx, Ethereum Foundation pauses open grant submissions

2 hours ago

After backing hundreds of projects with millions of dollars, the Ethereum Foundation is temporarily pausing the Ecosystem Support Program’s (ESP) unfastened assistance exertion process to refocus connected a much proactive backing exemplary that is amended aligned with the ecosystem’s strategical needs.

The modulation comes arsenic the instauration faces challenges reviewing the precocious measurement of inbound applications, which it said has near “limited capableness to prosecute caller strategical opportunities.”

In a Friday blog post, the Ethereum Foundation stressed that the ESP volition proceed backing caller projects, but nether a refined attack to grantmaking. More details are expected successful the 4th quarter, including a curated methodology outlining circumstantial ecosystem priorities.

In 2024, ESP awarded astir $3 cardinal crossed 105 projects and initiatives, supporting areas specified arsenic developer tooling, information and analytics, probe and education. In the archetypal 4th of 2025 alone, the Ethereum Foundation distributed $32.6 million successful full grants.

As a nonprofit established successful 2014 by Ethereum’s co-founders, the Ethereum Foundation has historically played a cardinal relation successful providing funding, coordination and semipermanent imaginativeness for the blockchain’s development, including large web upgrades.

In June, the instauration introduced a much transparent treasury policy detailing operational costs and currency requirements. As portion of the commitment, it pledged to people quarterly and yearly disclosures of its assets, investments and immoderate important developments.

Ethereum Foundation’s evolving priorities

As the world’s second-largest blockchain, Ethereum has beardown backing from organization investors and developers but faces increasing contention from faster, lower-cost alternatives specified arsenic Solana, Avalanche and BNB Smart Chain, which marketplace themselves arsenic much scalable and user-friendly platforms.

As such, Ethereum is being steered toward a renewed absorption connected layer-1 scaling, reducing web costs and improving the wide idiosyncratic experience.

These priorities were highlighted successful a abstracted instauration blog post connected Friday, which described interoperability arsenic “the highest-leverage accidental wrong the broader UX domain implicit the adjacent 6–12 months.”

Interoperability has go a cardinal absorption fixed the rapid proliferation of layer-2 protocols. While these solutions widen Ethereum’s functionality, they besides present caller challenges, peculiarly fragmentation, the instauration said.

Earlier this year, the instauration besides launched a $1 trillion information inaugural — a wide strategy designed to fortify Ethereum’s resilience and presumption the web for a wider, non-crypto audience.

Ethereum has already made inroads with fiscal institutions, with VanEck CEO Jan VanEck calling Ether (ETH) the “Wall Street token.” On stablecoins, helium argued that the winning blockchain volition beryllium the 1 that attracts the astir builders: “It’s going to beryllium Ethereum, oregon thing that uses Ethereum’s methodology.’”

View source