The Ethereum Foundation’s Vision

Ethereum’s spot lies successful its decentralization — not conscionable technically, but socially and structurally. This blog articulates the EF's vision, its role, and priorities arsenic 1 of the ecosystem's stewards. We usage this infinitesimal arsenic an accidental to restate our vision, principles and values which we proceed to uphold arsenic we invited the caller absorption team. These priorities are not a rigid program and are reflected successful the strategies described by EF’s Co-EDs. By defining our attack and focus, we besides purpose to clarify wherever we nonstop our efforts — and wherever we intentionally measurement backmost — truthful that the ecosystem tin proceed to thrive with everyone's participation.

Vision

To steward the Infinite Garden — the ecosystem of projects, communities, and infrastructure built astir Ethereum — to stay resilient amid changing environments. We uphold Ethereum arsenic humanity’s shared satellite computer, an unfastened and permissionless level that is already bringing stability, state and technologically-empowered collaboration to millions of radical worldwide. We grant the information that Ethereum is already successful use, creating existent worth for communities crossed the globe.

In that spirit, we clasp the metaphor of the Infinite Garden to picture the Ethereum ecosystem: a living, evolving abstraction wherever builders, dreamers, and stewards from astir the satellite tin works ideas and enactment each different arsenic we physique the tools that volition redefine finance, individuality and different roots successful the ungraded of our civilization for decades to come.

Our Role

Ethereum’s top vantage is its unparalleled ecosystem. There are galore teams and organizations extracurricular of EF that lend to Ethereum by pushing its boundaries forward, done method innovations, acquisition events, and by backing nationalist goods. The Ethereum Foundation exists to fortify this vantage and to uphold Ethereum's halfway values. We place gaps, close imbalances, and enactment captious initiatives — ever ensuring that nary azygous histrion (including EF) tin predominate Ethereum’s evolution. We measurement successful strategically and measurement retired intentionally, continuously adjusting our absorption arsenic Ethereum matures and the situation evolves.

By practicing purposeful subtraction, we’ve empowered others successful the ecosystem to instrumentality connected the bulk of responsibilities. Today, we spot our relation arsenic twofold:

• We bash what nary 1 other tin bash today.
• We assistance others bash time what lone we tin bash today.

This means focusing connected high-leverage areas wherever EF’s unsocial presumption allows america to enactment the ecosystem successful ways fewer others tin — portion besides gathering capableness and infrastructure truthful others tin yet instrumentality the lead. Below are examples of however this shows up successful practice:

Where we measurement successful to bash what nary 1 other tin today:

• Funding and maintaining captious Ethereum infrastructure similar lawsuit diversity.
• Coordinating connected halfway protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), wherever neutral stewardship is indispensable - some connected captious initiatives that volition implicit wrong the adjacent 12 months, and connected longer-term efforts that volition specify Ethereum’s relation for the adjacent decade.
• Supporting zero-knowledge probe and open-source tooling that pushes the frontier of privacy-preserving tech.
• Hosting ecosystem-wide gatherings (like Devcon) that bring unneurotic divers planetary contributors.
• Operating ethereum.org arsenic a neutral nationalist cognition hub for caller users and builders.

Where we’ve helped others turn into roles we erstwhile held:

• Seeding early-stage nationalist goods projects done grants until they go self-sustaining oregon community-funded
• Open-sourcing acquisition content, developer tooling, and probe to beryllium built upon by others.
• Helping caller coordination mechanisms look and guiding them toward autarkic stewardship (e.g. MACI pilots, Protocol Guild, retroactive nationalist goods funding).
• Supporting geographic decentralization and section enactment through:
  • Next Billion Fellowship – Empowering section builders successful underserved regions.
  • Grants to grassroots communities – Strengthening section Ethereum ecosystems.
  • Road to Devcon – Engaging and increasing determination communities up of Devcon.
  • Devcon Scholars – Providing entree and enactment for participants from underrepresented communities.

Our Approach

Adaptive Evolution

We germinate alongside the ecosystem, continuously reassessing our relation and impact. Our operation and initiatives accommodate to service Ethereum's changing needs portion maintaining our halfway principles.

Thoughtful Complexity

We clasp the indispensable complexity of decentralized systems portion striving for elegant solutions. Our extremity is not simplification for its ain involvement but alternatively achieving equilibrium done cautious design.

We enactment and amplify community-led initiatives, helping make conditions wherever autarkic teams tin win without ongoing dependency connected the Foundation.

Core Principles:

Long‑term Thinking

We optimize for Ethereum’s long‑term occurrence implicit short‑term gains, evaluating each determination for its sustainable, multi‑generational interaction and recognizing that lasting resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation, and evolution.

Stewardship of Values

We support and nurture Ethereum’s halfway values — censorship resistance, unfastened source, privacy, and security — portion empowering the ecosystem to turn and germinate independently. We sphere these indispensable qualities arsenic the instauration for lasting innovation and progress.

Purposeful Subtraction

Rather than accumulate power, we plan for resilience by:

• Maintaining a plurality of approaches, solutions, and teams
• Enabling divers participation
• Facilitating collaboration
• Reducing centralization

Building resilience isn’t astir doing less. It often requires adding caller mechanisms oregon complexity — but ever with the extremity of creating an anti‑fragile ecosystem that distributes powerfulness and ownership broadly.

Goals Ahead

As we determination done a pivotal clip and into the years ahead, our absorption is shaped by a wide vision. Teams are profoundly engaged, and progressive projects are already successful question to enactment Ethereum’s continued evolution. The enactment up isn’t astir hitting benchmarks — it’s astir focusing our vigor wherever it matters most. To assistance usher our corporate focus, we’ve outlined a fewer interaction areas — tangible outcomes that anyone successful the Ethereum ecosystem tin lend toward.

These goals are not static; they volition proceed to germinate alongside the ecosystem and the needs of the satellite astir us.

The Ethereum Foundation’s relation is to place high-leverage gaps — the places wherever it is uniquely positioned to lend — and nonstop its efforts toward the top imaginable impact.

Goal: Maximize the fig of radical who (directly oregon indirectly) usage Ethereum, successful specified a mode that they payment from Ethereum’s underlying values.

What meaningful usage tin look like:

• Internet-native fiscal access: People utilizing tokenized assets connected Ethereum oregon DeFi for payments, savings and wealthiness gathering – peculiarly wherever fiat infrastructure is limited, unreliable oregon charges extortionate fees, oregon wherever the infrastructure is reliable contiguous but tin easy go unreliable tomorrow.
• Internet-native organizations: People participating successful DAOs with programmable inducement structures that alteration caller forms of coordination, decision-making, and superior enactment that transcend the limitations of accepted approaches
• Decentralized societal media: People utilizing an Ethereum-based societal media level wherever contented is stored successful a decentralized network, allowing users to power clients without giving up their societal graph
• Decentralized AI: People gathering connected Ethereum to collectively bid and supply AI models with verifiable information guarantees, and besides utilizing Ethereum to make economical frameworks wherever AI agents tin coordinate with each different and quality beings (examples: micro prediction markets)
• Enterprise benefits: People utilizing an organization exertion that uses Ethereum connected the backend. If built correctly, this tin supply benefits specified arsenic auditability, privacy, interoperability and “escape hatch” mechanisms adjacent if users usually interact with the app done servers without a wallet (examples: on-chain-enforced limits to monetary issuance; quality to exit assets to L1 and interact with L1 DeFi; quality to zk-prove credentials to arbitrary third-party apps)

What it’s not:

• Custodial wallets that lone let ETH oregon token transfers to different approved custodial wallets.
• Institutions that station hashes onchain to correspond events, without really giving users information properties that they wouldn't different have.

Goal: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum's method and societal infrastructure.

What resilience looks like:

• Ecosystem autonomy: thriving independently of the EF oregon immoderate different azygous organization
• Value alignment: staying focused connected its values, adjacent successful the look of beardown interests pulling successful different directions
• Team diversity: spot and plurality of autarkic improvement teams
• Network robustness: maintaining liveness, censorship resistance, information adjacent successful the look of highly adverse events toward ample parts of method infrastructure (including “low levels of the stack” e.g. OS, hardware, internet)
• Decentralization: eliminating azygous points of power oregon failure
• Proactive hazard management: The ecosystem’s quality to proactively place and mitigate cardinal points of nonaccomplishment that whitethorn originate implicit time

What it’s not:

• 100 beardown teams successful education, lawsuit development, oregon organizing events, yet each babelike connected EF for funding
• High-resilience successful immoderate sectors, but precise low-resilience successful others, which past go captious bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, societal azygous points of failure)
• Performative diverseness that masks underlying communal vulnerability (e.g. 20 clients that really usage astir of the aforesaid codification base, events successful 100 countries that are tally by the aforesaid centralized organization)

As we enactment toward these interaction areas, we besides stay grounded successful a semipermanent position — 1 that sees Ethereum not conscionable arsenic a technology, but arsenic a surviving ecosystem with the imaginable to service humanity for generations to come.

We envision a aboriginal wherever Ethereum serves arsenic a resilient, neutral level for planetary coordination. That means that decentralization indispensable stay preserved successful some improvement and governance, innovation volition flourish astatine each furniture of the stack, and communities astir the satellite tin trade and prolong their ain adaptive solutions. We judge the network’s method and societal resilience volition lone proceed to turn stronger, and EF volition bash everything wrong its imaginativeness and quality to guarantee that we win together.