On January 21, Eric Conner, a well-known core developer of Ethereum, announced his withdrawal from the Ethereum Foundation in a post on social media, pointing out that the Ethereum Foundation had a series of problems such as opacity, disconnection from the community, and resistance to change.
The criticism against the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has been protracted, and Ethereums weak performance in recent months has further fueled the fermentation of community dissatisfaction. Many well-known investors and developers have expressed their opinions and dissatisfaction with EF, but the departure of veteran developers shows that the internal differences within EF have reached an irreconcilable point, and EF has been directly pushed to the forefront.
As public opinion continued to ferment and the communitys anger had not yet subsided, the Second Foundation was quietly established among the people.
Ethereum faces internal and external troubles and is in urgent need of reform.
Who is Eric?
Eric Conner, a well-known Ethereum core developer, left the ecosystem community after nearly 11 years of working with Ethereum, citing Vitalik’s rejection of a leadership reorganization proposal.
Eric is a co-author of EIP-1559, a major network change that changes how Ethereum transaction fees work. He is not formally employed by Ethereum but has been consulting, investing, and has been one of the people leading the evolution of the ecosystem since its early days.
On January 21, Ethereum core developer Eric Conner posted on social media, I am no longer .eth. Maybe one day, people in leadership roles will realign with the community, but for now, Im out. Deep down, I really hope that Ethereum can succeed. Good luck.
Later, he wrote another post about why he entered Ethereum and why he chose to leave. Eric first came into contact with Bitcoin in 2012. After the Mt Gox incident, he witnessed many of his friends suffer heavy losses due to their reliance on centralized exchanges. Eric and several friends tried to develop the first decentralized exchange (DEX) on Ethereum, EtherEx. Although the project failed due to premature timing, it allowed him to integrate into the Ethereum community.
Eric has previously stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is becoming increasingly opaque and out of touch with the community. The Foundation could have cut its budget by 80% and Ethereum would have operated and developed normally. The problem is that today’s Foundation does not report to stakeholders, is gradually sinking into a quagmire and resists change. The Foundation currently exhibits an “anti-winning and competitive mentality”, which has caused many community members to question whether to stay.
The ice is three feet thick, it is not formed in one day
Since last years Montenegro EDCON, the industrys dissatisfaction with the Ethereum Foundation has begun to manifest. As a solution to improve Ethereums scalability, L2 has been shackled with Ethereum alignment from day one, accepting and executing EFs will. Everyone is loyal to Ethereum and wants to be the most EVM-compatible L2. This means that for a long time, how to get EFs approval has become the project teams greater concern than the product and technology itself. The Ethereum ecosystem has begun to become deformed under the pressure of EF.
Related reading: EF has no dreams
The complex nepotism within EF, the constraints of EF on the ideological orthodoxy of the project, the gradual escape of major protocols from Ethereum and the backstab, the organization seems to have entered a mid-life crisis, and is in trouble in terms of structure, efficiency and culture. With the meme boom driving the re-emergence of Solana, Ethereums weak performance when Bitcoin broke through the previous high several times, and Trumps recent issuance of coins on Solana driving Sol to break new highs, Ethereums decline is fully revealed, and the communitys dissatisfaction with Ethereum is gradually fermenting. Under the pressure of public opinion, on the 18th, Vitalik himself issued a post to respond positively to the doubts, explaining that a large-scale change is being made to the EF leadership structure, as well as the specific goals of the change.
A single stone stirs up a thousand ripples, and a crusade against EF ensues.
On the 20th, Kain Warwick, founder of Synthetix and Infinex, first published a post expressing his dissatisfaction with L2: If I were to run EF, I would definitely put pressure on Layer 2 to use the sorter revenue to destroy ETH. Ethereum has a great advantage in this negotiation...
At the same time, Aave founder Stani Kulechov also said that after reading Ethereums 2024 budget report, he believed that there were 12 aspects that could be improved to ensure the sustainable development of EF, including slowing down the pace of burning money, reducing the number of employees, and establishing a sustainable income model. But on the 21st, Stani Kulechov wrote again: I do not advocate the dissolution of EF, but a better, faster, stronger and wider EF path... We should pay less attention to internal politics or neutrality, and more attention to advancing technological progress as quickly as possible.
That evening, Evgeny Gaevoy, founder and CEO of Wintermute, a top market maker in the industry, also published an article expressing his views on Ethereum, and mentioned that Ethereum is currently at risk of falling into a death spiral: If there are no casinos, and the entire use of ETH is to send things in Zazulu, then the price will be very low and the security will be very low. As the price of ETH falls, fewer and fewer dapps will consider it safe and will flee to other chains, which may form a very (death) spiral, further lowering the price.
Faced with the sudden attack from the community, EF obviously did not prepare a perfect countermeasure to calm the public anger, and even went the other way by selling ETH in response to the communitys pledge proposal. The next day, Vitalik announced the Ethereum Foundations financial update, and the Ethereum Foundation has established a new 3-of-5 multi-signature wallet. EF will use this new wallet to participate in the DeFi ecosystem and has conducted test transactions on aave.
But the community didn’t seem to buy it, mocking it for “preparing to sell again.” The community’s anger has not yet subsided in this EF crusade, and the smoke of war is still everywhere.
There is even a second foundation, left or right?
On January 22, market rumors said that Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk had established the Ethereum Second Foundation. Currently, the official Twitter account of the Second Foundation (@2nd_foundation_) has been launched, and Konstantin Lomashuk has also retweeted its first tweet immediately.
On January 23, Lido founder Konstantin Lomashuk posted another message saying that this tweet was just an idea and that the Second Foundation has not actually been established.
He said that Ethereum is the ultimate world computer, and every member of the Ethereum community can contribute to its growth, development and success. If a second foundation is really established in the future, it must have a clear goal to complement the tremendous work done by current contributors. Thank you for your support, and I also think that Ethereum needs more organizations to jointly promote development. I will share more ideas after further communication with those who contact me.
Although this plan has not been actually implemented yet, combined with Eric Conners departure, the community has had a heated debate on the development of Ethereums internal and external troubles.
No matter how heatedly the Chinese and foreign communities debate, one consensus is that the Ethereum Foundation needs to make a choice, because there is a natural difference between the left and the right, and a person cannot be both left and right. When the industry is in trouble, it needs the idealism of the left, and when the industry is developing, it needs the accelerationism of the right. One netizen commented, If Ethereum takes the route of building a nation on the Internet, political diversity is inevitable. If multiple foundations can be guaranteed to confront and cooperate, it will lead Ethereum to a greater future.
Second Foundation currently looks like a troublemaker, but some people also expressed why they don’t expect decentralized organizations to have more control departments to share power, just as Vitalik said in an article on January 21 that the future of Ethereum blockchain is decentralized, and the Ethereum Foundation is only a part of it. He further pointed out: EF should not over-intervene, it should confidently represent the part of Ethereum that it can effectively represent, while consciously creating and cultivating open space for other organizations to represent other aspects of Ethereum. Some of these aspects are even more suitable for a profit-oriented form.
