The Ethereum Foundation, de-facto figurehead of the Ethereum ecosystem, has responded to community frustrations by proving that it does in fact use the chain… to dump ETH.
The complaints have generally been focused on the foundation’s lack of leadership, which many feel is to blame for Ethereum’s limited price action compared to bitcoin (BTC), SOL, and other major cryptocurrencies.
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However, the foundation’s efforts to engage with the criticism have largely come across as being out of touch.
Initial attempts were seen to be missing the point when the official Ethereum X account simply posted “hello world computer.” While later examples of how the foundation actively uses the chain essentially boiled down to selling ETH (and sending grants to others to sell).
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin set out a series of goals via an X post on Saturday. These include increased activity, communications, and use of the chain by the foundation.
The post also contains a list of “non-goals” that shun the notion of becoming a “main character” within the ecosystem or plans to lobby governments, as well as the idea of “some kind of ideological/vibez pivot from feminized wef soyboy mentality to bronze age mindset.”
Buterin also defended current Foundation leadership against “childish” and “disgusting” criticism, during a campaign to bring back former member Danny Ryan in a leading role.
In response to calls to use its ETH in more productive ways, staking Foundation ETH is currently being explored to minimize any risk of compromising neutrality over any potential future forks.
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Rather than taking a holier-than-thou approach, however, Vitalik also made an effort to lean into the “cultural” side of Ethereum. In a last-ditch attempt to remove a “curse” placed on ETH, he changed his profile picture to a “milady” NFT after purchasing the token for almost $20,000.
