A prominent historian who wrote the book about Ethereum’s creation cannot find an answer to a simple question. No matter how many times she’s asked — as recently as yesterday — no one will tell her how many votes Vitalik Buterin controls over the Ethereum Foundation and its $400 million treasury.
It’s a question that impacts millions of ETH tokenholders around the world, including hundreds of thousands of wallets that transact on any given day.
Laura Shin, author of the book The Cryptopians about the formation and early years of Ethereum, has asked one question for years. Does Vitalik Buterin have three supervotes, or do the four board members vote equally?
There are four current directors on the board of the Ethereum Foundation: Vitalik Buterin, Aya Miyaguchi, Hsiao-Wei Wang, and Patrick Storchenegger. With many changes in leadership over time, Buterin is a founding member and widely recognized as the project’s leader.
However, the foundation regularly downplays his role, writing at great length to emphasize its community-focused governance.
In a series of joint statements yesterday, incoming “co-executive directors” blogged an “update on their focus areas” and “how to achieve the EF’s vision.”
Buterin and Miyaguchi co-wrote a new vision statement for the foundation. All four board members co-announced executive personnel changes.
All of these communications conveyed a sense of shared oversight, as though a team — not one man — held ultimate authority over the Swiss entity.
Still no answer about Vitalik’s voting power
Nevertheless, despite over a dozen attempts by Shin to clarify how much voting power Buterin possesses, the Ethereum Foundation hasn’t disclosed how its voting power is distributed.
In 2020, Storchenegger told Shin that Buterin held three votes — enough to tie any board decision unilaterally, even if all three other board members disagreed with Buterin.
However, Buterin has vacillated on his power in public statements, occasionally talking about only possessing a single vote.
Read more: Vitalik Buterin endorses one of North Korea’s favorite coin mixers, Railgun
In all, his power over the Ethereum Foundation’s board of directors is unclear. Despite a four-person board, none of them seem interested in disclosing how many votes each member possesses.
Supportive comments emphasized Shin’s repeated question. “I hope you get an honest response,” wrote one observer. “I hope u get an answer to this question, important for transparency,” commented another.
Protos has reached out to the Ethereum Foundation for comment and will update if we receive a response.
