Vitalik: The Ethereum Foundation has entered a "moderate tightening period," having withdrawn 16,384 ETH for long-term core missions.

In a post on the X platform, Vitalik Buterin stated that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will enter a period of "moderate austerity" over the next five years to achieve two main goals: first, to deliver a more aggressive technology roadmap, ensuring Ethereum continues to be a high-performance, scalable "world computer" without sacrificing robustness, sustainability, and decentralization; and second, to enhance the EF's own long-term sustainability, safeguarding Ethereum's core mission, including the foundational blockchain layer and users' ability to use the network securely, with privacy and self-sovereignty. Vitalik indicated that as part of the austerity plan, he will personally take on some of the work that might otherwise have been handled by the Foundation's "special projects," focusing on supporting an open, verifiable, end-to-end hardware and software technology stack to protect personal lives and the public environment. This technological vision encompasses areas such as finance, communications, governance, blockchain, operating systems, security hardware, and biotechnology (personal and public health), emphasizing privacy protection, decentralization, and a native-first software architecture. To this end, Vitalik has withdrawn 16,384 ETH and plans to gradually invest them towards the aforementioned goal over the next few years, while exploring more secure decentralized staking solutions to ensure that staking rewards are used to support related missions in the long term. He emphasized that Ethereum itself is an integral part of the vision of "full-stack openness and verifiability." The Ethereum Foundation will continue to focus on Ethereum Core development, but the priority is not "Ethereum everywhere," but "Ethereum for people who need it," that is, serving self-sovereignty, security, and privacy, rather than catering to the needs of centralized enterprises. Vitalik stated that in a world that increasingly values ​​"power above all else," this path provides a necessary alternative—building an uncontrolled collaborative infrastructure through truly open, verifiable, and user-serving technology.