Note: Under the pressure of long-term sluggish ETH prices, the Ethereum Foundation accelerated its pace of adjustment in 2025. On February 25, 2025, Aya Miyaguchi officially became the chairman of the Ethereum Foundation, and on March 17, Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak served as co-executive directors of Ethereum. On April 28, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation published three articles on its official website, from the new management to the Ethereum vision, and then to the focus of the next year, re-emphasized the Ethereum Foundation's determination to start again.
1. Management and Board Structure
The Ethereum Foundation recently appointed two co-executive directors and a chairman.
New Management (Strategy and Operations Execution)
The co-executive directors of Ethereum will lead and execute together with other management members.
Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-Executive Director
Tomasz K. Stańczak, Co-Executive Director
Bastian Aue, Focus Area: Organizational Strategy, Recruitment and Training, Co-Managers
Josh Stark, Focus Area: Project Execution, Communications and Marketing, Co-Managers
Board of Directors (Oversight and Vision)
The Ethereum Board of Directors acts as a Security Committee, guarding the heart and soul of EF and ensuring its compliance as a Swiss Foundation. The Board sets the vision and monitors whether the high-level strategy and decisions of management are consistent with the Foundation’s values. The Board is also responsible for selecting the Executive Director and terminating the appointment of senior executives when necessary. Current Board members include:
Vitalik Buterin, Founder - Continues to provide technical and intellectual guidance to the broader Ethereum ecosystem
Aya Miyaguchi, Chair - Develops the vision for the Ethereum Foundation with other Board members. Responsible for managing some key external relationships.
Patrick Storchenegger, Swiss Legal Counsel - Serves as Swiss legal and compliance representative
Hsiao-Wei Wang, Co-Executive Director - Serves as a bridge between the Board, executives and management
The Board has shared with the management team the vision, guiding principles and goals for the coming years. We look forward to further strengthening the Board to enable it to better deliver on its mission.
The appointment of Tomasz and Hsiao-Wei Wang as Co-Directors is an unconventional decision, but allows them to complement each other during a busy period for the Ethereum ecosystem and EF.
Tomasz will help the Ethereum Foundation (EF) drive robust and comprehensive change with his understanding of community and technical needs, while he will continue to be involved in the operations of other companies (Nethermind and Venture Capital Alliance). The Board and Tomasz have agreed that he will serve as a co-director of EF for an expected two-year term to leverage his proven strategic execution expertise and experience, especially in the context of the significant opportunities that will be presented to Ethereum in the coming years.
Hsiao-Wei's dual role as a board member and executive director, coupled with her research experience, will help her serve as a bridge between the board and management, and focus on the needs of the organization, with a deep understanding of the organization's history and status
II. Ethereum Foundation Vision by Aya Miyaguchi and Vitalik Buterin
Vision
Guard the Infinite Garden - the ecosystem of projects, communities, and infrastructure built around Ethereum - so that it remains resilient in an ever-changing environment. We honor the fact that Ethereum is already in use and creating real value for the global community.
In this spirit, we describe the Ethereum ecosystem using the metaphor of an infinite garden: a living, evolving space where builders, dreamers, and stewards from around the world can sow ideas, support each other, and build tools together to redefine finance, identity, and other roots of civilization in the coming decades.
Role of the Ethereum Foundation
Ethereum’s greatest strength is its unparalleled ecosystem. In addition to the Ethereum Foundation (EF), there are many teams and organizations that contribute to Ethereum and push its boundaries through technical innovation, educational activities, and funding of public goods. The Ethereum Foundation exists to reinforce this strength and safeguard Ethereum’s core values. We identify gaps, correct imbalances, and support key initiatives—always ensuring that no single actor (including EF) can dominate the evolution of Ethereum. We strategically step in and intentionally step out, continually adjusting our focus as Ethereum matures and the landscape evolves.
By doing targeted “subtraction,” we empower other members of the ecosystem to shoulder much of the responsibility. Today, we see our role as twofold:
This means focusing on high-leverage areas where EF is uniquely positioned to support the ecosystem in ways that no other institution can, while also building capabilities and infrastructure so that others can eventually take the lead. Here are examples of how this plays out in practice:
We can do what no one else can currently do:
Funding and maintaining critical Ethereum infrastructure, such as client diversity.
Coordinate core protocol upgrades (e.g. The Merge, Dencun), where neutral governance is critical - both for critical initiatives that will be completed in the next 12 months, and for longer-term efforts that will define Ethereum’s role over the next decade.
Support zero-knowledge research and open-source tools to advance privacy-preserving technologies.
Hosting ecosystem-wide meetups (like Devcon) that bring together diverse contributors around the world.
Operating ethereum.org as a neutral public knowledge hub for new users and builders.
We help others grow into the roles we once served:
Funding early-stage public goods projects through grants until they can become self-sustaining or community-funded
Opening educational content, development tools, and research for others to reference.
Help new coordination mechanisms emerge and steer them toward independent governance (e.g. MACI pilots, protocol associations, retroactive public goods funding).
Support geographic decentralization and local leadership through:
Next Billion Scholarships – Support local builders in underserved regions.
Grants to Grassroots Communities – Strengthen local Ethereum ecosystems.
Road to Devcon – Attract and grow regional communities before Devcon.
Devcon Scholars – Provide opportunities and support to participants from underrepresented communities.
Our Approach
Adaptive Evolution:We co-evolve with the ecosystem, constantly re-evaluating our role and impact. Our architecture and initiatives continually adapt to the evolving needs of Ethereum while staying true to our core principles.
Thoughtful Complexity:We embrace the necessary complexity of decentralized systems while striving to provide elegant solutions. We do not aim for simplicity for simplicity’s sake, but rather to achieve balance through careful design.
Community Empowerment:We support and amplify community-led initiatives, helping to create the conditions that enable independent teams to succeed without ongoing reliance on the Foundation.
Core Principles:
Long-Term Thinking:We optimize for Ethereum’s long-term success over short-term gains, assessing the sustainable, multi-generational impact of each decision, and recognizing that enduring resilience requires continuous learning, adaptation, and evolution.
Protecting Values:We protect and foster Ethereum’s core values—censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security—while empowering the ecosystem to grow independently. We uphold these fundamental qualities as the foundation for enduring innovation and progress.
Purposeful Subtraction
Rather than accumulating power, we design for resilience by:
Maintaining multiple approaches, solutions, and teams
Enabling diverse participation
Fostering collaboration
Reducing centralization
Building resilience doesn’t mean doing less. It often requires adding new mechanisms or complexity — but always with the goal of creating an anti-fragile ecosystem where power and ownership are widely distributed.
Future Goals
At this critical juncture, looking ahead, a clear vision will guide the way forward. Teams are actively engaged and multiple projects have been launched to support the continued development of Ethereum. The work ahead is not about striving for excellence, but about focusing our energy on what matters most. To guide our shared goals, we have outlined several areas of impact — tangible results that everyone in the Ethereum ecosystem can contribute to.
These goals are not set in stone; they will evolve as the needs of the ecosystem and the world around us change.
The Ethereum Foundation’s role is to identify high-leverage gaps — places where it is uniquely positioned to contribute — and direct its efforts toward the greatest possible impact.
Goal 1: Maximize the number of people using Ethereum (directly or indirectly) so that they benefit from Ethereum’s underlying value.
Meaningful usage looks like this:
Internet-native financial access: People using tokenized assets on Ethereum or DeFi for payments, savings, and wealth accumulation — particularly where fiat infrastructure is limited, unreliable, or charges excessive fees, or where infrastructure is reliable today but could easily become unreliable tomorrow.
Internet Native Organizations: People participating in DAOs have programmable incentive structures that enable new types of coordination, decision-making, and capital formation that go beyond the limits of traditional approaches
Decentralized Social Media: People use Ethereum-based social media platforms whose content is stored on a decentralized network, allowing users to switch clients without giving up their social graph
Decentralized AI: People collectively train on Ethereum and provide verifiable security guarantees for AI models, while using Ethereum to create economic frameworks in which AI agents can coordinate with each other and with humans (e.g. micro prediction markets)
Enterprise Advantages: Users of institutional-grade applications using Ethereum as a backend. If built correctly, this provides advantages such as auditability, privacy, interoperability, and “safe exit” mechanisms even if users typically interact with the application through a server without a wallet (e.g. on-chain enforced limits on currency issuance; ability to exit assets to Layer-1 and interact with Layer-1 DeFi; ability to make zero-knowledge proofs to arbitrary third-party applications).
It is not:
A custodial wallet that only allows transfers of ETH or tokens to other approved custodial wallets.
Institutions publish hashes on-chain to represent events, but do not actually provide users with security properties that they would not otherwise have.
Goal 2: Maximize the resilience of Ethereum's technical and social infrastructure.
What resilience looks like:
Ecosystem autonomy: Thriving independently of EF or any other single organization
Values alignment: Adherence to values even in the face of strong interests from other directions
Team diversity: Strength and diversity of independent development teams
Network robustness: Survival, censorship resistance, and security even in the face of extremely adverse events targeting large parts of the technical infrastructure (including the “lower layers of the stack” e.g. OS, hardware, internet)
Decentralization: Elimination of single points of control or failure
Proactive risk management: The ability of the ecosystem to proactively identify and mitigate central points of failure that may emerge over time
What it is not:
100 strong education, customer development, or event organizing teams all relying on EF Funding
High resilience in some areas, but very low resilience in others, which become key bottlenecks (e.g. wallets, proprietary ZK provers, social single points of failure)
Diversity of representation masks underlying common weaknesses (e.g. 20 clients that effectively use much of the same codebase, 100 countries operating from the same centralized organization)
As we work toward these impact areas, we always take a long-term view — viewing Ethereum not just as a technology, but as a living ecosystem with the potential to serve future generations.
We envision a future where Ethereum is a resilient, neutral, and globally collaborative platform. This means that decentralization must be preserved in development and governance, innovation will flourish at every layer of the stack, and communities around the world can build and maintain their own adaptive solutions. We believe the technical and social resilience of the Ethereum network will only grow, and the Ethereum Foundation (EF) will do everything within its vision and capabilities to ensure our shared success.
III. The Next Chapter of the Ethereum Foundation
We are Hsiao-Wei and Tomasz, co-authoring this blog post. It’s been almost a month since we took on the role of the new co-executive directors. The honeymoon period is over, and it’s time to take action.
A Moment of Transformation and Opportunity
Ethereum has always been a journey: an evolving ecosystem driven by those committed to building a more open, decentralized world. Although the Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a decade old, it continues to reinvent itself.
This year, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) launched a new leadership model with dual executive directors. This design brings diverse and complementary perspectives, enhancing our ability to address complex challenges. We look forward to the opportunities and challenges ahead, with a strong commitment to Ethereum’s core values and a vision based on stewardship, coordination, and long-term thinking.
It is important that EF is not a two-headed horse pulling in different directions. Our relationship is built on mutual respect, trust, and shared values. We work closely together, challenge each other, and ultimately move forward as a united team with a shared purpose.
Our Principles and Focus Areas
As we look to the future, we will be guided by two pillars: Guiding Principles (our core values) and Purpose (our pursuit of impact and resilience). Technical excellence is the foundation of everything we do and the cornerstone of our mission.
As Executive Directors, our role is to execute the vision of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) in an ever-changing world. Our responsibilities include strategic planning, ecosystem management, team leadership, and operational oversight. All in support of Ethereum's long-term success.
Values We Promote:
Censorship Resistance: Ensuring that Ethereum remains an open network where anyone, anywhere can transact and build without any barriers or external control.
Open Source Innovation: Fostering collaboration, transparency, and community-driven development through publicly shared knowledge and tools.
Privacy: Enabling private interactions without sacrificing security, safeguarding individual freedom and autonomy in the digital world.
Security: Maintaining trust, robustness, and resilience across the Ethereum ecosystem by prioritizing secure design and ongoing research.
These values are fundamental to guiding our technology choices, our support for the ecosystem, and our long-term vision for Ethereum as a public good.
With these values in mind, we have set the main directions for the next 12 months:
Overall, this means improving mainnet and L2 interoperability and coordination, UX, DevEx, giving applications and L2 more presence and attention at Devcon, and amplifying their message through communication channels.
Beyond that, we know we need to accelerate the pace of developers, founders, and institutions building and applying on Ethereum. The Ethereum Foundation has a wealth of knowledge and leaders who can guide, lead, attract and guide talent.
Tomasz:
A new chapter for Ethereum. Its values remain the same: open source, censorship resistance, privacy, and security. The Ethereum Foundation will transform - to become an organization that communicates more openly, one that is willing to have difficult conversations now.
We will focus on execution speed, accountability, clear goals, targets, and trackable metrics. We will focus on the success of the Ethereum mainnet protocol. The Ethereum mainnet will always be a global neutral network, a trustless protocol that can be trusted. We will focus on the success of the Ethereum mainnet and the entire ecosystem - L2 will bring mass adoption and bring many benefits to users, and the mainnet will serve as a solid foundation and flexible network behind all transactions and coordination mechanisms. We are excited about this journey - it will be one of the most inspiring technological and social changes we have ever experienced, and we will embark on this journey together - visionaries and down-to-earth builders.
Our expansion work in the coming year includes: expanding the Ethereum mainnet (Layer1) and supporting its successful expansion by providing the best architecture for Layer2 chains, ensuring their network security, and enhancing user confidence. Our goal is to bring the entire blockchain ecosystem together by providing the best user experience, design, and interoperability, while scaling through engineering excellence and cutting-edge research.
Hsiao-Wei:
In the coming months, my first priority will be to strengthen the operations of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) to support the growth of the ecosystem. An adaptable and capable foundation helps us better serve the long-term mission of Ethereum.
As we grow more focused, one of our goals is to better support the application layer of Ethereum. We will support developers and users by improving developer and user experience, clarifying standards, strengthening the ecosystem, and simplifying the entire process from ideas to actual applications.
We are working to improve the way we plan, prioritize, and coordinate within the Ethereum Foundation (EF) and across the ecosystem to ensure that our work is aligned with community needs and the cypherpunk spirit of Ethereum. Strengthening EF is only part of the transformation. The real power comes from the vitality and creativity of the global Ethereum ecosystem.
Building a Future Together
Ethereum is not a monolith. It is a vibrant network of communities, builders, researchers, artists, educators, and dreamers. It is global, diverse, and proudly decentralized. We are constantly inspired by the creativity and resilience of the ecosystem. Ethereum will continue to be present where we are most needed, while also making room for the ecosystem itself to thrive. This is a community-led future.
The road ahead is filled with possibilities. Ethereum has already revolutionized what is possible in technology, finance, governance, and more. To all of you who are building, teaching, researching, experimenting, and imagining new futures: Thank you! Together, we can achieve far more than any one team, project, or generation could. We are honored to be on this journey with you, and we are excited for what lies ahead.
Weatherly
Catherine
Kikyo
Joy
Anais