The Future of Ethereum Foundation Ecosystem Development

Author: Posted by James Smith & EF Man; Compiled by: Plain Language Blockchain

Ethereum is at a critical moment. Interest in Ethereum has expanded beyond technical experts and enthusiasts, attracting businesses, governments, and ordinary users seeking practical solutions and real benefits. The Ethereum ecosystem is adapting to these needs, and the Ethereum Foundation is ready to play its role.

As stated in the Ethereum Foundation's recent vision statement, we have two main goals:

• Maximize the number of people who use Ethereum (directly or indirectly) and ensure that they can benefit from Ethereum's underlying values.

• Maximize the resilience of Ethereum's technical and social infrastructure.

Ecosystem Development (EcoDev) refers to the team that helps achieve these goals at the ecosystem or social level, rather than the technical level. These teams are dedicated to removing bottlenecks to real-world applications, helping users onboard to Ethereum, supporting the global Ethereum community, providing grants, and helping govern the ecosystem to ensure Ethereum remains resilient and people-centric as it scales.

To better achieve these goals, we will significantly expand and reorganize our ecosystem development efforts to focus on four key areas.

Ecosystem Acceleration

We want to accelerate the growth of the ecosystem by working closely with developers, founders, application teams, and enterprises looking to use Ethereum.

We will create four new teams to drive results in the following key adoption channels:

• Enterprise Relations: Providing clear resources and guidance to enterprises adopting Ethereum.

• Developer Growth: Attracting, mentoring, and supporting the next generation of Ethereum developers.

• Developer Growth: Attracting, mentoring, and supporting the next generation of Ethereum developers.

  • Enterprise Relations: Providing clear resources and guidance to enterprises adopting Ethereum.

  • Developer Growth: Attracting, mentoring, and supporting the next generation of Ethereum developers.

    Ecosystem Acceleration

    We will create four new teams to drive results in the following key adoption channels:

    • Enterprise Relations: Providing clear resources and guidance to enterprises adopting Ethereum.

    • Developer Growth: Attracting,

    • Application Relationships & Research: Accelerate meaningful user-facing Ethereum applications.

    • Founder Success: Provide non-financial support including feedback, introductions, operational expertise, and mentorship.

    These teams will include long-time Ethereum Foundation members working in these areas (such as Austin Griffith in Developer Growth) as well as newly recruited members to expand our skills and capabilities.

    The core of our ecosystem acceleration work will be working with existing network and community members. Ethereum has a deep ecosystem, including individuals and organizations that support founders, developers, applications, and enterprises, such as L2, accelerators, community events, hackathon organizers, investors, educators, and more.

    Ecosystem Amplification

    Other teams will help amplify our acceleration work as well as the community’s ecosystem development work.

    These teams will help us understand and track ecosystem growth, host specific events focused on strategic priorities, educate and tell Ethereum’s important stories through various media formats, and use new tools and AI to add more leverage to our work.

    These teams are an evolution of existing teams at the Ethereum Foundation, with the exception of the new Ecosystem Growth Automation team.

    • Digital Studios (formerly ethereum.org team): Our innovation and storytelling engine, producing informative content, videos, publications, and unique visualizations that showcase Ethereum’s potential. Ethereum.org will continue to be one of many projects developed by this team.

    • Strategic Events: Design targeted events ranging from small meetups to single-day conferences on specific topics.

    • Ethereum Everywhere: Focused on expanding local communities and hubs that support application developers (team name still under development).

    • Ecosystem Development Automation: Improve internal operational efficiency through intelligent automation and AI-driven tools, empowering teams to achieve their goals more effectively.

    Devcon/nect will continue as a team focused on hosting large annual events for the Ethereum ecosystem (such as Devcon and Devconnect), but will work directly under the management team and will not be included in the new ecosystem development structure.

    Ecosystem Support

    We will continue to retain three teams dedicated to coordinating financial and increasing non-financial support to meet the needs of various initiatives in the Ethereum ecosystem:

    • ESP/Grant Support: Our grant program will undergo a major change, emphasizing more targeted applications and non-financial support. This team will support the Ethereum Foundation team's grant initiatives, assist in reviewing some grant applications, and manage relationships with grantees.

    • Strategic Grant Initiatives: Co-fund organizations that are important public goods that benefit the broader Ethereum ecosystem.

    • Launchpad: Assist organizations with operational design, sustainable funding, governance, and other challenges. Launchpad supports affiliates of the Ethereum Foundation, grantees, or other ecosystem organizations that can benefit from it.

    Long-term Ecosystem Unlocking

    We will also continue to work on multiple long-term efforts to remove barriers to adoption around the world, divided into the following directions:

    • Policy Coordination: Monitor global issues related to the Ethereum ecosystem, identify risks and opportunities that the Ethereum Foundation can support, and work with global policy organizations to promote positive outcomes for Ethereum.

    • Institutional Secretariat: Build ongoing relationships with the public sector, multilateral organizations, and non-governmental organizations.

    • Academic Secretariat: Facilitate collaboration with universities, professors, and students to advance blockchain technology.

    Ecosystem Working Together

    As Ethereum grows, the ecosystem needs to do more to support and guide this growth. We are excited to play a role and contribute in new ways, but we will not do it alone. We have worked closely with the broader ecosystem, including organizations, companies, startups, event organizers, community members, investors, developers, and many other partners who are driving Ethereum forward.

    The Ethereum ecosystem is always changing. This means that the way we grow the ecosystem will also continue to evolve. We will continue to always ask: where do we need to step in and do what no one can do today? We will continue to work hard to help others increase their impact on the ecosystem so that the Ethereum ecosystem becomes more resilient over time.