Ethereum Foundation Announces Expenditure Situation and Related Updates

Recently, the funding usage of the Ethereum Foundation has attracted widespread attention from the crypto community. In response to related queries, the Foundation released its official spending report at the end of August.

Data shows that "new institutions" account for the largest share of foundation expenditures, reaching 36.5%. This category includes grants provided to multiple organizations, such as the Nomic Foundation and the Decentralized Research Center, aimed at strengthening the Ethereum community in the long term.

L1 R&D is the second largest expenditure category, accounting for 24.9% of total expenditures. This includes funding external client teams (62%) and internal foundation researchers (38%). Internal expenditures cover multiple teams including Geth, cryptography research, Solidity, and more.

The remaining expenditures of the foundation include community development ( 12.7% ), zero-knowledge applications ( 10.4% ), internal operations ( 17.7% ), developer platform ( 16.5% ), and L2 research and development ( 11.4% ).

Vitalik Buterin revealed that his annual salary at the organization is approximately $139,500, which is not high compared to his estimated net worth of $1.5 billion.

Regarding the fund management plan, the foundation plans to spend 15% of the remaining funds each year, which means the foundation will exist in the long term, but its influence in the ecosystem will gradually diminish. Foundation member Justin Drake expects the foundation to have about 10 years of operational funds, but this will fluctuate with the price of Ether.

Vitalik's sale of ETH sparks controversy

On September 12, Vitalik's sale of $441,000 worth of ETH sparked controversy again. He explained that the order was placed in August and stated that this was the last sell-off, intended to fund ecological defense projects. According to data platforms, wallets associated with Vitalik have sold $2.28 million worth of ETH since August 30. Vitalik insists that all profits are used to fund projects and that he has never profited from them.

Ethereum Foundation's Attitude Towards DeFi

A person who has been engaged in DeFi development for a long time recently accused Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation of "being against DeFi". In response, Vitalik stated that he has always been focused on decentralized exchanges and sustainable projects, but is not interested in short-term projects such as liquidity mining.

Foundation member Dankrad Feist stated that the foundation does not have a unified view on DeFi. He personally believes that the most valuable contribution of DeFi on Ethereum is decentralized stablecoins, although these stablecoins currently face scalability limitations.

Research Directions of the Ethereum Foundation

Despite the controversial spending, the Ethereum Foundation is still actively researching multiple technical fields:

1. Zero-Knowledge Proofs ( ZK ): Research on STARKs and SNARKs, including recursive signature aggregation and post-quantum secure implementations.
2. Verifiable Delay Function ( VDF ): Although not yet implemented in Ethereum, its potential applications are being studied.
3. Maximum extractable value ( MEV ): Research ePBS, Execution Tickets, and other solutions to reduce MEV impact.
4. Technical Upgrade: Consider the possibility of using a binary hash tree instead of Verkle tree in the future.
5. Formal verification and verifiable computation: considered as key technologies to ensure the correctness of code.

ETH Value Accumulation Issue

Foundation members believe that the accumulation of ETH's value is crucial to the success of Ethereum. Justin Drake proposed that Ethereum must become the programmable currency of the internet, and the accumulation of ETH's value will be realized through total fees and currency premium. He emphasized that total fees are important, rather than the fees for each transaction.

Drake also pointed out that the usage ratio of ETH as a collateral currency is very important, such as its application in DeFi. He believes that in the Rollup roadmap, the Ethereum mainnet will become a hub for high-value activities.

Addressing Centralization Issues in Layer 2

Currently, over 80% of Ethereum transactions occur on Layer 2 solutions. In response to criticisms of the centralization of L2 networks, Vitalik explained that highly decentralized L2 solutions essentially cannot invade user funds without achieving strong consensus.

Vitalik proposed the standard for Stage 1+ rollup: the network requires a 75% consensus from the council to overturn the proof system, and at least 26% of the council members must be independent of the rollup team. He emphasized that this requirement is necessary for the security of the network.

Summary

Despite facing some doubts, the Ethereum team is still actively addressing and solving problems. As the largest application public chain, the fundamentals of Ethereum have not been shaken. Currently, industry applications are encountering a bottleneck, but the low fees of L2 are promoting the development of new applications. With the improvement of liquidity in the capital market, the adoption rate of the crypto industry is expected to accelerate, and the future of Ethereum remains promising.