Buterin Says His Influence at Ethereum Foundation Will Wane as He Maps Out Overhaul, Technical Priorities

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has weighed in on the controversy surrounding the Ethereum Foundation’s restructuring and set out his view of the network’s future technical direction.

The Block reported on May 24 that Buterin, in a lengthy post on X, said the Ethereum Foundation should be seen as one of many nodes in the Ethereum ecosystem rather than its center.

“My influence at the foundation will decline further over time,” Buterin wrote. “That is also the direction I personally want.”

The Ethereum Foundation has recently seen a string of departures among key personnel. The report said at least eight major contributors have left the foundation this year or announced plans to do so. Tomasz Stanczak, a former co-executive director, has also stepped down.

Buterin also addressed criticism from within the community. He wrote that the foundation has long faced complaints that its actions have diverged from its stated emphasis on decentralization, privacy and “sanctuary technology,” adding that he has found those criticisms personally painful.

He said the foundation will no longer try to encompass the entire ecosystem and will instead focus only on roles essential to the Ethereum network’s stability and long-term sustainability.

Buterin also outlined a more detailed technical blueprint for Ethereum. He listed core priorities as minimizing bugs through AI-based formal verification, strengthening the stability of the consensus mechanism and reducing reliance on intermediaries.

He argued that pursuing only speed and scalability is “a path to mediocrity,” and said Ethereum should take a different course from chains focused solely on competition over transactions per second. He also said it would be undesirable for Ethereum to rely on social consensus or hard forks to solve problems arising from node failures, reiterating the importance of network stability and decentralization.

At the same time, Buterin described Ether itself as the most valuable financial product in the Ethereum ecosystem. He said some of the functions needed to support Ether’s value will be handled by organizations outside the foundation.