Prominent Ethereum Dev Proposes $1 Billion ETH Organization With Leader Who 'Wants to Fight'

Amidst a cascade of resignations and mounting scrutiny over its long-term vision, the Ethereum Foundation was hit Thursday with a stinging rebuke by one of its most prominent former members.

Dankrad Feist, who until last year served as one of the Ethereum Foundation’s top researchers, suggested today that a new organization be built in its place to “save Ethereum.” 

The organization would need at least $1 billion in funding, Feist said, provided by “a significant amount” of revenue derived from ETH staking fees.

“The EF now holds less than 0.1% of all ETH,” Feist said. “There is no flow of Ethereum staking or fee revenues to it.”

He added that the new organization would need a board of people “who want ETH to go up” and “a leader who is competent and wants to fight.”

In recent months, Ethereum co-founder Vitalk Buterin has struggled to satisfy community members who worry the Ethereum Foundation is more preoccupied more with idealism and arcane technological improvements than with economics and marketing.

Decrypt reached out to Feist about the post, including seeking clarification on whether he was referring to any specific leader, and will update if we receive a response.

Despite its long-held position as crypto’s second most-valuable asset behind Bitcoin, ETH has struggled mightily to make significant price gains in recent years, and has yet to breach $5,000. It came close last summer, but has since plunged by nearly 57% to more than $2,100.

Last year, Buterin acknowledged the organization needed to make “large changes.” But when the Ethereum Foundation released a long-anticipated new mandate in March, the document not only contained vaguely sexual language and imagery, including allusions to the controversial Miladys NFT collection—but also repeatedly emphasized the organization’s lack of desire to get too fixated in boosting ETH’s price.

“Our bottom line is not profit, nor organizational growth, nor blind adoption at all costs,” the document reads.

“We are NOT a marketing agency…. We are NOT a casino…. We are NOT opportunists,” another section stated.

Since the mandate went live, several members of the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership have resigned—including two this week, fueling further doubts about the current organization’s ability to lead the Ethereum ecosystem.

None of those developers, however, made direct reference to Buterin’s vision for Ethereum or the Ethereum Foundation’s new mandate. Feist’s comments today are the bluntest levied at the organization by someone who, until fairly recently, was a key driver of its work.

Last fall, Feist left the Ethereum Foundation to build Tempo, a private blockchain under development by payments giant Stripe. One crypto commentator likened the career shift, at the time, to the notion of environmental activist Greta Thunberg accepting a position at oil giant British Petroleum.