On February 27, Raul Romanutti, a member of the funding coordination team at the Ethereum Foundation, published an article titled "This Is Fine (Until the Grant Runs Out)." The article introduced Project Odin—a structured sustainability support program aimed at a small, strategic set of teams that have previously received significant funding from the EF.

At first glance, Odin may easily be categorized as "EF has launched another public goods grant program." However, it differs from conventional grants: the project side does not receive a new startup fund or a public application opportunity, but rather a long-term support mechanism tailored for already funded teams. The EF Blog targets a two-year framework: to assist these teams in establishing credible sustainable paths, reducing long-term dependence on a single source of funding; the involvement of strategic advisors lasts for about 12 months.

Odin is concerned with the path following the grant.

The point highlighted by 0xRahul in his tweet is also crucial here. He did not frame the question as "Should EF continue to fund public goods?" but instead focused on the sustainability of developer tool teams: large, complex, heavily used open-source tools cannot rely solely on enthusiasm or short-term grants.

In the past, discussions in the Chinese community on public goods have revolved more around Gitcoin donations, RetroPGF distributions, EF funding lists, or whether a particular project deserves donations. The stage pointed to by Project Odin is further along: how does a public goods project continue after it has proven its importance, without being driven solely by the next grant?

Grants are still important, but the issue has begun to change

First, let's clear a misunderstanding: Project Odin is not a signal that EF has stopped funding public goods.

From recent public information, EF continues to fund protocol research, clients, cryptography, ZK, developer tools, education, and public goods experimentation. The projects listed in the EF Ecosystem Support Program's 2026 Q1 Allocation Update still cover multiple infrastructure and tool areas, including EthereumJS maintenance, BuidlGuidl, WalletConnect clear signing library, L2BEAT 2026, DISC-NG Geth, Lighthouse, Vero, and formal verification. Similar quarterly funding lists have been appearing for the past few years.

Grants have not disappeared; they simply cannot solve all problems on their own.

For early-stage projects, grants can lower startup costs; for research-oriented work, grants can cover explorations that are not easily commercializable; for community education and public infrastructure, grants remain an important source of funding. However, if a tool team heavily relied upon by many projects has only one main source of funding in the long term, the risk can become centralized.

The EF Blog mentioned that many teams do not lack technical capability; their weaknesses lie in fundraising, external communication, organizational design, and legal structures—non-technical abilities. Teams are capable of writing compilers, conducting research, and maintaining network stacks, but may not have the energy to address these questions: Who relies on us the most? Which users are willing to sign long-term support contracts? Which work can be procured by enterprises? Which revenue streams will not affect the project's neutrality?

Odin attempts to fill in these capabilities.

Why developer tools are the most likely to get stuck here

0xRahul listed four traditional developer tool models in a long tweet: large companies open source, binding to larger products, commercial SaaS, and unpaid maintenance.

All four models have obvious limitations when applied in the Ethereum context.

Tools open-sourced by large companies are often strong, but their long-term sustainability depends on company strategy. When a company is willing to invest, the ecosystem benefits; when the company's direction changes, the priority of maintenance will also shift. For ecosystems like Ethereum, which emphasize trustworthy neutrality, relying on the long-term interests of a single company for key tools is not stable.

Binding to major products is similar. It can serve a specific product line or platform users well but is difficult to maintain complete openness. Developer tools in Ethereum need to operate across wallets, clients, L2s, and protocols; a closed garden weakens their public attributes.

Commercial SaaS can solve some problems, but not all. Many crypto teams are still in their early stages with limited R&D budgets. More importantly, tools like compilers, languages, foundational libraries, network stacks, and transparency platforms have their value reflected in the overall security and efficiency of the ecosystem, making it hard to charge individual users directly.

Lastly is unpaid maintenance. Small libraries or individual tools can be pushed forward by interest in the short term, but large infrastructures cannot. Compilers require long-term testing and security responses; languages need roadmaps and community governance; P2P network stacks require cross-project coordination; risk monitoring platforms need continuous data maintenance. These are not one-off tasks.

Developer tools often find themselves in an awkward position: they are too foundational for anyone to want to lose; yet too public to generate natural revenue.

Project Odin is not an "accelerator"

The EF Blog describes Odin as a structured support program, but it is not the same as a startup accelerator.

Accelerators typically serve growth-oriented companies, aiming for product, market, financing, and scaling. Odin does not require public goods teams to present a venture-scale story; it is concerned with whether these teams can continuously deliver over multiple funding cycles, gradually becoming more stable institutions.

The fundamental mechanism of Odin is that each team will have a resident strategic advisor. This advisor is not there for a one-time training session; they are involved in the sustainability planning and execution of the team for the long term. The entire process roughly consists of three phases:

• The first phase is to clarify real options. What does the team rely on to survive currently? What funding methods have been tried in the past? Who benefits from it in the ecosystem? What funding channels are available? What is the cost of each channel?
• The second phase is to validate pathways. For instance, engaging in conversations with potential funders, partners, enterprise users, DAO delegates, or protocol teams to determine which directions are not merely theoretical proposals.
• The third phase is execution. This includes preparing fundraising or collaboration materials, establishing a cooperation pipeline, and designing support contracts, service agreements, or other repeatable revenue forms when necessary.

This process may not sound as compelling as the "public goods" narrative, but it addresses the most immediate issue for projects: teams cannot wait until their runway is nearly exhausted to start looking for the next round of funding.

Why Vyper was chosen

Vyper is the first pilot participant in Project Odin.

This choice is not surprising. Vyper is a Pythonic smart contract language for EVM that emphasizes security, simplicity, and readability. The EF Blog mentions that Vyper historically protected more than $27 billion in on-chain value at its peak. Even today, it still underpins thousands of contracts and billions of dollars in TVL.

Languages and compilers are typical examples of public infrastructure. When they fail, the impact is not on a single application but on all protocols and developers reliant on them. However, from a business model perspective, such projects are challenging to manage: core languages should remain open, while security and formal verification capabilities require continuous investment, making it hard to sustain long-term teams solely through community donations.

The foundation newly established by the Vyper team, Foundation for Verified Software, brings this issue to the forefront. The FVS website indicates that the organization focuses on formal verification research, open tools, and ecosystem support, with current projects including Vyper, Vyper-HOL, Verifereum, and HOL4. The EF Blog also discusses Vyper/FVS as the first pilot participant in Odin.

This is not a commercial template that has already been established. More accurately, it is an organizational form currently being experimented with: the foundation undertakes long-term research and open-source tools, while the team explores stable income possibilities around formal verification, auditing, training, support contracts, or enterprise POCs.

In the context of the Chinese community, Vyper is not just "a language project receiving EF support." As the demands for contract security continue to rise with DeFi, L2, and institutional funding, capabilities like formal verification may gradually shift from a research topic to a purchasable professional service.

libp2p and L2BEAT: two contrasting cases

The EF Blog mentioned libp2p at the start. It is the P2P network stack used by many Web3 systems and is also utilized by Ethereum clients for node discovery, message propagation, block dissemination, and validator vote propagation. The EF Blog cites it as a recent case of funding pressure, illustrating how widely relied-upon open-source infrastructure can also enter a state of need when resources are insufficient.

This case highlights the funding dilemma of foundational dependencies: the more fundamental the layer, the more users there are, yet the direct payment relationships become less clear. Every project hopes for libp2p’s stability, but it’s hard to say which project should bear the main maintenance costs.

L2BEAT provides a different perspective.

L2BEAT is a transparency tool well-known within the Chinese community, tracking risks and data around L2, bridges, DA, ZK, and more for a long time. While it is not a pilot for Odin, it publicly discloses its funding sources, making it suitable to look at as a case of funding diversification.

According to L2BEAT's donation page, its funding sources include the Partnership Fund, Ethereum Foundation grants, Optimism RPGF, Gitcoin, rewards and compensations from participating in L2 governance frameworks, dedicated grants, conference sponsorships, report and dashboard explorations, and direct community donations.

This list is quite interesting. It indicates that public goods teams do not necessarily have only two paths: entirely relying on grants or becoming SaaS. A team that offers neutral data and professional judgment over the long term can secure support from various ecological roles. However, the prerequisite is that it needs to clarify its funding sources, allowing the external community to continuously scrutinize its incentive structures.

Combining funding mechanisms instead of betting on a single answer

In the past two years, the Chinese community has become relatively familiar with public goods funding mechanisms such as Gitcoin, Optimism Retro Funding, Protocol Guild, and Drips. They are often discussed in the context of "diversifying funding sources" and "sustainable revenue streams."

Yet these mechanisms address different problems: Gitcoin Grants are more suited for aggregating community signals, helping early public goods gain exposure and startup funding; Optimism Retro Funding rewards work that has already produced impacts and is meant to compensate past contributions; Protocol Guild has established a longer-term on-chain funding mechanism for Ethereum L1 core R&D contributors; Drips focuses on dependency funding, hoping that funds can flow to upstream open-source projects.

For large developer tool teams, the key is not to choose a single answer among these mechanisms, but to understand the applicable boundaries of each funding source. QF requires projects to continually solicit votes, Retro Funding outcomes are uncertain, DAO grants are influenced by governance cycles and token fluctuations, and direct donations often fail to cover stable team costs.

The focus of Project Odin is not to invent a new funding mechanism but to help teams combine existing mechanisms and potential revenues: grants can support research, retro funding can reward impact, DAOs or protocols can offer targeted support, enterprise users can purchase services or support contracts, and partners can co-develop POCs.

These all sound like ordinary operational issues, but for many public goods teams, basic operational capabilities are often a shortcoming. What Odin genuinely fills in is the ability to translate "the project is valuable" into "who relies on it, who is willing to support it continuously, and what income will not undermine its public attributes."

In other words, the point is not just a slogan beyond grants, but a more concrete combination of funding, partnerships, and organizational capabilities.

How the Chinese community can understand it

The Chinese community has often had two entry points in viewing public goods.

One entry point is donations. For example, at the start of each Gitcoin round, there are project recommendations, donation tutorials, and interaction guides. Public goods feel more like community participation here.

The other entry point is news. For instance, when EF announces quarterly funding lists, Optimism initiates Retro Funding, or a project receives a grant. Public goods resemble the flow of ecological funding here.

Project Odin offers a third entry: the long-term management of public goods teams.

For the Chinese community, this perspective resonates more with developers and protocols. If a protocol relies long-term on a particular open-source library, risk data platform, compiler, verification tool, or security infrastructure, it cannot just forward a help request when it runs short on funds. A more reasonable approach would be to include these dependencies in its own ecological budget: which tools are key dependencies for us? Should we provide long-term support? Do we need to purchase support contracts? Should we participate in dependency funding? Should we reserve public goods expenditures in our governance budget?

Framing it as a charitable issue is inaccurate; it is closer to a supply chain issue. Public goods are important not because "they deserve to be donated," but because many teams rely on them in daily development, security, data management, and governance decisions. Since this dependence is real, supporting them is not just an expression of goodwill but also a form of ecological risk management.

If a protocol is willing to spend money on market-making, incentives, growth, and branding but is unwilling to pay for the foundational tools it depends on, what it saves is not cost but rather shifts the cost onto the maintainers and the entire ecosystem. The reason Project Odin deserves attention is that it moves the conversation from "who is willing to fund" to "who truly relies on these teams should engage earlier in their sustainability design."

Project Odin will not solve all public goods funding issues. It currently remains a structured support program aimed at a small number of strategic funded teams. However, it clarifies a long-postponed question: public goods projects cannot only prove their value when applying for grants but must also identify who truly relies on them, who is willing to support them continuously, and what revenue streams will not detract from their public attributes during daily operations.

This may signal the entry of Ethereum’s public goods discussion into the next phase. The past question was "who should be funded"; now the question is shifting to "how can teams that have proven their importance ensure they are not dictated by the next grant for their survival."

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。