What smart people fear most is not competitors, but after a meeting, discovering that the meeting notes do not include a "who will be responsible" section.

Written by: Fu Gui

0x0 Epigraph

Some say that Ethereum in 2026 resembles a PhD student who graduated with perfect grades but repeatedly faces setbacks in the job market. The resume is impeccable, the citation rate is the highest on the internet, yet the interviewers (the market) refuse to extend offers. This naturally frustrates the PhD student and their advisors.

0x1 Associations triggered by two resignation letters

On May 18, 2026, the Ethereum community saw the emergence of two resignation letters.

One was from Carl Beek, who had worked at the Ethereum Foundation (EF) for seven years, with his final working day set for May 29. He was involved in the core development of Beacon Chain and experienced the historic moment when Ethereum switched from PoW to PoS. The other was from Julian Ma, who worked at EF for four years, primarily in mechanism design and cryptoeconomics, co-authored FOCIL (EIP-7805)—a proposal aimed at enhancing censorship resistance—and promoted the Fast Confirmation Rule, reducing cross-chain confirmation time between L2 and the mainnet to 13 seconds.

Both resignation letters were written elegantly, expressing gratitude to those who deserved it, without saying anything inappropriate.

However, when these two letters are placed on a specific timeline, they become intriguing.

In 2026, eight high-level members had already left EF. Co-Executive Director Tomasz Stańczak resigned in February, Josh Stark left in April, followed by the departures of Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Trent Van Epps, and Alex Stokes, and then Carl Beek and Julian Ma. The three leaders of the Protocol Cluster also collectively stepped back in early May. In the month of May alone, five left.

You could say this is normal personnel turnover—people do resign, and metabolism is a basic characteristic of a healthy organization. But if so many core members leave the same company in one year, and the headquarters had just released a 38-page new mandate in March, it’s inevitable for observers to think a little deeper:

Is this a deliberate reshuffle?

0x2 That 38-page document

On March 13, 2026, the Ethereum Foundation released an official mandate document.

The core message of the document, translated into plain language, is this: EF is not the boss of Ethereum, EF is the guardian of Ethereum, and the ultimate goal of EF is to make itself unimportant. There is a term in the document called the "walkaway test"—Ethereum should be able to function normally even after EF disappears.

The document elaborates around the CROPS principles: Censorship resistance, Open source, Privacy, Security.

After the document was released, the community's reaction was split into two factions. Supporters said this codified Ethereum's decentralization philosophy in black and white, clear and powerful. Opponents said that at a time when institutional capital was pouring in and competitors were eyeing closely, declaring an intention to step back was not guarding, but lying flat.

Both reactions have their merits, but that's not the key point. The key is that two months after this document was released, EF lost a group of core personnel who had worked in the protocol layer for many years.

No one explicitly states the causal relationship between personnel changes and the document's release. But with the timeline laid out, it feels like that document from March might not just be an external declaration of values, but also an internal redirection. Some agreed with this direction and stayed. Others chose elsewhere.

This is a quiet organizational restructuring, outwardly appearing as "natural resignations," but internally EF is redefining what it is.

0x3 Dankrad's proposal

Against this backdrop, former EF researcher Dankrad Feist tweeted on May 21, proposing to establish a new organization, aiming to raise at least $1 billion, with the goal of "saving" Ethereum and ensuring staking fee revenue as a long-term funding source, with leadership composed of "those who want to fight and care deeply about ETH prices."

Who is Dankrad? He is the originator of the term Danksharding—one of the co-authors of EIP-4844 and one of the founders of Ethereum's current blob expansion route. He left EF full-time in October 2025 to join a new Layer 1 project called Tempo but remains connected to EF as a research advisor.

In his tweet, he casually mentioned a figure: EF currently holds less than 0.1% of the total ETH supply, without staking revenue or fee income flowing in. At the current expenditure rate of about $130 million per year, the treasury could last another seven to eight years.

Once this figure was revealed, some people realized it, some claimed they already knew, while others suddenly understood: It turns out that the organization considered to be the "spokesperson" for Ethereum has almost no direct economic relationship with whether the ETH price rises or falls.

As a result, some holders of large amounts of ETH began to voice their opinions, saying EF doesn't understand "market capitalization management," that ETH needs someone to actively lift and stabilize the price, or more bluntly: You just keep your head down building protocols, but with the token falling like this, aren't you worried?

This is amusing and worth elaborating on.

0x4 Wall Street has entered, but they are not the players you think

Before discussing "who will manage ETH prices," let’s first look at the major players already in the market.

BlackRock's iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) held approximately 1.3 million ETH by early 2026, valued at about $3 billion, accounting for 1.08% of the total ETH supply. Larry Fink specifically mentioned Ethereum in his 2026 thematic outlook, stating it occupies a 65% share in the tokenized real-world assets space, serving as the core infrastructure of BlackRock's tokenization strategy.

Fidelity also holds a large amount of ETH, participating in the market through institutional custody and ETF products.

These figures sound substantial, but to understand the logic behind these funds’ behaviors: They are buying the long-term narrative of "Ethereum as infrastructure," not for short-term trading. When the ETH/BTC exchange rate falls, ETFs see net outflows; they are voting with their feet, not stepping in to stabilize the price.

Therefore, the logic that "Wall Street has come in, so Ethereum should rise" is a misunderstanding in itself. Institutional capital is a follower of price, not a creator of price. They entered because they recognized the long-term value, but they can also choose to exit when they think valuations are high or narratives are shaken.

The more important players are on-chain.

Lido Finance is currently the largest staking protocol on Ethereum, with a market share of about 23%, and stETH is deeply integrated into the entire DeFi ecosystem. At the beginning of 2026, they launched stVaults, allowing L2 projects and institutions to directly access Lido's staking infrastructure. Consensys' Linea was among the first to integrate.

Alchemy and QuickNode are the primary RPC infrastructure providers for Ethereum. Alchemy raised $200 million in funding in 2022, with a valuation of $10.2 billion. The vast majority of on-chain requests for global dApps are sent through the nodes of these providers. In other words, if you are doing anything on Ethereum, it’s likely that every transaction goes through their servers.

MetaMask, under Consensys, is the core entry point for Ethereum user experience, with monthly active users in the tens of millions. They are not just a wallet but are also the most important distribution channel for Ethereum narratives.

These infrastructure providers and staking protocols are the true kings in the Ethereum ecosystem. They may not hold a large amount of governance tokens, but they control network traffic, liquidity, and user experience. EF can change personnel, and protocols can upgrade, but if Lido announces support for a certain decision tomorrow, that decision is pretty much set in stone.

In this context, the idea of "establishing a $1 billion organization to manage ETH prices" initially sounds exciting but, upon further thought, seems somewhat naïve.

0x5 Market capitalization management is itself a paradox

Let’s talk about the topic of "market capitalization management."

Some small public chains in the stock market are quite adept at this. They secure a few institutions to lock in their holdings, control the circulating supply, coordinate with project developments and KOL endorsements to rally the market, while retail investors take the bait, and the big players sell off, creating a cycle. This strategy is operable in public chains with market capitalizations of just a few hundred million dollars.

But what is the market capitalization of Ethereum? It was around $200 billion in 2026. To "manage" this market capitalization, the scale of funds required is far beyond what $1 billion can cover. Furthermore, the current crypto market has already entered an era where both long and short positions can profit, and the derivatives market provides ample shorting tools, so when large amounts of capital enter to buy, smart money can completely hedge against or even short on the futures side. Your stabilizing funds may end up merely providing liquidity for others.

But the more fundamental issue is: If Ethereum indeed produced an organization with sufficient capital and willingness for "market capitalization management" that successfully intervened in ETH prices, this act would declare the complete failure of Ethereum's decentralization narrative.

Decentralization is not just a slogan; it is Ethereum's core value proposition against censorship and single-point control. The reason BlackRock chose Ethereum and not another platform for RWA infrastructure is partly due to Ethereum's "neutrality"—no single entity has the final say. If suddenly a group appears that can coordinate to influence ETH prices, how do you think BlackRock's lawyers would view this?

Thus, there lies a true paradox: ETH prices need narratives to rise; a good narrative is precisely about decentralization and neutrality; yet "market capitalization management" is a centralized act that will destroy the narrative that makes ETH valuable.

You can have the price, but you will lose the story. And in the crypto world, assets without a story are the most dangerous assets.

0x6 Tokenomics is not as some think

Many people still remain in a simplistic framework of thought: the better the ecosystem, the more the token should rise; if the price does not rise, it means the ecosystem is not doing well; if the ecosystem is fine, someone should come to pull the price up.

This logic has some validity in traditional stock markets, but in the crypto world of Tokenomics, it sometimes feels like navigating a spaceship with a compass—not entirely useless, but misaligned.

Ethereum's current predicament is a typical case. Network activity has reached an all-time high, yet on-chain fee revenue has not kept pace because a significant volume of transactions has been diverted to L2. After EIP-4844, Ethereum actively lowered the blob fees, allowing L2 to use the mainnet's data availability affordably. This was a choice in the technical roadmap, which, in the short term, diluted ETH's fee burn, undermined deflationary expectations, and placed pressure on the price.

This is a design trade-off, not a mistake. But the market will price based on its own logic and will not give you any favors just because this was an "intentional trade-off."

Moreover, the characteristic of decentralized governance is that there is no "CEO" who can come out and say, "We decide to prioritize price this quarter." The upgrade roadmap for Ethereum is discussed and decided by All Core Devs; EF provides research support and coordination, but it does not, and should not, have the unilateral power to modify protocol economic parameters to raise token prices.

This is a strength of the Ethereum protocol, but it is also a weakness in the competitive narrative of the market.

0x7 Respect the market

Lastly, let me make one statement.

One of the easiest mistakes for certain observers to make is projecting their own expectations onto the market and then attributing the market's noncooperative behavior to "someone suppressing the prices" or "organizational negligence."

The market is an information aggregation mechanism. It does not give valuation premiums because your project’s technology is excellent, nor does it allow your token to rise on its own ignoring macro liquidity just because your team is well constructed. It merely observes where funds are willing to flow under the current dominant narrative.

In 2026, funds are buying into the digital gold narrative of BTC and AI infrastructure. The story of Ethereum as the "world's neutral financial platform" has yet to find an expression that can gain consensus from most funds under current market conditions.

This is a narrative problem, not an organizational management issue, and certainly not a "EF doesn't understand market capitalization management" issue.

Dankrad's proposal, EF’s internal reshuffle, those quietly resigning researchers, those holders shouting on Twitter—put together, this is an ecosystem searching for a new narrative, undergoing a necessary self-reconfiguration.

This process may be chaotic, possibly painful, but it is far more honest and healthier than "finding someone to lift the price."

If there is any advice, it is just this: learn to respect the market. It is smarter than you and harder to buy off than any $1 billion organization.