Author: Shenchao TechFlow

In the early morning of May 25, Vitalik posted a lengthy article on X.

It was written very restrainedly, more like a memorandum for the internal foundation, the community, and himself rather than a visionary statement.

In the five months preceding this, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) had gone through some of its roughest times. By the end of 2026, at least eight senior contributors had left or announced they would leave EF, with five departing in May alone; co-executive director Tomasz Stanczak stepped down, and protocol researcher Alex Stokes also left. The doubts from the community have not stopped since the beginning of the year: What exactly is the foundation doing? Why do they repeatedly talk about decentralization, privacy, and anti-censorship, yet their actual actions resemble a Silicon Valley company pursuing execution efficiency?

Vitalik's response was unique; he used an entire article to accomplish something that is seriously underestimated: downgrading the role of the Ethereum Foundation from "the central bank of the Ethereum ecosystem" to "the constitutional court of Ethereum values."

What did he actually say?

Stripping away diplomatic language, Vitalik talked about five specific things this time.

First, EF is no longer the center of Ethereum, but just a node. He intentionally presented the proportion of ETH held by the foundation: about 0.16% of all ETH. In contrast, the central foundations of other blockchains typically hold 10% to 50% of native tokens. Behind this number is a qualitative judgment: EF no longer has the financial firepower to "dominate the ecosystem" on its own; it must accept that it is just one of many nodes, no longer the central authority issuing commands.

Second, EF's mission has been narrowed. In the future, it will only focus on three areas: anti-censorship, privacy, and open infrastructure, and only in areas where "if EF doesn't do it, no one will." Other work, including market management for ETH assets, ecosystem expansion, and business collaborations, will be entirely outsourced to other organizations. Vitalik left a very strong statement here: certain "essential" tasks supporting ETH as an asset fall outside EF's scope and require "other heroes (some of whom hold more ETH than EF)" to take on.

A light yet precise punch, aimed at whom, insiders know very well.

Third, a firm rejection of the "high TPS route." The sharpest line in the article: "Going as fast as possible, as scalable as possible, with only epsilon (a mathematical symbol meaning infinitely small) more decentralization than others is a path to mediocrity. If we do this, we will lose." He named his opponents: "Ethereum cannot rely on social consensus and hard forks to save itself. If 34% of nodes go offline, it collapses. This works for Hyperledger, BNB, Solana, Tempo, but not for Bitcoin, Ethereum, or Zcash."

Fourth, he threw out a very ambitious goal in terms of technology: using AI to assist formal verification and making Ethereum "provably bug-free" within months. Six months ago, he thought this was impossible; now he says it is within reach.

Fifth, he is personally stepping back. 90% of his net assets are in ETH, with the remaining approximately $40 million in on-chain stablecoins pledged for open-source biotech, software, and hardware projects. The board is expanding, and his influence will "continue to decline, which is exactly what I want."

From Central Bank to Constitutional Court

Over the past decade, EF has effectively played the role of "the Ethereum central bank": it controlled a massive reserve of ETH, decided research directions, incubated key projects, coordinated upgrade timelines, and endorsed the brand externally. Its influence stemmed from its "presence"; as long as it held large amounts of ETH, employed top researchers, and had Vitalik himself on board, it naturally became the center of gravity.

However, the side effects of the "central bank model" have concentrated in the past two years.

Last year, the leaked letter from Geth core developer Péter Szilágyi laid the contradictions on the table: "Ethereum may be decentralized, but Vitalik absolutely has complete indirect control over it."

Szilágyi's accusation was sharp, revolving around Buterin's "small ruling elite of 5-10 people" dominating the direction of the network. This remark was harsh but hit on a real issue: a network that claims to be decentralized is highly dependent on the attention allocation of one individual at the execution level.

Adding to this is the ongoing exodus of researchers since May, the continuous weakening of ETH's price against BTC, and the community's dissatisfaction with the foundation's "wanting it all". The "central bank model" has reached the end of diminishing marginal returns.

Vitalik's new design essentially transforms EF from a "central bank" to a "constitutional court":

• No longer holding large reserve assets: shifting from the central bank's balance sheet logic to a logic that hardly utilizes financial tools;
• No longer engaging in ecological development or business expansion: shedding the "industrial policy" function;
• Protecting only a few inviolable core principles: anti-censorship, privacy, and decentralization;
• Only entering the fray at critical judgment moments: e.g., vetoing routes that sacrifice decentralization for TPS;
• The personal color of the leader continues to fade: the board is expanding, and Vitalik is stepping back.

The power of a constitutional court is not measured by how many things it oversees, but by whether it cannot be circumvented in the most critical affairs. What Vitalik wants is precisely this kind of "small but irreplaceable."

Why is this inevitable?

Looking a bit further out, Vitalik's "self-downgrading" has historical precedents.

The Linux Foundation has never defined what the Linux ecosystem looks like; it only maintains the kernel; the Apache Foundation has never planned how the web will develop; it only safeguards protocol neutrality; W3C doesn’t venture into browser development; it only sets standards. All truly surviving open-source governance organizations for over 20 years eventually converge to the role of "gatekeeper," distancing themselves from the role of "builder."

Organizations that do not converge face two possible outcomes.

One is self-corruption. Vitalik uses Google as a counterexample, which is quite a biting comparison: he says Google started with a strong idealistic foundation but gradually deviated from its original intention under mainstream corporate pressure; if he could have pressed a button in 2008 to make Google carry two standard deviations of "principles," he would have pressed it immediately. The other is being voted out of the ecosystem.

EF reaching this point was merely a matter of time. The Bitcoin Foundation dissolved in 2015, Satoshi Nakamoto has been absent for ten years, and Bitcoin has survived until today precisely because there is no central point that can be attacked, corrupted, or acquired. What Vitalik is doing now is to provide Ethereum with this lesson, albeit two years later than ideal.

How will the market price it?

In my view, this lengthy article is not a positive signal for ETH's price in the short term.

The reason is simple. "The foundation selling less ETH" sounds like a reduction in sell pressure, but what the market is really concerned about is a different question: who will be responsible for ETH assets? In the past few years, although EF was not an efficient market cap manager, it was at least a "visible responsible entity." Now Vitalik says: this matter is no longer under EF's management, and relies on "other heroes who hold more ETH" to step up.

Translated, this means that ETH has officially entered an "orphaned" era.

Whether this event is good or bad depends on whether "other heroes" will truly arise, when they will appear, and whether they can form a collective force. The short-term market cannot price uncertainty; it can only price ambiguity. So if you see the ETH/BTC exchange rate stagnating in the coming days, do not be surprised.

But looking three years down the road, this direction is correct. An asset that does not require the foundation’s endorsement, does not need the founder's tweets, can stand firm solely based on its own nature deserves the positioning of "digital commodity" or "internet-native currency." ETH is being forcibly squeezed from being a "project token" into a "protocol asset"; this process is painful, but it must happen.

The technical goals that Vitalik repeatedly emphasizes (usability consensus, provable bug-free, minimizing intermediaries) can be understood as the underlying attributes that "protocol assets" should possess. A system that can still produce blocks when 34% of the nodes are offline, code that can be mathematically proven to be free of vulnerabilities, and users capable of bypassing all third parties to directly connect to the main network is qualified to become a new generation of "neutral infrastructure."

The crypto industry has been dominated by the "narrative industry" in the past three years: meme coins, political concept coins, AI agents, RWA, and stablecoin legislation, one wave after another. Each wave is extremely short, extremely noisy, and extremely profitable. In this atmosphere, "Ethereum not chasing trends and insisting on building infrastructure" sounds like a kind of clumsiness.

This clumsiness is exactly what Vitalik has been recalibrating in this lengthy article. He has seen the TPS of Solana, knows the cash flow of the BNB chain, and is also clear about the valuation of Hyperliquid. But he has come to a clear understanding: in an era where everyone surrenders to short cycles, the long cycle itself is the most scarce resource.

This is a market judgment, not a moral high ground.

The return on short-term narratives is extremely high, and the half-life is very short. The return on long-term construction appears low, and the compounding effects only become visible after a decade. It took Bitcoin ten years for the term "digital gold" to go from a joke to an asset allocation option on Wall Street. If Ethereum can use the next ten years to transform the concept of a "neutral world computer" from a geek dream into common knowledge of infrastructure, then all the price pressure it is currently under, all the community doubts, and all the departing researchers will be worth it.

The prerequisite for this "if" is that EF must first step back from the center of the ecosystem to the periphery, and Vitalik must first step back from leader to guardian.

This is already happening.