Ethereum Community Foundation

Transcript

[Music] Good afternoon. Ethereum is the backbone of decentralized finance and stable coins. It's the future of monetary premium. The Ethereum Foundation got us here, a global force thanks to their vision. But strategically economically culturally it's gone off track. I don't want to be here doing this. I'd much rather be fishing with my son. But the gaps, they're too big to ignore. And we're here to help fix it. We are the Ethereum Community Foundation. We say what the EF

won't. We do what the EF can't. We serve ETH holders because you deserve better. Our northstar, the ticker, is ETH. That's the mandate. ETH isn't an experiment anymore. It settles billions of dollars in stable coins. It backs sovereign capital, LSTs, Dows, and treasuries. It's the monetary base layer of the internet. Yet, people are still afraid to say the P word. Still pretending it's taboo. Still afraid to say price out loud. We're done with that. ETH to 10K isn't a meme. It's a requirement, a benchmark, a mandate. A $1.2 2 trillion market cap makes ETH competitive with gold's monetary role.

Price isn't just speculation. It funds validators. It secures the network. It earns ETH the right to settle global value. When Black Rockck filed their ETF, they called ETH programmable money. They made the monetary case. They treated ETH like an asset. The EF still won't. We will. We treat ETH as a monetary asset. We serve ETH holders like a board serves shareholders. And we build for you, for validators, developers, holders who make Ethereum real.

EIP1559, it burned over 4 million ETH. So, how do we make number go up? We burn it. EIP1559 wasn't just a supply cut. It was a monetary policy. Ultrasound money was real. Apps like OpenC for example, they led the burn. A tokenless marketplace charging fees and ETH. Then came EIP4844. The EF rushed it through. No proper fee market. No ETH burn. Why did they do this? It's because roll-ups threatened to leave. ZK sync eyed Celestia. Polygon launched a veil. Optimism went modular.

They're ready to make Ethereum optional. And the EF caved. They bent the knee. They gave L2's cheap blob space at the expense of ETH holders. L2s post to Ethereum for free. They use L1 security. They charge us an ETH and then they dump it. They keep the revenue. They mint tokens. They extract me. They return nothing. That's money out of your pockets as ETH holders. Optima Optimism raised $200 million. Arbitum they raised 120 million. centralized, extractive, no ETH burn.

ETH holders pay for validator infrastructure and you get nothing back. That's not alignment. That's surrender. We believe L2s are critical for scaling, but not at the cost of the asset. We'll fund L2s that burn ETH or share revenue with holders, not tokenized value for VCs. Think projects like EAS, EFP, or a new DEX burning 100% of its fees in ETH. immutable feebased ethaligned. Current funding models aren't working.

Millions go to vague public goods that don't move East needle, but still, nobody seems to be working on finding what's missing for adoption to happen at scale. The funding process is often a black box. You don't know who decides. You don't know what's funded. You're not invited to ask. And it's hard to even know what's funded, why it receives funding, or how it aligns with ETH. Take ENS for example. These are projects that were incubated in-house at the EF. Uh when ENS was launched, uh it meant to burn ETH on domain registrations.

Uh but then there came a token, there came a DAO. One guy controls a huge share. Fees go to the treasury. That goes right into that guy's pocket. That comes out of yours. Nothing is burnt. Unis swap built with EF support inhouse. Now it's a VC token project. Governance is theater. Value capture is private. ETH sees nothing. Plasma promise scalability. Delivered vaporware. Then it became optimism. Another token machine. The pattern's clear. EF provides legitimacy. Teams launch tokens. Vested interests extract value. Eh folders get diluted. So, don't get me wrong, we don't oppose teams

succeeding, but publicly funded projects should remain public and benefit those who have paid for them. That's all of the ETH holders. We don't fund that. We fund infrastructure, not exit ramps. If it starts, it stays public. If it burns ETH, we fund it. If it mints tokens, we don't. So, let me ask you a question about this. Like why is Kraken and Backed launching tokenized stocks on Salana? Doesn't make any sense, right? It's because Salana showed up. They lobbyed.

They wrote memos. They built relationships. Ethereum did not. The EF has no DC presence. No policy desk. No regulatory engagement. We do have organizations like Etherealize who are out there doing good work, but that's just one group independent of the EF and they had to petition pretty hard for pretty menial um funding. Um so unless more organizations like that come to surface and support those initiatives, it could be too little too late because don't get mixed up here. There are people out there trying to eat our lunch. There's competition out there and they do it better than us and they do it smarter and they have a hell of a lot more money. A couple months ago I was in DC sitting in on a round table. I was

sitting with policy makers. I was sitting with staffers, regulators, politicians. I am not a politician. I was sitting next to Grant Hummer of Etherealize. Him and I were the only people in that room representing Ethereum. Who was there? Salana was there. Bitcoin was there. Worldcoin was there. Cardono was there. Ghost chains for lack of a better word. There was no one else from Ethereum there other than Grant and I. That should be shocking. And don't underestimate the enemy on this either. These guys are smart. They know what they're doing. They're trained. They're properly educated.

They're not engineers who came out of a grassroots movement 10 years ago. So while Salana had boots on the ground shaking hands with lawmakers, Ethereum posted blogs, wrote thought pieces about gardening and the virtues of remaining passive. Vitalik had no problem sitting at a table with other global leaders, people like Putin, people from Thailand, people from Montenegro. No issue there.

but he never stepped foot in a Congress. The United States is our largest client and we're sleeping on him. That's not doing a good duty to anyone in the network. That's not making Ethereum a monetary premium. The US is writing stable coin laws, defining crypto taxes, shaping custody rules, and Ethereum is nowhere to be found. And we're going to put an end to that. We'll be there. This isn't politics. It's defense. We'll back align teams, lobbyists, groups, and legal fellows who will help make the case for ETH as public infrastructure. And we'll show up where the EF has gone missing.

We're not an infinite garden. We're not planting metaphors. We're not curating vibes. We build software. We fund execution. We optimize for ETH price, security, and usage. No DEI reports, no identity based public goods, nothing that can't explain why it helps e-holders. Here's a couple quotes for you. We view public goods as identity work. Ethereum is a container for self-cultural foractization.

What the does that mean? What does that mean? No idea. All right, so these are actual quotes from grant recipients. So, let me make it clear. Ethereum is not a tool for social or identity formation. That's like saying the US dollar exists to help people. It doesn't need a worldview. It needs to clear. We're too old to be delusional about any of this. Ethereum is financial infrastructure. Let's get back to basics.

The ECF will fund stuff. Thank you. Thank you. It's kind of crazy that I have to be up here talking about this to you guys. Um, I can't believe no one has said this. This is that people say on Twitter. They talk behind closed doors. Everybody knows it. We're here to say the quiet part out loud. So, we'll fund stuff like a DEX that burns 100% of its fees in ETH. No tokens, no governance. There's no reason why applications shouldn't be generating revenue by charging ETH and collecting ETH in fees.

We don't need to be launching dilutive tokens that just end up in as these VC ponzi pump and dumps. All that does is reduce the money that you're taking home. This is the this is a network. We're building validator tools to make nodes cheaper and faster. strengthening the network and we're doing it transparently. Every grant is public. Every project commits to ETH alignment. Every dollar moves the number. The validator association validators secure Ethereum.

They finalize blocks. They post blobs. They carry the risk, but they have no say in development. That's like taxation without representation. So, we're launching the EVA as our first initiative. Uh validators will signal preferences like client priorities or EIP road maps using their staked EA signal. This isn't governance, it's influence. If you run the software, you shape its future. That's the bottom line. Igen layer introduced validator capture. The EVA introduces validator representation.

So client development Ethereum ships slow because there's no accountability. The protocol the protocol guild pays all the teams the same. There's no performance bonuses, no deadlines. You can stall forks and still get paid. It's communist that needs reform. Peter from guest said it. Specs aren't ready. Teams rewrite mid midcycle. Everything's decided behind closed doors. You can call him a disgruntled employee all you want, but at the end of the day, he's right. And he knows more than any of us in this room. He's been around since the beginning and he didn't get paid as much as he should. He was completely under reppresented and then he was just thrown out. That's Now, Prismatic

Labs, one of Ethereum's biggest clients, is owned by Offchain Labs. It's the Arbitum team. Uh that's a for-profit L2 that owns core infrastructure. The EF said nothing. They refused to continue funding. So, we're saying it. We'll fund clients based on output, sync speed, fork readiness, state minimization, milestones, not membership. Ethereum isn't slow because of decentralization. It's slow because no one's applying pressure. We are. So, thank you. You built this network. So, now let's protect it. We hope the EF would course correct. They didn't. So, we're stepping up. We fund projects that burn ETH. We enforce immutability. We reject token games. We align incentives.

We show up where Ethereum's missing. This isn't a fork in code. It's a fork in priorities. We are the Ethereum Community Foundation. We're just getting started. Join us. Run a validator. Shape the EVA. Build with us to burn ETH. Hold ETH and demand alignment. The ECF is your foundation. And let me make this absolutely clear. We are here to win. If you would like to get involved or contribute, visit us online at ecf.org and follow me on Twitter, zerozac zak.

And keep an eye open for what we're about to do. Thank you very much. [Applause] Thanks. [Music]