Buterin Defends Ethereum Foundation’s Neutral, Research Focus

Vitalik Buterin responded on Sunday to calls for the Ethereum Foundation to support token prices or lead marketing. He wrote that the Foundation should be ‘one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes’ and referenced the organization’s March 2026 mandate.

Buterin outlined the Foundation’s priorities as censorship-resistance, open-source code, long-range research, cybersecurity and neutrality. He noted the organization will prioritize longevity and technical health over scaling for maximum transaction throughput or directly influencing market valuations.

The comments followed several large ETH holders selling entire positions and a string of high-profile departures from the Foundation. At the time of the remarks, ether traded near $2,094, more than 50% below its roughly $5,000 peak reached in August 2025.

Buterin pointed out the Foundation holds about 0.16% of all ETH, contrasting that share with other blockchain foundations that typically hold much larger portions of their native tokens. He said the Foundation will stretch its funds to finance long-term research and signaled an intention to sell less ETH going forward.

In May the Foundation unstaked 21,270 ETH from the Lido liquid staking platform as part of its treasury strategy. Unstaking removes those tokens from yield generation but does not confirm a sale.

Observers have linked part of the protocol’s revenue decline to the Dencun upgrade, deployed in March 2024, which reduced fees for layer-2 transactions and led to a decline in base-layer fee income. Cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin commented that Ethereum’s ‘original sin’ was not considering tokenomics in decisions made after Dencun.

The Foundation has reiterated the March 2026 mandate, which emphasizes decentralization, long-range research, open-source development and protecting the network’s censorship-resistant properties. Foundation officials stated they will not act as a central market actor or perform corporate-style promotional duties, and that market-driven activity and scaling experiments should be left to other ecosystem participants.