Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, is pushing back against critics who want the Ethereum Foundation to do more to prop up the price of ETH. With the token trading at roughly $2,094-more than 50% below its all-time high of $5,000 from August 2025-and following high-profile exits from the foundation, pressure has been mounting.
Buterin made clear the Foundation's mission remains unchanged: supporting decentralization, open-source development, cybersecurity, and censorship resistance. He stated, "Now, we are taking action to ensure that we will be the latter," referencing those core goals. The Foundation is not aiming to compete with high-throughput blockchains or chase a million transactions per second.
A key point of criticism has been the Foundation's minimal ETH holdings. Buterin noted that other foundations typically hold 10% to 50% of their native tokens, while the Ethereum Foundation holds just 0.16% of the total ETH supply.
Crypto journalist Laura Shin weighed in, saying, "I think Ethereum’s original sin was not considering tokenomics with every move it made from Dencun on." The Dencun upgrade in March 2024, which drastically cut layer-2 fees, also collapsed base-layer revenue for Ethereum.
On Sunday, Buterin reiterated that the Foundation will prioritize “longevity,” using its resources to fund research that could lead to fewer ETH sales in the future. He pointed to the Foundation's treasury plan, which involved unstaking 21,270 ETH from Lido in May, though he stressed that does not mean those tokens will be sold.