A fresh round of departures involving Ethereum Foundation researchers and contributors has pushed community unease into a broader dispute over the institution itself. With no detailed explanation from the Foundation, the conversation has moved beyond personnel changes and toward a harder question: whether the organization at the center of Ethereum still understands the network it is meant to guide.
Criticism has focused on leadership and strategy. In the absence of direct communication, community members, investors, and former insiders have started building their own explanations for what may have gone wrong inside the Foundation and what those exits could signal for Ethereum’s direction. The silence has become part of the story.
Feist calls for an institution tied to Ethereum’s economics
On Thursday, former Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist posted one of the clearest public critiques so far on X. His argument was that Ethereum’s governance and institutional setup are fundamentally out of sync with the network’s economic interests.
Feist said Ethereum needs an organization that is economically aligned with the network and accountable to it. In his view, the Ethereum Foundation still has cultural influence, but lacks real economic leverage. He wrote that the Foundation controls less than 0.1% of all ETH and does not receive direct revenue flows from staking or transaction fees.
He argued that if Ethereum wants to get back to winning, the ecosystem needs a new body with permanent funding, clear accountability, and leadership focused on growth. One proposal he floated was a $1 billion treasury, funded in part by staking revenue and overseen by a board whose incentives are linked to ETH appreciation.
Dencun debate reopens the tokenomics question
Crypto journalist and Unchained host Laura Shin framed the problem in even sharper terms. Writing on X, she said Ethereum’s “original sin” was failing to weigh tokenomics in every major move, especially after the March 2024 Dencun upgrade.
Dencun sharply reduced transaction fees on Ethereum layer-2 networks. That change also reopened debate around ETH’s older investment narrative. The “ultrasound money” thesis had been built on the idea that fee burns would make ETH increasingly scarce. Critics now say Ethereum’s scaling path, especially its embrace of rollups and lower base-layer fees, weakened that mechanism without replacing it with a new narrative compelling enough for token holders.
Shin wrote that many people do not want to believe in something that is not putting points on the scoreboard. Her remarks captured a wider frustration inside parts of the community: that the Foundation has focused too heavily on ideology while paying too little attention to competition, business development, and ETH price performance.
Leadership questions and internal disputes fuel speculation
The criticism is not limited to tokenomics. Shin also pointed to recent internal controversy, including a reported “mandate” that some contributors were asked to sign. At the same time, questions remain over recent leadership appointments and decision-making inside the Foundation.
Because the Foundation has not directly addressed these issues, speculation has centered on whether new executive leadership played a role in the departures and whether the exits reflect a deeper cultural shift within Ethereum’s most important institution. Shin wrote that it is not good for Ethereum if its most competitive people keep leaving, and warned that failure to stop the brain drain would benefit rivals or create new ones.