Ethereum Foundation President Breaks Silence On New Mandate And Internal Tensions

Ethereum Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi has laid out her view of the organization’s new mandate, framing the shift as a necessary reset after internal debates became increasingly strained and the Foundation faced pressure to be too many things at once. Her comments, posted on X after Vitalik Buterin shared his own view of the Foundation’s direction, arrive during a sensitive period for Ethereum’s core nonprofit. The EF is moving toward a smaller, more focused structure while the broader ecosystem debates its governance role, technical priorities and a wave of high-profile departures. Ethereum Foundation Enters New Power Era Miyaguchi said the mandate came from the board, but that she proposed it late last year. The trigger, in her telling, was not a single dispute but a structural problem: EF had become a focal point for competing expectations. “First, debates that were meant to be technical had started to become political and personal, and at times shaped by quieter incentives,” she wrote. “Second, as EF grew, more and more versions of ‘what EF should be’ began pulling at the core of the organization from every direction at once. I became convinced that trying to satisfy all of them would leave us achieving nothing at all.” That line goes to the center of the Foundation’s dilemma. Ethereum has long relied on EF for research funding, coordination and stewardship, but its culture has also resisted the idea that any single entity should become Ethereum’s command center. Miyaguchi leaned heavily into that tension, arguing that EF’s reduced centrality is not a retreat from responsibility but proof that Ethereum has matured beyond its first institution. “We have said it many times: EF is one of many nodes in Ethereum,” she wrote. “I know that is hard to hear for some, because EF was the first group, and in the early years it was essential for making things happen. But it was never meant to stay that way.” Miyaguchi connected that philosophy to her own history in crypto, noting that she has been in the sector since 2012 and joined Kraken in 2013 shortly before the collapse of Mt. Gox , which she said she helped clean up. That experience, she argued, shaped her understanding of both growth and centralization risk. When she became executive director in 2018, her goal was to help Ethereum grow beyond EF. The Foundation, she said, made deliberate choices to distribute power rather than retain control. Miyaguchi pointed to EF’s role in incubating and releasing projects such as Uniswap and ENS, supporting ETHGlobal and hackathons, and “funding the funders” through groups such as Gitcoin and Moloch. The guiding question, she said, was always: “how does this stand on its own, without us?” That strategy, according to Miyaguchi, has left EF with less than 0.2% of all ETH and a role that is now narrower by design. The mandate, she said, is to preserve and accelerate the properties and goals that make Ethereum “uniquely valuable, competitive, and worth building on,” centered on what she called CROPS and “inalienable user self-sovereignty and self-sovereign coordination.” “We cannot do it alone, and we do not intend to,” she wrote. “But defining this as the north star for the mission, and coordinating with the allies who share it, is the responsibility we are keeping.” Miyaguchi also pushed back against the idea that a sharper EF means less concern for adoption. She said the opposite is true, arguing that everyday users and institutions both depend on Ethereum’s underlying value proposition. Adoption, including institutional adoption, remains part of EF’s work, she said, but only in ways that fit the mission. The comments come as EF has seen a notable exodus of senior and high-profile contributors in 2026, including researchers and ecosystem figures such as Carl Beekhuizen, Julian Ma, Barnabé Monnot, Tim Beiko, Trent Van Epps, Josh Stark and former co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak. That turnover has intensified scrutiny over whether the Foundation’s restructuring is a sign of healthy decentralization, internal strain, or both. Miyaguchi acknowledged the personnel implications directly. “As EF becomes more focused and more opinionated, the team naturally becomes smaller and more concentrated. That is part of the choice,” she wrote, adding that new leaders are already stepping into the mission and that management will provide more details on the new structure and strategy in the coming weeks. Buterin’s May 24 post set the stage for Miyaguchi’s remarks. He described the EF as still being in transition, emphasized that he does not hold special power over the board, and said another leader is executing much of the current transition. He also framed the Foundation’s future as leaner and more focused, with less emphasis on being the center of Ethereum and more emphasis on preserving the network’s long-term properties. At press time, ETH traded at $1,986.