Ethereum Foundation Announces Expenditure Situation and Recent Developments

Recently, the financial transparency of the Ethereum Foundation has attracted widespread attention from the crypto community. In response to related concerns, the foundation publicly disclosed its official expenditure at the end of August.

Data shows that "new institutions" account for the largest share of the foundation's expenditures, reaching 36.5%. This category mainly includes grants provided to multiple organizations, aimed at strengthening the Ethereum community in the long term. L1 development is the second largest expenditure item, accounting for 24.9% of total expenditures, covering funding for external client teams and internal researchers.

The remaining expenditures of the foundation include community development (12.7%), zero-knowledge applications (10.4%), internal operations (7.7%), developer platform (6.5%), and L2 R&D (1.4%). It is worth noting that the foundation has continuously released reports on external expenditures or funding activities over the past four years, maintaining a certain level of transparency.

Regarding the fund management plan, the foundation will spend 15% of the remaining funds each year, which means the foundation will exist for a long time, but its influence in the ecosystem will gradually diminish over time. Foundation members expect that the current operating funds can sustain for about 10 years, but the specifics will change with the fluctuations in ETH prices.

Recently, the co-founder of Ethereum has sparked controversy by selling ETH again. He explained that the transaction was an automatic order placed in August, aimed at funding ecological defense projects, and stated that this might be the last transaction of this kind.

In response to criticism in the DeFi space, the Ethereum team reaffirmed its commitment to decentralized finance but emphasized a greater focus on long-term sustainable projects rather than short-term speculative ones.

In terms of technological research and development, the Ethereum Foundation is actively exploring multiple areas, including zero-knowledge proofs, verifiable delay functions, and maximum extractable value. Team members believe that these technological advancements will play a key role in the future development of Ethereum.

Regarding the issue of ETH value accumulation, the foundation members believe that this is crucial for the success of Ethereum. They emphasize that the value of ETH will be realized through total transaction fees and currency premiums, rather than relying solely on individual transaction fees.

In response to the centralization issues of Layer 2 solutions, the Ethereum team has proposed a decentralized standard, requiring a 75% consensus from the network's council to overturn the proof system, and at least 26% of the council members should be independent of the rollup team.

Despite facing some doubts and challenges, the Ethereum team is still actively addressing and solving issues. As a mainstream application public chain, the fundamentals of Ethereum have not been fundamentally shaken. With the continuous development of the L2 ecosystem and the potential explosion of new applications, the future development of Ethereum is still worth looking forward to.