Is the Ethereum Foundation Too Out of Touch to Save ETH?

And when he left, and they, he departed, they replaced him with this other mysterious fellow that nobody even knows, and hasn't ever met or seen, and now they're releasing a bunch of like, you know, like I was, now they're releasing a bunch of crazy deviantArt looking shit that looks like they just walked out of a ketamine orgy.

You're talking about the mandate?

Yes.

That doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

They could just say crops, they can release some sort of blog post.

They don't need to put some stuff out that's like, looks like they paid some furry on Instagram to like come up with some sort of manga-based manifesto that like, doesn't make any sense.

This is what it looks like.

This looks insane.

Yeah, like, I'll put it this way, I don't think Tomas would have released this.

Greg, Greg, I, Greg, I know you wanna keep it like not bearish, we wanna keep it bullish, but you can't look at this and be like, oh yeah, dude, that makes sense for financial future.

This is a great place to put your money, institutions, like, we're totally in, like this is what they released to prove that they're like, that they have their fingers on the pulse.

Like, I would have left the organization too.

Hi everyone.

Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto.

I'm your host, Laura Shin.

Thanks for joining this live stream.

Today's topic is the future of Ethereum, the Ethereum Foundation, and E.

Here to discuss are Zach Cole, managing partner at Number Group and president of the Ethereum Community Foundation, and Greg Marcou, co-founder and CEO of Sprinter and co-founder of ChainSafe.

Welcome, Zack and Greg.

Hello, thanks for having me.

Thanks for having us.

So the Ethereum Foundation, sorry, the Ethereum community has been in turmoil over the last week about several departures, especially of senior people from the foundation, and there's been concern about all of that, plus, then we saw that David Hoffman of Bankless announced that he had sold his last ET, and we're seeing ethers trading at about $2100 and last summer and fall, it was about $500.

And then on Sunday, Vitali announced, quote, the EF will be a smaller ship, and he doubled down on Ethereum's crops values as being its guiding light, crops standing for censorship resistance, open source, privacy and security.

And all of these developments are just the latest and kind of like an unfolding two-year crisis in Ethereum.

And, you know, it feels like the community has these concerns, um that Ethereum kind of like, is losing ground to other chains.

Those were quelled a little bit in 2025 with the appointment of Tomas S Stanchek as co-executive director, but then he departed after 11 months, and so, it sort of feels to the community like Vitali and the EF are reverting back to their old ways, and those were the ways that kind of had caused a lot of angst in the community.

So, but you know, before we get into the specifics of like each of the events, I was just curious to hear each of your top line thoughts on all this drama.

And Zach, why don't we start with you?

Yeah, so, I mean, I've been kind of banging on that drum for a while about the EF and their performance, and kind of their attitude toward the broader ecosystem, and I think they took some steps in the right direction, but it it definitely does feel like a few steps back.

But overall, I think the sentiments and kind of like the way that people are feeling about the EF right now is Pretty much directly correlated with price.

I think that if you were at like $5000 I don't think anybody would be complaining about what the EF is or isn't doing necessarily.

So, I don't wanna be too harsh on the Ethereum Foundation, you know, I just, I think that I think that a lot of it is just, uh, people's angst over price action right now, which I think is out of the hands of the EF, not to say that they shouldn't.

Consider price and focus on that as like a, you know, security component of the network itself.

I just think that a lot of it is probably just bear market things.

Huh, OK, Greg, what about you?

Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, like, generally, the bear market and like, the current price probably doesn't like help too much with the general sentiment of things.

I'd like to say though also that they, you know, the ES probably been growing up quite a bit over the last, you know, since Tomas stepped in, there was all that turmoil that was like back then, when they, when they were looking at different opportunities, like even at Danny Ryan, like, as a potential option back then.

I think Tomas did like a really good job at least to like try and realign where they need to be focused, uh, and Yeah, I mean, him departing and then seeing like all these other departures, there's probably, it's like a mixed bag, uh, you know, a lot of these people that have been there, like, most of them had been there like 456 years.

You know, and so, whether this is like time for them to just take a break, move on, or pursue other things is something to still understand, but generally speaking, like, Yeah, there's been a lot of growing up, there's been a lot of cutting of things that have, you know, people have been historically complaining about for quite a long time, a lot more transparency, and I think like the latest news that's surrounded like with crops, crops, corpse, um, crops, I think is what it is, uh.

As they should just call it a corpse, yeah.

Like, I think there's probably some truth to it to a degree, but at the same time, like, You know, it does feel like there was like a bit of a shift when Tomas left and to what we have now, but things are heading positively, which is good.

But, like, generally speaking, it looks like things are headed in a positive direction nonetheless, cause I think like, even Vitalic's tweet kind of slightly changed my opinion yesterday, um.

Oh wait, and I'm, I'm sorry, wait, just when you say, um, things are headed in a positive direction, what exactly are you pointing to?

Like that, like the EF growing up and realizing that, like, priorities, you know, where their priorities need to be and where they have to lean on, like, other teams, you know, to, to, to hold ground in other areas.

My only, yeah, my only, my rebuttal, my, my concern about that is that I feel like we've heard this before, and they tried it out with Tomas and like, kind of shit the bit, and now they're just like, let's just go back to what we know, which is like, infinite gardening and uh funding longevity research, and like doing a bunch of retarded stuff that nobody in the world gives a shit about other than Vitali and his little cabal.

I'm just gonna say it, like, the EF is completely out of touch.

So, I mean, Now that I've dunked on them a little bit, like, I can also say that, like, at least they're acknowledging that other organizations are gonna have to step in, but then it becomes a question of whether or not they're actually going to like cede those reins to any other organization that is more competent and more in touch than they are, uh, because they, they just aren't, they're like, Funding hippos in Asia and all that, and like, you know, it's just, that's just stupid, nobody cares about that.

Like, it doesn't matter, like, like we're like Ethereum is no longer a startup, it's now a mature and robust ecosystem, and like, You know, you can't really like take the same liberties that we did 6 years ago, 10 years ago, like, it's just completely different.

There's like billions, trillions of dollars on the line here, and like people's livelihoods are dependent on that.

There are people with families, or, like, my entire career has been on Ethereum.

If it goes to shit, I mean, what am I gonna do?

Yeah, yeah, so we're gonna, we're gonna get into all the specifics because I feel like each of the points that I kind of, you know, used in my little summary at the beginning, we can dive into each of those.

So we're gonna do that in a moment, but first we're gonna take a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible.

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Back to my conversation with Zach and Greg.

So both of you kind of hinted at this before, um, but, you know, to my mind, actually, the fact that so many of the recent departures from the foundation were actually senior people who'd been there quite a while, and were extremely well known in the community, that actually didn't seem bullish to me.

In fact, it seemed quite concerning, but it feels like you guys are not that concerned, or, yeah, just talk about your reaction, cause, you know, to my mind, several of these are like true evangelists.

Yeah, um, I don't think it's super concerning.

I mean, mature organizations have churn, you know, and those guys have been around for a minute, um, and, and wait, even the fact that they all happened, you know, in the wake of Tomas leaving, like, like, basically, it's just within the span of 3 months.

I'm not saying it's like bullish by any means.

I'm just saying that like, It is a signal of a maturing ecosystem, and maybe not necessary, maybe the EF isn't maturing, maybe it's like regressing from what it did with Tomas, I don't know.

Either way, like the ecosystem itself is growing, and if these people don't have If they're not aligned with what's going on with internally in the EF, it's probably better that they just leave and start their own thing.

Like, I'm sure that they'll keep working in this ecosystem, or at least I hope so.

So it's kind of hard to really make a prediction without, like, on the long tail.

Without like seeing how it plays out and like what's going on in these people's heads, cause I hadn't really spoken to any of them, so I don't really know exactly what's going on, I'm just kind of guessing, you know.

Yeah, and, and just because I didn't actually name them, but, but I do want to, you know, some of them are Tim Baco, Barnaby Minogue.

Josh Stark, Trent, Trent Van Epps, Carl Beek, Julian Mott, like, these are, these are well known, right?

They're well known, but what, honestly, what have those people, like, not to disrespect anything that they've done, what have they done recently?

Like what have those people contributed to the EF and to the broader ecosystem recently?

I mean, like, I don't know if each thing that they were doing would have their name on it necessarily, but are you saying that you don't even feel like they were that important, or I'm not saying that they're not important.

I just feel like that they were essentially tenured to some extent, and they're kind of just like taking on hobby projects and doing X, Y, and Z, and if they were doing Large things and they're responsible for larger initiatives, then maybe that's another failure of the Ethereum Foundation for not highlighting the initiatives that they're leading.

Because personally, I don't really know what the EF is doing.

I don't know what any individual employee is doing there.

I don't know what the board is doing.

I don't know anything.

All I know is what Vitalic says, and that's pretty much it.

So, I think that would just be another like failure on their behalf to like highlight what people are doing, cause as involved in the ecosystem as I am, I can't even say what they were doing, aside from Trent working on protocol guild, you know.

And Greg, what about you?

Um, I mean, like I wouldn't find it like, is it, is it bullish, like probably like no, but am I, am I concerned yet?

Like, yeah, I wouldn't be concerned unless we see like an exodus go to like other ecosystems.

Yeah, like that's my gut check and read on most of this is like this isn't like a Max Resnick, you know, uh, you know.

Two birds up, like, you know, I'm done with you guys, you know, Solana and Toli are my god.

This is just, I, from what I've heard, like, most of them are going to continue to like work, you know what I mean?

Like, they're going to continue to like do stuff in Ethereum.

It's just maybe You know, just not in the EF, um, and I think that's Like healthy churn, like Zach said.

It's, it's only when an organization goes like negative like this, when they all start, you know, getting picked up by other teams, and that's probably to like, Yeah, at that point it's, it's probably due to like a various amount of other reasons.

Uh, yeah, if they start building in Solana, then we're fucked.

Yeah, but they're also like they've been around, like they churned like Peter last year, it's Peter Salai from yeah, it was, yeah, it was a natural churn.

He like didn't do anything for like 6 to 12 months.

He would like show up 1 or 2 PRs a month, you know, I'm, I'm giving him not enough credit, but like.

You know, like the output, like slowly dropped and dropped and dropped, and then it was just like, all right, I'm moving on.

Right, and they did, none of these people have had as big of a blowout exit that he did.

Like his was actually bad.

But what if, so, but what about the fact that all of this is happening after Toma stepped down, and he only came in 11 months prior, and when he came in, that was really in response to changes that the community was demanding and kind of discontent really amongst the community.

And, you know, when he started, people loved him, just like the praise I would see for him on the timeline, and he was just so open, he was very clearly kind of like talking and listening to all the builders that he could, and so it was a real shock when he stepped down so quickly, because it really felt like the community was extremely happy with him.

And so, you know, it kind of indicated almost like the foundation was gonna go back to not really listening to the community.

But I'm curious to hear like why you even think that happened at all.

I think that they, I think that they gave in to the pressure from the community, but they didn't really want to cede any control at all.

So they put Tomas in there, and they didn't even give him any like rent free reign.

He, he, he was still co-director or whatever with like CoED with uh with, yeah, so.

You know, like, he never actually had the chance to implement the type of change that he wanted to see within an organization that's actually real, and when he tried to push to institute those changes, uh, he essentially, I think what I think happened is he got run out because he, he's not conforming to the whole like, infinite garden, like nonsense that that we, we've seen, and, you know, And then when he left, and they, he departed, they replaced him with this other mysterious fellow that nobody even knows, and hasn't ever met or seen, and now they're releasing a bunch of like, you know, like I was, now they're releasing a bunch of crazy DeviantArt looking shit that looks like they just walked out of a ketamine orgy.

You're talking about the mandate?

Yes.

That doesn't, it doesn't make any sense.

They could just say crops, they can release some sort of blog post.

They don't need to put some stuff out that's like, looks like they paid some furry on Instagram to like, come up with some sort of manga-based manifesto that like, Doesn't make any sense.

Like, you, you know, it's just, it's, it's, that's crazy.

That's like super bearish.

Like, I don't want to see that out of the organization that's responsible for the financial future of my child.

One must show it on the screen so people can see.

Yeah, we were kind of laughing at at the document.

No, no, it should be a PDF.

It should be a PDF.

Um, and yeah, it's, it definitely, um, has a certain aesthetic, like even the fonts seemed kind of like a funny choice to me, but, um, yeah, so, OK, so, um, so we're kind of like jumping ahead, but, OK, let's do this, we're, we're gonna, we will, let's talk about that.

So yeah, this is what it looks like.

This what's insane.

Yeah, like, I'll put it this way, I don't think Tomas would have released this.

Greg, Greg, I, Greg, I know you wanna keep it like not bearish, we wanna keep it bullish, but you can't look at this and be like, oh yeah, dude, that makes sense for financial future.

This is a great place to put your money, institutions, like, we're totally in, like this is what they released to prove that they're like, that they have their fingers on the pulse.

Like, I would have left the organization too.

I would really like, what? and then it says that they have to kill themselves.

Come on, dude.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, it does.

Yeah, there's the Sepaku license, that's like maybe Ethereum Foundation fall on our swords and blah blah blah, if we ever fail to do this X, Y, and Z, and it's like, dude.

Come on, If it was just like weird looking design, that's like one thing, but the copy itself is just as delusional and out of touch.

Oh, you're talking about this is on page 11 at the bottom, it's like a A little, yeah, manga cartoon.

Um.

Yeah, Yeah.

Well So, OK, so neither of you know Bastian, because, OK, we're gonna skip ahead to to Vitali's post on Sunday, just because like something that was interesting to me was in his post, he said, um, Hold on, he said something.

I just want to find the exact quote.

I think he said something like, Bastian is leading this transition at the foundation.

That's what he said.

So do you think that the mandate came from Bastion, or do you think it came from Vitallic, or maybe it doesn't matter, but like, um, I mean, so the EF has a board.

Vitallic is majority on the um on that board.

So regardless of whatever he says, if you look at like a corporate org chart, like Vitallic is at the top.

And he's in his legal right to do whatever he wants to do.

So you can say that like, it's decentralized or somebody else is leading, or somebody else wants to do this, but that's not really how it is in practice, like, like the EF is essentially, you know, the mouthpiece for Vitalic.

That's, that's just how it is, and you can't, you can't deny that.

So, whatever he wants to say, like whether they like it or not, he's in charge of the Ethereum Foundation.

So, nothing is gonna happen without his approval.

Greg, what do you think of that?

Do you agree?

Um, yeah, I mean, generally speaking, it like that from that perspective, I don't think this is like.

Anything different than what we had.

Like, I don't know, a decade ago with all the drama of, like, you know, super shadowy, uh, government inside the EF, yeah, like, I mean, like, it's just like more, yeah, yeah, it's just more transparent, but it's just obvious, uh.

Like, yeah, like, there's no way that both of them didn't sign off on it, um, which is, I think the concerning aspect of this, cause like, as Zach uh delightfully pointed out, it just looks Like, You know, on one hand, like, it's nice to see, like, you know, creativeness.

Um, on the other hand, I think like when we're fighting for like a price.

You know, report, so to speak, uh, especially at a mandate level, it's like a little bit of McKenzie won't hurt you.

Like, it'll probably help.

Yeah, right.

And there's a fine balance, right?

This isn't summer camp, dude, like this is an art school.

Yeah.

OK, you guys, this is, this is cracking me up.

Um, well, so, so one thing is, um, and I can't remember if I asked you this specifically, but do you think that the recent departures have to do with Tomas also no longer being KED, or, or do you think it's just like the timing is, I think that Tomas leaving was kind of like made it obvious that, you know, no, that the people at the EF don't really have the intention of actually Delivering on what they're promising the community, I think it's just kind of like, you know, hot air.

Um, that's what I think, and there's no actual intention to like make good on any of the You know, what they're saying.

Cause if they did, then we we'd see more than just words, we would see action.

You know, like, uh, what, what should happen from if Vitali actually wants to put his money where his mouth is, what he would, what he could do, and like, let's say that he doesn't want to cede control of the EF and cede control of the ecosystem entirely, right?

Like he wants to maintain that power and concentrate it in the app.

Cool, that's great, sure, just like be uh be open about that, and then also open up the board.

Why don't they add, uh, why don't they appoint other board members that come from DFI, that come from different protocols, that come from an institution.

Institutional background that are all public, public figures that have a track record that we can hold accountable, as opposed to just this random dude who's out there, and we have to like, put together a bunch of pieces across the internet to figure out who he is.

And when we look up his name, you get this weird, like, similarly psychopathic, weird, like, like, documents out there, like the guy's personal website.

Maybe it's not him, but if it were me, if there were a Zach Cole.

Dot com out there that was saying a bunch of crazy psychobabble bullshit, I would be like, hey guys, there's another Zach Cole in the world that's even more unhinged than I am.

Like, let me, let me just show you, like, this isn't me, right?

But instead, we don't hear anything, we don't know who these people are, we have no idea who's making any sort of decisions that uh that uh that uh that impacts, like, you know, everybody's ability to survive within this ecosystem and, uh, like, directly contribute to its health or otherwise.

Yeah, Greg, do you wanna add anything?

I mean, it's just like.

I'm pretty sure Tomas was on like, 1, a 2-year term with like 1 year renewal dates on it.

And I think it's like, when I saw him leave, I, it was pretty clear to me that like, It's just not working.

Um, sure, like you could probably claim like the AI psychosis, like was like peak at that point in time as well, and maybe it was like, I want to do something different, but like, If you're trying to make an impact and a change, like, you gotta give it like 2 years.

I mean, uh, you know, like big orgs like that don't move fast, um, generally speaking.

And Again, like, you know, I'll go back to the shadow government era, it's like, like how was the accent, it's, you know, I know there's people in the EF that know who Bastian is, and like, he may be this great guy, but like when it comes to like centerfold Ethereum, it's like nobody knows who this is.

He's making all these decisions to just like a a bunch of people.

Um, and ask a bunch of stuff, put out a bunch of stuff, um, whether, sorry, and when I say acts, I don't mean like the people that departed, I mean, like, you know, like, they're, they've cut funding for a bunch of shit.

Yeah, he's making a lot of major decisions.

Yeah, he's just doing a bunch of stuff and like, I don't, there's like no background on this guy, you know.

Why, why, why isn't he, why isn't he on Unchained?

Why are Greg and I here?

Like, why aren't you talking to Bastian?

Like, you know, like, do I, do you know who he is?

Have you ever, do you know what he looks like?

Like what color hair does he have?

No, I tried to figure that out.

I, I messaged, I found a photo of a Bastian Aw on the internet, and I asked the EF if that was him, and they said no.

And I got physical descriptions from people who know what he looks like, and yeah, that definitely wasn't him.

But it's got DB Cooper, like, like, like this is what I kind of said in my post and the EF coms person was so mad at me, but like.

You know, he is such a contrast to Tomas, right?

It's like Tomas was out there, he was talking to people, like you could meet him, he, you know, he had a presence on the internet, like on, on X, like he just was engaging in every way, in person, online, like, you know, he kind of He was a visible presence, he had his hands in things, and he gave people confidence cause they could kind of see what he was up to.

Bastian, it's like, no history, um, you know, you cannot find him online except the strange website that we can't even confirm if that's him.

Um, then there's like the fact that even as this interim OED, uh, position that he has, he just has barely tweeted since the, um, announcement, and then, but the other thing too is like, they said he's the interim OED, but there's literally no information about how they're trying to find the new ED, you know, what the next steps are, like, what the process is, just like, it's just.

He's interim, that's it.

That's the only information.

Um, so, OK, oh, uh-huh.

Yeah, this is, I mean, like, this is just like a repeat pattern of like a lot of things.

I said this on Twitter they did like the other day.

It's like the EF in general, they've never talked to anybody, um, you know, like, I know for a fact there are L2s like historically that were like pissed off, cause like, They had never had a conversation about, like, you know, anything when it was come to marketing, when it came to, like, really anything, it was offhand researchers would, but like, there was never like the org itself would.

Uh, I know Tomas like attempted to change that.

Um, and there's only like, as of recent, like people actually focus on Defi, like Charles, Charles and I think it's Yvonne, um, and they're like actually going out doing the work, you know, but it, it took like 10 years to get to this point.

Yeah, yeah, now Defi DVL is like low, it's like too late, too little, too late, yeah, and it's just like a repeat, it just feels the repeat, right?

We're like, this new guy, sure he might be a great person, but none of us, no one's been able to actually like.

Hear from him, to see from him, understand anything, and he's out here cutting budgets left and right.

So, and spinning people out and whatever else.

Um, Yeah, concerning, you know.

So let's, let's go back to the mandate just for a second because I did want to ask, you know, it's like, Um, at that time, there were, there were these rumors that, you know, said that, um, the employees had to sign a loyalty pledge to props principals, and if not, we would be expelled from the foundation.

And, um, like, do you think that's coming from Bastion or from Vitali, or, and what do you even think of the fact that maybe that was what they were trying to do, get people to do?

No, this is just a scapegoat.

Like, truthfully, like, this actually pisses me off as like, somebody who, like, runs companies.

This is, like, an ineffective job at being able to fire people over the years, cause they don't hold people accountable, they don't hold teams accountable.

Yes, there are great PMs, there are great engineers, but, like, how many times have, like, it's just been like, a 20 mil budget to just do shit, and there's like, no enforceability at the EM level, like, You know, I, I was yelling about this with Tomas.

It's like there should be like engineering managers, and they're held to like an actual standard, uh, that's like, it doesn't even have to be public, but like, yeah.

Budgets just run, you know.

This is like their excuse to get rid of the people that just didn't fit the culture mold, and also at the same time, probably just do a bunch of culling at the same time.

Yeah, it makes me feel like they want their cake.

They want, want their cake, and then they want to eat it too, you know, it's like, well, they want everything, but they're not, uh, willing to actually go the extra mile to ensure that all these things are actually implemented.

Now they're kind of backpedaling.

Oh, like, meaning they By trying to have people sign the loyalty pledge, that was like a sort of indirect way rather than just like having conversations with people, kind of about like what what the mission is and like making sure they're on board or something.

Is that what you mean?

Oh, what I mean, yeah, yeah, for sure.

OK, OK, and then they're using that as an excuse to, to get rid of folks like Greg was saying.

Yeah, OK, well, let's now talk about the next event that happened last week, which, um, so basically we've kind of filled in all the backstory leading up to the departures, but, um, as the community was having this conversation about the departures, David Hoffman of Banklit announced that he had sold his last E, which was shocking because Bankless has famously been an Ethereum line podcast from day one.

Um, his co-host Ryan Sean Adams is still a believer in Ethereum, but he's not gonna be visible, um, or as visible on the show anymore.

So I was curious like what your reaction was to hearing that news.

I don't think it's news.

I mean, like David's been kind of like doing his own thing for a few years now, as far as I'm concerned, like, primarily they're, they're entrepreneurs, they're business people, and they're gonna do whatever is best for their bottom dollar at Bali, and that doesn't necessarily include what's good for Ethereum.

Like they have a venture studio, they have to do like, or they have a venture, like a VC fund now, and they have like, you know, fiduciary responsibilities, but I mean, David has been doing some like Bear as shit for a couple of years, it's not like anything new.

I think that maybe him saying that he's sold his eth now is maybe um kind of like a cry for attention because he's kind of pigeonholed himself as this like villain essentially, I think, in regard to the broader Ethereum ecosystem, and it's been about 3 years since that's like started, 3 or 4 years, you know, but I don't, I don't, I don't think it's gonna impact me.

I'm not gonna sell Eve because David did, that's stupid, you know.

Like people, people buy and sell all the time.

I don't tweet about it, like, I think it's just a cry for attention.

Well, OK, but I mean his whole identity was wrapped up in Ethereum, so it was, but I don't, I don't, when I think of David, I don't think of an eth Maxi, and I haven't thought about him in that light for 3 or 4 years.

Like I don't, I think of him as a shark that's out there to make money, and that's fine, yeah, that's what if that's who he wants to be, and that's who he is, that's OK, there's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah, at least he's not out there trying to say that he like shilling Eve, while also covertly dumping his bags, you know.

Greg, what about you?

I don't really care that much.

Um, I think it's like, I, I, I, I do think though.

I mean, it's, I think it just shows a little bit of character.

You know, when you have a personality that big, and as you said, you've like built the brand on the back of E for as long as it was, until as long as it has been.

Yeah You know, it gets clicks.

That's how I like to look at it, right?

OK, well, let's move on because we have so many other topics.

So if you don't have a strong opinions.

One thing to note, one thing to note though, is that like the EF and Vitallic and all of them say they don't want to be kingmakers.

They're directly responsible for creating David Hoffman.

They gave him a spotlight, they gave him a microphone, they brought him in, like before that, he was just like a podcaster that Did whatever, had like a few 100 followers, and then Vitallic put him on to kind of become the de facto podcast of Ethereum, like, you know, what, 56 years ago, something like that, um, whenever there was conflict starting in Russia, he kind of like gave him the spotlight there.

So, but I don't know what you mean by that.

He like officially said that Bankless is the, no, he didn't officially say it.

He didn't officially say it, but he put them on and he supported them and he like gave them the microphone.

That's what he, that's what Vitallic did.

That's what he did back in like 5 years ago or something like that.

And before that Bankless wasn't even really, it wasn't even really a thing.

He was working on POV crypto, that was like another podcast that I was on several times, and it was just a tiny podcast.

So I'm just saying that like, Metallic giving people the mic and the spotlight is actually like, they, they are kingmakers, so that's kind of contradictory to a lot of what what they're trying to say now.

All right, well, so the day after David's announcement, Don Crad Feist, who previously, you know, did research at the foundation, and then last fall left to go to Temple.

Um, he tweeted a proposal that, um, at least like from a podcast that he and I did together last week on the Defiant, I'm not even sure if he was like incredibly serious about it, or like, like was even seriously putting it forward.

It, the way he spoke about it, it felt like he was just more just putting an idea out there, but he tweeted, quote, if we want to get Ethereum back to winning, 1, create an organization with credible funding, minimum $1 billion is a start, find a leader who is competent and wants to fight.

Make it accountable with the board of people who want it to go up in a charter that holds the orac accountable to it, fund it permanently with a significant amount of staking revenue.

So, what I found interesting is that, like, in, so in my opinion, I think the EF can totally have crops principles as its guiding light, but also do all the things that Jakered mentioned in his post, like, I don't think that they're mutually exclusive at all.

But in my opinion, the way the EF is operating, it's like they wanna do the crops thing, but they don't wanna fight for it.

They just wanna like, be in their ivory tower and, you know, sort of build it and they will come kind of concept.

Um, so, anyway, I was curious like what you thought of his proposal.

Um, I mean, I think the big problem is like funding, where like, sure, give someone a billion dollars and they'll make it great again.

Like, cool, all right.

I mean, I, I think it also boils down to the EF not acknowledging prices, like a significant And driving factor behind the ecosystem and actually one of the foundational pillars of security within the network.

When we switch to proof of stake, the value of ET becomes the value of the network.

It's, it, it's, it's equal to the security overall of the network.

So, I think that's like a big, big problem.

I think it's less like, oh, give someone else a billion dollars, and more like, hey, let's like boil this down to fundamentals.

Like, what do we need to do?

I think like we need to really focus on Ethereum as the, you know, Like the, the, the asset of the network that we need to drive value to.

And I think that a lot of that has been cannibalized because there have been a lot of poorly made strategic decisions, uh, like driving a lot of things to L2s, and like making a lot of protocol decisions without considering the economics of the network and the protocol itself, um, and just like, by disregarding all of that, I think it's just done a huge, uh, disservice to E and, you know.

Uh, the ease holders, which should be treated as fiduciaries essentially.

Yeah, like, the EF has historically, outside of, like, a few core teams, obviously, like, historically, a good chunk of the folks that work there are, like, very strong academic researchers.

Right, like they don't, the, the concept of like applied research isn't.

Something that's very like prevalent there and when you look at the explain what that means for non-technical yeah yeah so like you know on the applied research it would be somebody that You know, has a little bit more let's say product focus, um, so they, they can go and say like, OK, this is the ideal state, but, you know, to get there we're gonna have to do make some trade-offs and like this is the path we're gonna like realistically take, um, and they might also be on the engineering side.

Um, And kind of where I'm going with this is that like historically, and I mean even till today, like most of that like the applied side and the actual engineering side is generally outsourced, right?

Like that's why there's consensus client teams and all the funding that happens to external parties.

Um, that's probably a lot of it and including operationally like due to just like execution, um, and leadership like internally, right, over the years.

Like the team, they are not built to hold people accountable to build, and if, you know, to build, especially on the product side.

Like even the internal teams, they run pretty autonomously, so the ones that are working well and work, like Gath, um, and a few of the other ones, like, they, they're just, they get funding.

Right, they, they hear what research wants, and half the time they're the ones shooting down the proposals, right, at the like core devs, um, level.

And so Yeah, I mean, like, I think that's an Also interesting to watch as we see a lot of these folks leave, but also some of the teams that get forcefully spun out with like fixed funding.

You know, and potentially no renewals on it, it's in reaction, as I see it, to like, they're just not good at it.

It's when a team's like, similarly, a startup's not good at building product, but they're good at, like, doing X and they focus on that.

Um Yeah, you know, it's like, that's the inevitability, right?

All right, so now let's talk about Vitalic's post on Sunday.

Um, Let's, we'll just talk about a part of it at first.

So, um, he, first of all, I just need to say, he said that this was just his views, um, so obviously there's other people at the foundation and like other board members, um, but as we said, everybody knows that what Vitali says is, it's probably gonna go.

So, anyway, uh, as I mentioned earlier, he said that Bastian was executing the EF transition, which, you know, was interesting to me just because it feels very Vitallic to me, but maybe that's why Bastian is the KED.

Um, and then he talked about like how Google started as don't be evil, but then he said that all large companies now are bending to what he called greed for financial gain, totalizing visions of accelerated superintelligence, infiltration by sociopaths, and craving capitulation to, or worse, active participation in government pressure for ideological control, surveillance, and war.

And then he said that like the fact that this was happening influenced his vision of the EF to not be a center of Ethereum, but as one node with a defined purpose alongside other nodes.

And then basically, he also talked about how the EF has limited financial resources with only about 0.0 0.16% of all E, and for that reason, it will focus those resources on pursuing longevity over bread.

So, you know, to my, the way I read that was like, maybe some of these departures have to just frankly do with money, um, because with the E price down by more than 50% from the fall, um, you know, that means that their budget has also shrunk.

Um, but then the last bit is, he talked about how a theory must be impressive, and he defined that as provably bug-free, available chain consensus, and intermediary minimization.

So we'll talk about the second half of the post in a moment, but first of all, like, what did you make of, of all these parts?

I, I mean, You don't exit senior leadership because budget's tight, uh, like the folks running the ship.

So, like, You know, you exit like solidity, which people complain about on a frequent basis into their own organ, that's a budgetary concern.

So I would not associate budget cuts to like, you know, Tim and all those folks leaving.

I think that's more like systematic health and those are also.

People who have been around for like 10 years, like, you know, they're like, they're they're they they were the they were the folks that were around like when we were all getting started doing this stuff, and they were in it.

Like, we all believed the same thing, and that's what motivated all of us to actually do anything, cause I wasn't getting paid shit for a really long time.

Granted, I still don't get paid shit, but like, you know, like, it was, it was tough for a while, and if you were in it, And if you got in around the same time I got in, and the time Greg got in, like we built, we worked on these too, we did a bunch of stuff.

I wasn't getting paid, I was in it for the love of the game, like, you know, it's something that I believed in, something that I could rally behind, and I think that's what made Ethereum so awesome at the beginning, and I think now.

We're trying to like backpedal to try to put this crop thing front and center, which I agree with, you know, it's, and it's, it doesn't have anything to do with the ethos necessarily, it just has to do with how they're running things.

You think, you can't run things the same way that they were run before, but I think that they've become such like a titan of influence, that it's Riskier to try to like take to try to take it in a direction it needs to go, because, you know, there's a lot of moving parts, and now there's like a lot more at stake, you know, and They're probably just a little scared as well.

So, OK, now, in the second half of the post, this to me, it's funny that to me this like made me raise my eyebrows.

He said, the most high value product of the Ethereum blockchain, financially speaking, is Eth the asset.

And it's just funny that, you know, when the creator of Ethereum says that the most high value product of the blockchain is actually Eve, like, the fact that that's headlines, headline news to me, because he generally kind of like disdains talking about price and and all that, like, Anyway, um, then the other thing he said was, um, there are aspects of supporting if the asset, necessary aspects even that are outside the scope of the EF.

This is where we need other heroes, some of whom hold more Eth than the EF does, to step in and help.

So, I kind of read that it's almost like an implicit endorsement of the Dinkrat idea.

I don't know if you agree with that, but like, what, what was your reaction to the statement about E the asset?

I mean, I think it's about time, like, yeah, hey, E has value, and it presents a unique utility to the network, like duh, like should have said that shit five years ago, bro, come on, get real.

Like, hey, actually, now that I think about it, E is pretty important.

Like it's like literally what proof of stake is based on.

Like, if the value is low, then security is low.

You don't build an economic engine and then say, oh, you know what, maybe economics are important.

Like, it doesn't, like, did you not think about that 10 years ago, 15 years ago?

Like, you know, come on.

I mean, I'm not gonna like harp on the guy for saying what we've all been thinking.

I'm just gonna be like, this isn't news, people, like, let's go, like, you know, like we need to focus on ET as the monetary premium of the network.

That is what creates value.

That's it.

That's what attracts new users, that's what creates security.

Most importantly, is like the security of the network is entirely dependent on ET having value.

That's how it works.

That's the innovation of blockchain, that's the innovation of crypto, you know, so.

Just seems a little weird that he's coming out and saying that stuff now, you know.

Greg, It was like his Wolf of Wall Street moment, you know, the way, but it was just as sex said a little bit late.

Uh, it's, it's in line with what's happening though.

I mean, like, they hired Dei leads, great, you know, still very late.

Dei Summer was, you know, 6 years Abos ago, yeah, like, uh, yeah, I've got, I've gotten married and had kids, raised those kids, like.

You know, that's where I got my first gray hair, um, but like, it's nice that it's happening, it's just late, um, but It's also maybe he's turning a page.

Maybe they're all turning a page, you know, it's There are serious competitors out there.

I don't know.

The way that I read that was like, he's paying lip service, that's how it read to me.

But so this leads me to my next topic, which I, I tweeted about this, like, to my mind, I feel like Eve's cryptoeconomics are kind of broken right now.

I think like so many people think that Ethereum is super valuable, and I think that there's like a lot of people that Want to fight for it and are um and and like all the, I, you know, um, ideals and principles that Vitalic talks about and crops and all those things.

I actually think so many people are really into that, but the fact of the matter is that Vitallic and the EF, yeah, I just want to say Vitallic, but anyway, um, they, they, yeah, they haven't kind of like.

Um, used, so basically ether could be used as an amazing tool to push those crops principles.

It could be used to, you know, get many people kind of into this community and ecosystem that values those principles, which I think are actually really important.

It's just that everyday people don't know that those principles are important.

So if you kind of do the BD and you do use the cryptoeconomics to get people interested in E, then you can kind of like Trojan horse those principles to them, but because everyday people don't give a shit about that, like, by him just being like, I'm gonna, you know, do these principles and, and like then.

Sort of, you know, hope and, and pray that people get interested.

Like, I feel like that's not gonna be as effective.

So I was curious, like, do you agree that ether's cryptoeconomics are broken, and, and a second piece is, I do feel like the foundation plays a critical role in formulating those cryptoeconomics, and I feel like because they're not focused on it, that's like another problem.

Would you agree that the foundation is kind of a crucial player in formulating that?

Yeah, 100%, no question.

Yeah, yeah, I think I, I.

If you try to change the curve that exists there, like, I guarantee you're gonna have the entire R&D team swoop in there and just be like, uh, no.

Like, wait, I'm sorry, the curve, like the emissions curve, or, yeah, of course, if you try and touch the economics, like there's no way they don't all just jump in on it, you know what I mean?

It's like you could have like a perfect, you know, by definition perfect, there's nothing perfect, but like.

I mean, I, I swear like on the Hasu podcast, like the one from years and years and years ago, there was like discussions about changing the curve, but that was like 34 years ago, like, we still haven't changed the curve.

Well, now there's an EIP they're proposing that's going to reduce emissions, essentially cut it in half, which is gonna be really great.

Yeah, another contentious, another contentious EIP.

You ready?

Yeah, it's like the risk free return on this just isn't worth worth it at all.

Yeah, that's sort of what David Hoffman was saying, cause I, I also tweeted that like Ethereum's not interested in putting points up on the scoreboard, and he said that, yeah, that was basically why he pieced out.

They should be interested.

I mean, the fact that there's a scoreboard with points on it implies that you're playing on a field that cares about those things.

If you're on a team that doesn't care about winning, then go back to the playground.

I feel like I'm on a sports podcast right now, but like, you know.

So this actually leads perfectly to my next question, um, which is all about kind of this coming era of we're we're we're really already in this era of competition, actually.

And this morning, Frank Chaparo tweeted, quote, Ethereum's dominance is slipping.

ET is down about 30% year to date.

The ETBTC ratio just hit its lowest level since mid-2025, and blockchain revenue is steadily shifting towards Solana, Tron, and Hyperliquid.

The competitive landscape is changing fast, and his tweet had a chart that showed exactly that.

Actually, Juan Ma, can you expand it out, like, if you click on the image?

Yeah, so like if you look, it might be hard to see, but like, basically, um the blue where it's, you know, it's super dominant for a period, that is Ethereum, and then when you look at the, the, you know, the recent, I think it's like by quarters or something, um.

Basically, it's actually quite evenly spread, and so, um, you know, I kind of get the feeling that like the EF or Vitali either is unaware that there's this massive competition going on, and there's all these players that are vying, you know, to, to get people on chained, or they don't care, or I don't know, what, what's your read on kind of like, whether or not they seem to recognize that the competition is only just getting started.

Yeah, I think they're totally oblivious.

I mean, in previous cycles, we've always seen these like E killers come out.

You remember like EOS and all that other, all that other crap, and it was always, it was always kind of like vaporware, but, you know, it was only a matter of time before somebody could come put together a car that looks cooler and is actually faster, you know.

Um, I think that there's no competitive edge left because, you know, we, we've had such A winning streak of like being the shit and being cool, and having the great tech, and having all the good researchers and having the mind share, that it kind of made everybody kind of complicit and lazy, but I think, you know, they still don't really have their ear to the ground.

Everybody like, you know, it's still uh it's still pretty, you know.

I don't know.

I think they're definitely out of touch.

But that's not to say that it's too late.

Like, also, I, I don't, I'm not buying the whole like E is make Eth win again and blah blah.

I still think Eth is doing well.

I think that we're doing better than any other network out there, and the whole market is just down because, you know, AI is kind of taking over and, you know, there's like a lot of other shiny objects out there that's that are gonna attract like younger, more like younger talent, you know, than than crypto.

Crypto was like the hot shit for a minute, but now it's more like Just a standard component in the tech stack now, as opposed to like a new thing that's out, and AI is out, and it's new, and it's attracting a lot of talent, and a lot of young people.

I think that's just inevitable.

I'm no longer young.

I was young when I started working on this.

Look at me now, you know.

Still working on it, haven't gotten smarter, I guess.

Greg, what about you?

What do you think about the EF and it's either attitude toward or awareness of the competition?

I mean, I don't think they're like, I don't think you can be truly that oblivious, but when it comes down to what's actually happening, I believe that, like, a good chunk are just not paying attention to other stuff, um, you know, like a change if we like ran and build infrastructure and nodes for like, Most major blockchains, and we would bring back ideas that looked great, and it was always like, oh yeah, don't know anything about that chain.

And that's like a common pattern.

You know, whether they know the stats is one thing, but whether they care about what's happening from like, you know, in that ecosystem specifically is like its own battle, and truthfully most of the time it's not.

Um, Yeah, like you would have to be like gross negligence to not be fully aware of what's going on.

I'm sure that they're aware, but I think it's maybe like arrogance that's, well, yeah, they think it's the care, right?

That's what I don't need to compete.

We don't need to compete, like, you know what I mean, like.

And these killers come and go every cycle.

So in your ideal world, what would happen?

Like, either what would they do, or then would there be this kind of like outside organization, or, or Zach, I don't know if you want to talk about what you're doing with the Ethereum Community Foundation, but like, ideally, what would happen from this point forward?

Yeah, so the ECF has always just existed to act as like a forcing function to the EF.

Like we, we've shipped a bunch of stuff over the past year on a shoestring budget with a very minimal team, focusing on Ethereum, providing like some degree of funding, uh, building, you know, public goods infrastructure that needs to be put out there, and products that focus on consumers.

So I think on a, like on a longer timeline, if I think what would be ideal is Metallic and the EF just quit the bullshit.

Like the bottom line is that like if you're in court, and, you know, there's a concept of jurisprudence, and like, you can say that like, you know, uh they that they don't have control or whatever, one thing or another, but they're gonna look at like, they're not gonna look at the statements, they're gonna look at the outcomes, they're gonna look at what's actually implied like.

Actually enforced in in practice, right?

As opposed as opposed to like, oh well, we don't do this thing or this is decentralized, and we don't have anything to do with that.

But that's, that's all, that's all bullshit.

So, I think at the end of the day, just say, hey, look, we're controlling Ethereum, we control the network.

I mean, if, if, uh, circle and tether, like, so if there's a contentious fork, um, which fork is which network is going to be, uh, like the, the primary fork, like the primary chain.

It's gonna be whatever the Ethereum Foundation says, because it's going to be whatever circle and tether, wherever they choose to redeem their assets, and they don't want to incur any liability by making any sort of just like choices themselves.

So what they're gonna do is they're gonna defer to whatever the Ethereum Foundation.

Which is what Vitalic says, at the end of the day, that's what they're gonna do.

That's it.

That's all that there is to it.

You can say whatever you want, you can put out a bunch of crazy mangas, you can say that you're not in charge.

It doesn't matter, they're in charge.

Admit that you're in charge, it's OK to be in charge.

Actually, I want you to be in charge.

Please be in charge.

Take some responsibility.

You gave birth to this child, put the fucking kid through school.

Like, you know, divert, like, grow the fuck up, diversify your board, include people.

From across the industry that are smarter than you, that know how to run products, that know how to build companies, that have entrepreneurial experience, that's not just sitting and writing white papers for 20 years, and like, dealing with all this academic masturbatory garbage.

Like, don't do that.

Like, think about someone other than yourself and your ego for once, and give other people the reins.

Like you, like, it seemed everybody was super stoked when Tomas came in, and that seemed like a step in the right direction, but then they drove him out and they, like, went back to their infinite gardening.

Like, just.

Make that board larger, make it public, make it actually transparent.

We built a transparency dashboard that like tracks every single penny that we spend.

If somebody buys a paper clip, it's on this, it's, it's on this transparency report.

We need to run Ethereum like we would a company.

That's it.

That's all there is to it.

Whether you like it or not, whether whether companies are evil or whatever, like, shut up, just like grow up and like get a job.

Like, you know, that's all there is to it.

So I think that's what would happen in a perfect world, is everybody saying, all right, cool, we had our fun, we did our stuff.

Like having a properly functioning organization is not contradictory to any of the crops, like, notions of crops at all, because Greg and I have been running companies that bleed and die by these principles for 10 years, over 10 years, and at no point did any or any of those like principles, um, put like or or threatened, like not, never, right?

So you can run an organization that's like clean and coherent and makes sense and it's.

Professional and has like a, has like a unified face that allows institutions to feel comfortable without completely selling out to banks.

Like, none of us got into this to be like institutional investors or accredited investors, or like whatever, like, none of us, that's not why we got into this.

We got into it cause we were dumb and young and had nothing better to do, not us.

No, because there were like the crops principles, you know, like, that's what drove everybody, and that's what we can still conform to.

But let's grow up and actually run.

Ethereum, like we would an organization that can scale, because if we can't do that, then the crops principles are useless because it's gonna show that none of these principles are actually applicable to real-world business.

And if they aren't applicable to real-world business, then it doesn't, then they have no real-world value.

So, let's make them real.

Let's like, put our money where our mouth is, and let's grow up, and let's do it.

Yeah, and whether that's the Ethereum Foundation taking responsibility for that and saying, yeah, you're right, we need to do BD for the price.

We need to do BD around like marketing and like, we need to make sure that people understand the messaging.

Like you, like that's, that's it.

Or whether it's another organization, they're gonna have to actually cede control and they're gonna have to hand the mic to somebody else the same way that Vitali did to David Hoffman.

Doesn't matter who, as long as they have like their shit together and everybody understands what the, what's necessary of the roadmap that's actually gonna scale.

Yeah, I, I agree that I think the Ethereum Foundation is not using ether and its price as a tool in its toolkit, and it could.

I know you have to run at the top of the hour, and it is the top of the hour, but I just want to ask one last question cause you mentioned the board, and Vitalnik did say that the Ethereum Foundation will be appointing new board members.

Do you either have like suggestions on how that process should go, or who should be on it, or even like the type of person that should be on it?

I don't think it should be like a Dow.

I don't think it should be a decision that's made by everybody that holds E.

I like, you know, I'm not saying anything extreme, treat it like a real company.

Bring in people that represent different sectors of Ethereum, that can contribute their knowledge and their wisdom to understanding what's actually necessary.

Have a board like someone that represents standard media, that understands PR, like, be like, all they, and if they don't want to do that, then they just need to shut up.

Because like everything they're doing is creating PR crisis that just makes us all look bad.

So either like, do it or shut up.

That's all they, that's all you have to do.

They could just shut up and play their little game and do their little thing forever, in perpetuity, as long as they just step out of the way.

So it's either lead, follow, or get out of the way, and they're not really choosing to do any of those things.

Which is extremely frustrating, and I know that I'm going off on a tangent, and I'm rambling, and I seem unhinged, but I've been doing this for over 10 years.

Like, I've seen cycle and cycle and cycle, and many people turn over and, like, you know, that's just what I think.

Yeah, so Zach, if you have to run, you can, um, I do want Greg to answer those last two questions that I ask, I can repeat them for you, Greg.

So I'm gonna thank you for having me.

Thanks, Zach.

It was great chatting with you.

Bye.

So Greg, um, the two, well, I'll start with the first one, which was just like about the Frank Chaparo chart, and whether or not you think the EF has an awareness about the competition.

Oh yeah, like I was saying, like the It would be a fiduciary irresponsible for nobody to be not checking this.

I mean, like everybody's on Twitter, everybody sees everything like.

They, they, they know it's, they're aware that the competition is, is there.

I think in many cases, being aware that there's competition and being aware of like what the technical edge and why people are making those decisions is probably not as prevalent until more recently.

Like, You know, I was saying before, like, talking to people in the community, and then there's talking to people in the community, and then there's talking to people in the community that like also have users.

And historically, a lot of the time you'll find it's like, oh yeah, we spoke to these people, and it's like no one's heard of them, just like nobody's heard of Bastion, you know what I mean?

That's changing, it truly is.

But like, I mean, I would be shocked if they haven't.

I just don't think they care.

I think a lot of people internally don't care.

Right, it's like we have our moat, we have our defi, we've got our liquidity, you know, like.

Like my worry, like the fact that they don't care means that they will lose out on the competition.

That's what I worry, like, I, so I said this on, I think on that Defiant podcast, and I don't remember if I tweeted it or not, but like, basically, I think that crops could win in the long term, but is it gonna win in the short term?

No, in my opinion, because basically the way that I expressed it was like, If I think of anybody that I know, um, like, from who, who I know from any context that's not crypto, and I think about the percentage of those people that are into crypto, it's basically 0%.

And so, you know, all these other competitors, they are going to where those people are, and they're like, you know, meeting them where they're at right now, and Ethereum is not doing that.

It's kind of like.

Staying in this sort of cypherpunk, you know, kind of stance, and it's just like, oh, no, no, no, but yeah, like, you know, whatever, 98% of people are not into this, and so all the other chains and um platforms, they're going after the everyday person.

And so, if Ethereum loses in the short term, then will it win in the long term?

Like, possibly, but if it loses in the short term, then it runs the risk of also not winning in the long term, and that's what I'm concerned about.

Yeah, you have to like play to your, like, you have to play to like increase your like total luck surface, you, you know, like that, it's, you're not going to like.

You know, there's getting winning takes like a bunch of factors and a ton of it is luck.

It's like, and you need to increase that surface as much as you can, um, you know, crudely, like, how Zach put it, it's like that documents just garbage, like.

I would be happy with a cleaned up version, and that would probably appeal to a lot more people more widely, you know, but you read that, it's hard to get through.

Um.

And I think it's just like a lack of awareness that like pushes sometimes these decisions that You know, would cause Ethereum to lose.

I don't, I don't think it will, uh, truthfully, we've just got so much going for it.

But, you know, the price of it's a whole different problem, right?

Yeah, I feel like if they fix the tokenomics, and if they like deign to fight for Ethereum, not just like, you know, in this airy fairy way, put these principles out there, if they decide we're gonna fight for these principles, then yeah, I think like Ethereum probably would win, but in the absence of those things, I'm a little bit like, OK, well, we'll see if the principles just magically attract people on their own.

Um, but OK, so that last question that I asked Zach, um, about, you know, the fact that they are actually adding people to the EF board, like, how would you, um, you know, wanna see that happen?

You know, what process or like what types of people or, or if you wanna name specific people you'd like to see on the board, like, what are you thinking?

I mean, like, systematically, it has to, we, we need like grown-ups in the room, you know, I, I, I, you look at, I mean, again, I can't find Bastian's info, but like, you look at the rest of, like, the team there and like, a lot of people.

Don't have like big corporate management things.

Not that that's what they need, but you need to have somebody that like actually understands.

Like businesses at scale to come in and say like, OK, there's like some things we have to change, we can adhere to the rules of corps as much as we can, but like, you know, these basic principles of how we should run.

You know, a 13, they have 13 bits of like, the total supply.

Like, that's a crazy amount still, even though it's like not a lot, like, it's still a lot of funds.

Like, they have to steward that, that's like priority number 1.

Priority number 2 is, I would love to honestly for them to just, like, continue to cut more stuff out and lean on other organizations to do it, like they already do.

Right?

Like, keep it lean, keep it focused on research, that's like what we need the most.

We've got other teams that are extremely talented at different budget sizes that are independent, that can really execute on a lot of this stuff, versus like the traditional model, which is, you know, you have team leads allocated budgets that are large, and they kind of just throw it around, and that's getting called back now anyway.

And finally, when it comes to the board, like, I don't, I really hope we don't have just like an internal family business style that we have, you know, it's just promote internally and just continue to promote internally.

It's like, there's no observability at that point.

There's no, like, keeping them accountable.

Like, we should be seeing someone external come in, somebody that has, like, put their, like, neck on the line for the last like 10 amount of years.

I don't know who that is necessarily, and, and you have to be careful not to kingma in this process, you know, but I would probably add like 2 or 3 beachheads from different, you know, areas, maybe like 1 or 2 from Dei, or even board observer seats.

I don't know if those exist in Swiss Foundation orgs, but, you know, same concept.

It's like, I would take, like, I would take on like a cane and like a, like a stani, you know, like.

Kind of polar opposites and similar at the same time, yeah, like people that have been around and basically like prop up the network.

You know, like, truthfully, like, iftani didn't, like, put together this, like, recovery fund, like, I think it actually would have been like, We would be in like super bear for the next 2 years.

Right, it's like those type of people would be good.

And then maybe honestly take on somebody completely like different adjacent.

Right, um, but just has a good track record and like open source, like, I'm sure there's somebody at You know, S&P 500 that like has ran massive orgs and can suggest this is the way to go, but like, You know, pick and choose your battles.

Yeah, yeah, in my book there was this moment where they tried to recruit um Brian Bellendorf from Hyper Ledger.

Um, but for various political reasons at that time, that was not really a viable option, having to do with, um, the, the current or the, the then executive director of the EF, but, um, anyway, oh no, I'm not Albert, never mind, no, it was Ming, yeah, yeah.

Oh my goodness, throwback, wow, yeah.

Um, anyway, I forgot that that was the time.

Yeah, see, that's my, that's my point.

It's like, there's too much family business happening right now, and it's like, let's bring some people in from the rest of the world that have, like, been bleeding, you know, this whole initiative, this whole time.

Um, Yeah, yeah, I basically feel like more transparency from the EF and more communication, those two things alone would go a long way, I think, for the community.

So, anyway, well, Greg, it was so great chatting with you and having Zach, um, and yeah, I know, um, this commute this conversation will be ongoing, um, it's sort of like been ongoing for a couple of years now and hasn't really died, so, um.

Yeah, we'll have to see how all this plays out, and really like the changes that they're making at the EF like how, what those changes really look like, because clearly, um, the reaction hasn't been positive, so I wonder if they'll take the feedback, but maybe they won't, we'll see.

We'll find out.

I'm sure we'll, I'm sure we'll get a tweet soon enough.

All right, everyone, thank you.

Yeah, thanks for joining and thanks everyone for joining this live stream.

We'll catch you tomorrow.

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