As Ethereum Turns 10, Where Is the Foundation Focused Next? - Ep. 877
🎯 Summary
Podcast Episode Summary: As Ethereum Turns 10, Where Is the Foundation Focused Next? - Ep. 877
This 80-minute episode features an in-depth interview with Tamas Hontzchek, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), conducted around Ethereum’s 10th anniversary. The discussion spans retrospective achievements, current strategic priorities, the EF’s evolving role, and Ethereum’s potential future impact, particularly concerning AI.
1. Focus Area
The primary focus is the Ethereum ecosystem’s strategic direction following its 10-year milestone. Key themes include the Ethereum Foundation’s governance and mandate, immediate technical priorities (scaling, UX), the relationship between the EF and ETH price, and Ethereum’s role in addressing future global coordination challenges, specifically around Artificial Intelligence (AI) centralization.
2. Key Technical Insights
- Short-Term Priorities: Tamas identified the three main short-term priorities for Ethereum development as: 1) Scaling Layer 1 (L1), 2) Scaling “blobs” (i.e., scaling Layer 2 activity), and 3) Improving User Experience (UX).
- Asset Issuance Preference: Tamas expressed support for the notion that all assets should ideally be minted on the Ethereum L1, even those currently being launched on L2s or sidechains like Base (e.g., creator coins on Zora).
- Interoperability Gap: The host noted that focusing solely on L1 and L2 scaling might be “kicking the can down the road” if the critical issue of interoperability between chains is not simultaneously addressed.
3. Market/Investment Angle
- EF Stance on ETH Price: Surprisingly, the EF maintains its historical stance of not prioritizing or focusing on the price of Ether (ETH), except when managing the foundation’s treasury assets. This contrasts with the community’s recent focus on ETH performance relative to competitors like Solana.
- Recent Market Momentum: The discussion acknowledged the recent positive shift, noting accelerated ETH price appreciation and Ether ETF inflows outpacing Bitcoin ETFs, signaling renewed ecosystem confidence.
- Maturation for Global Finance: The network has moved past the “experimentation” stage and is now mature enough (with trillion-dollar economic activity potential) to onboard global finance, suggesting increased institutional relevance.
4. Notable Companies/People
- Tamas Hontzchek: Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, recently appointed, bringing a background combining building, DeFi experience, and TradFi collaboration.
- Shayway: The other Co-Executive Director, noted for her deep technical background within the EF, particularly in consensus research and the Merge.
- IEA (I amie Kuchi): The previous Executive Director, involved in Tamas’s transition and the leadership shift.
- Vitalik Buterin: Mentioned regarding his effective work in driving community response and regulatory adaptation.
- Zora/Base: Mentioned as platforms currently seeing new asset issuance, contrasting with the EF’s preference for L1 issuance.
5. Regulatory/Policy Discussion
While not a deep dive, the conversation touched upon the community’s need to react faster to the changing regulatory framework, suggesting that recent community activation was partly driven by this external pressure. The EF’s mandate remains focused on promoting values like privacy and censorship resistance, which inherently carry policy implications.
6. Future Implications
The conversation strongly suggests Ethereum is positioning itself as the foundational coordination layer for the next wave of digital innovation, specifically AI governance. Tamas connected Ethereum’s permissionless, decentralized nature to resolving fears surrounding AI centralization, implying that the next decade of Ethereum development will heavily involve attracting thinkers focused on these “big threats to humanity.”
7. Target Audience
This episode is most valuable for Crypto/Web3 professionals, Ethereum core developers, Foundation stakeholders, and strategic investors interested in the long-term governance, technical roadmap, and philosophical direction of the Ethereum ecosystem.
Comprehensive Summary
The podcast celebrates Ethereum’s 10th anniversary by interviewing Tamas Hontzchek, the recently appointed Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation (EF). The narrative arc moves from reflecting on Ethereum’s resilience—highlighted by 10 years of 100% uptime and strong developer metrics—to outlining the EF’s renewed strategic focus under new leadership.
Tamas described his leadership style as adopting a “servant role,” emphasizing aggregation of smart ideas from the ecosystem rather than imposing a top-down vision. He detailed the process of his appointment alongside Shayway, noting that his profile brought necessary business and TradFi understanding to complement Shayway’s deep technical expertise.
A key revelation was the EF’s continued disinterest in the market price of ETH, treating it only as a treasury management concern, despite recent community anxieties over underperformance relative to competitors.
Technically, Tamas outlined the immediate roadmap: L1 scaling, L2 scaling (blobs), and UX improvement. However, the host challenged this by pointing out that these steps might neglect the crucial, unsolved problem of interoperability. Furthermore, Tamas advocated for all new assets to be minted on the L1, suggesting a potential standardization push away from L2-native asset creation.
Reflecting on Ethereum’s stages—from experimentation to robust infrastructure building—Tamas positioned the current era as one of adoption, driven by larger economic stakes (trillion-dollar potential). He connected Ethereum’s core value proposition—permissionless coordination—to
🏢 Companies Mentioned
đź’¬ Key Insights
"we published the treasury policy and the DeFi strategy and the DeFi prime guidance where we said that from our holdings of ETH, we will be delegating it to the DeFi protocols, and we expect the yield from all of these allocations."
"I think interoperability is the hardest of the three challenges that we are talking about, maybe because scaling L1 and scaling blobs are a continuation of something that people have been thinking a lot, and it's very well-defined within the protocol. Whereas when you touch interrupt and UX, it's like a thousand small pieces and coordination of those between L2s and the ones..."
"The Merge's role was to help the L2s scale and to deliver a solution for L2 data availability and to finally deliver those like sub-one-cent transactions."
"Ether is designed to be securing the network, right? like the two-stake Ether to secure the network, and then the Ether defines the level of economic security."
"if they think of Ethereum or Ether as an asset, as participating in DeFi because it's being very naturally the native token of those very rich DeFi ecosystems on Ethereum, used as collateral, used for staking, it's an aspect of security as it's used in burning, and so you have all those different functions of Ether that are just being observed by others."
"When people come to you and say, 'How about L2 versus L1?' I say, 'It's not versus. Let's just start communicating, sharing, and thinking, behaving on the human level, like it's one network.'"