Ethereum investors are growing increasingly frustrated as the token's price languishes, with many pointing fingers at the Ethereum Foundation for failing to actively support its market value. Co-founder Vitalik Buterin is now pushing back against these demands, firmly stating that the organization is not a central bank designed to engineer price pumps. The cryptocurrency currently hovers around $2,094, sitting more than 50% below its August 2025 all-time high of nearly $5,000.
This prolonged slump has triggered high-profile departures from the organization and prompted several large holders to liquidate their positions. In response to critics demanding aggressive marketing, Buterin clarified that the Ethereum Foundation will strictly adhere to its core mandate: promoting censorship-resistance, funding long-range research, and fortifying the network's cybersecurity.
EF is not a ‘center of Ethereum’, rather EF is ‘one node, with a defined purpose, alongside other nodes’. We have always said that the EF should be the latter, but many in the Ethereum ecosystem, and even within the EF, wanted us to be the former.
- Vitalik Buterin, Co-founder, Ethereum
He noted that the foundation is actively taking steps to ensure it remains just one node in a broader decentralized ecosystem. Unlike other crypto projects where founders hoard massive supplies, Buterin emphasized that the organization holds a mere 0.16% of all ETH, a stark contrast to the 10-50% commonly held by rival foundations.
The Dencun Upgrade and Tokenomics Backlash
Much of the current financial anxiety traces back to the Dencun upgrade in March 2024. While the update successfully slashed network fees for layer-2 transactions, it inadvertently collapsed the base layer's revenue generation. Cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin argued that the network's "original sin was not considering tokenomics with every move it made from Dencun on."
She warned that most investors simply "don’t want to believe in something that is not also putting up points on the scoreboard." Addressing concerns about the treasury's runway, Buterin confirmed the organization will stretch its funds to prioritize longevity, meaning it plans to sell less ETH moving forward.
This follows a strategic move in May where the foundation unstaked 21,270 ETH from the Lido liquid staking platform. While this halts yield generation on those specific tokens, it does not automatically signal an impending market sell-off.
The Cost of True Decentralization
The growing rift between the Ethereum Foundation and retail investors highlights a fundamental clash of expectations in the Web3 space. By refusing to act as a corporate marketing department, the foundation is preserving the very decentralization that gives the network its regulatory shield and long-term resilience. However, this ideological purity comes at a steep short-term cost.
The fallout from the Dencun upgrade proves that technical triumphs do not always translate to financial gains for base-layer holders. As competing high-throughput chains aggressively market their ecosystems and subsidize liquidity, Ethereum's reliance on organic growth feels sluggish to investors accustomed to rapid returns. If the foundation continues to step back, the responsibility of driving the token's narrative and value accrual will fall entirely on layer-2 developers and decentralized applications - a transition that the market is currently struggling to price in.
