Former Ethereum Foundation Developer Calls for $1B Ethereum Advocacy Initiative

• The former developer Dankrad Feist proposed creating an independent entity funded with a minimum of $1 billion.
• The Ethereum Foundation currently retains less than 0.1% of the total $ETH cryptocurrency supply.
• Key researchers such as Danny Ryan, Carl Beek, and Julian Ma have recently left the organization.

The dissatisfaction surrounding the management of the Ethereum Foundation escalated after a former developer’s proposal to found a new organization aimed at supporting the asset’s value.

This Thursday, Dankrad Feist, creator of the Danksharding scalability design, raised the need to establish a body economically aligned with the community. According to Feist’s statements published on X, this new entity would require a minimum funding of $1 billion to operate under competent leadership.

The way to save Ethereum: The community needs to create an organization that’s economically aligned with Ethereum and accountable to it.

The EF now holds less than 0.1% of all $ETH. There is no flow of Ethereum staking or fee revenues to it.

If we want to get Ethereum back to…

— Dankrad Feist (@dankrad) May 21, 2026

The initiative arises in a context of internal tensions and departures of high-profile technical staff within the ecosystem.

During this week, researchers Carl Beek and Julian Ma resigned from their positions. Previously, researcher Danny Ryan also left the organization to co-found Etherealize, a division focused on institutional marketing and commercial promotion of the protocol. For his part, Feist left his post last year to join Tempo, a competing Layer 1 network.

A structure oriented toward financial performance

The proposal seeks to correct what some community members perceive as a lack of direct economic incentives in the current administration.

According to Feist’s approach, the new entity should be led by a board of directors accountable to the community. The guidelines suggested by the developer stipulate that the main objective of the group would be to execute commercial strategies that drive the cryptocurrency’s price in the financial markets.

The proposed funding model contemplates the partial use of revenues generated by the network’s staking mechanism.

Feist noted that, in its current state, the foundation operates on a strictly non-profit basis and does not receive revenue streams from transaction fees or validator staking. Furthermore, data presented by the developer indicates that the organization holds less than 0.1% of the entire circulating supply of $ETH, which limits its direct financial impact on the market.

The asset’s market capitalization exceeds $250 billion, trading in the $2,148.56 range according to market data at the time of writing this news.

The technical debate also covers the network’s roadmap and the central entity’s execution capacity. During the internal restructuring period, Feist served as a strategic advisor in areas of Layer 1 scalability and user experience. Among his technical proposals, the Ethereum Improvement Proposal EIP-9698 stands out, which sought to increase the network’s gas limit by 100 times to lower operational costs.

Despite discrepancies over the organizational direction, the technical contributions of the outgoing developers have the backing of the network’s leadership. Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of the platform, publicly expressed his recognition of Feist’s work, calling him an excellent researcher whose contributions were invaluable to the current development of the protocol.

The community is now evaluating governance mechanisms for the formal presentation of this new economic proposal in upcoming technical discussion forums.