Recently, Vitalik Buterin, standing by Aya Miyaguchi, the Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, attended to criticism pertaining to her increasing scrutiny from the community.
He rebuffed the call to fire Miyaguchi from her position, expressing disdain at the expectations made from him to replace Danny Ryan with the likes of CoinMamba, Tetranode, and Evan Van Ness to tackle the question of development focus.
In his criticism of social media campaigns, Buterin warned that these can disrupt and erode much of the cooperative ethos that exists within Ethereum and can impact its content contributors.
He further pointed out that, instead of opting for public disputes that tend to be polarizing, leadership changes should be subject to careful consideration. His reasoning being, divisive politics hamper morale and deter skilled individuals from contributing to Ethereun’s ecosystem.
In the midst of the conversations, Buterin developed a strategy to alter the Ethereum Foundation’s leadership structure. His proposals include increasing the level of technical sophistication within the Foundation, improving engagement with the community, and broadening the set of potential contributors to those who share faith in Ethereum’s open-source ideology and its core values. But, he argues, the Foundation should not become subject to centralization or political meddling.
These tensions encompass larger disagreements over the role of the Foundation. The critics have raised challenges pertaining to its level of transparency, pointing out the movement of $72 million worth of ETH to Kraken in January 2025, as well as some other details like the delays in Dencun upgrade.
Some of these supporters have claim that the Foundation should have a much more centralized leadership structure, Buterin went on to emphasize Ethereum’s position regarding decentralization and added that the Foundation’s place is to pursue the goals that it can achieve best, leaving the rest to profit driven entities.
Extreme criticism, which included foul-mouthed memes and direct threats towards Miyaguchi, was rejected by Buterin, who expressed bluntly that such actions were detrimental.
He also reflected on dividing the campaigns and the negative impact of doing so stating the critical position environment needed for developers to flourish.
While the Foundation’s governance structure will likely change, Buterin indicated that he will make no changes anytime soon, suggesting that he sees himself in ‘governance’ position until a formal board has been created.
