It seems that in order to coincide with this significant 10th anniversary, ETH is retesting the $4000 mark.

From the mainnet launch on July 30, 2015, to today in 2025, over the course of a decade, Ethereum has not only witnessed the ups and downs of the entire blockchain industry but has also, through numerous upgrades and consensus iterations, built an unprecedented "world computer." Smart contracts, once underestimated, have now become the most widely used operating system in the Web3 world. ETH has evolved from a few cents during its ICO to a major asset with a market cap exceeding $3 trillion.

Simultaneously, the Ethereum Foundation has undergone a significant "changing of the guard." Changes have occurred internally and externally. Over the past year, a group of companies with traditional financial backgrounds has gradually accumulated ETH, with institutions like SharpLink, BTCS, and BMNR announcing plans to include ETH in their strategic asset reserves.

All of these changes have taken place in this special year: 2025, marking a full decade since the launch of the Ethereum mainnet.

This decade represents one of the most eventful chapters in blockchain history. From a whitepaper to a global ecosystem worth hundreds of billions of dollars; from the "Eight Immortals" ruling council to the island breakout amid Ethereum killers' encirclement; from PoW to PoS, from a tech laboratory to public infrastructure, Ethereum has completed its first full cycle.

But perhaps its true story is only just beginning.

The "Prologue" of Ethereum

The focus of this phase is the split and ideological conflict within the Ethereum founding team, happening between 2014 and 2015. When Vitalik Buterin, the brilliant programmer who always speaks passionately about technology, is asked about his biggest regret on the Ethereum journey, he always answers, "the situation with the 8 co-founders." Clearly, these eight co-founders who had already departed were a concern for him.

When Vitalik, who had nothing but an idea, greeted the first 10 developers who responded that they wanted to join, and selected 5 of them as the leadership team, these became Ethereum's five co-founders: Vitalik Buterin, Anthony Di Iorio, Charles Hoskinson, Mihai Alisie, and Amir Chetrit.

"It was clearly a serious mistake; they seemed like good people, and they wanted to help, so at the time, I thought, why not make them part of the leadership?" This is how Vitalik described his decision at that time.

When it comes to Ethereum's co-founder, it is a controversial topic with many different versions online, even the related Wikipedia entry has been continuously edited. After Vitalik "personally attested to 8 co-founders," the widely accepted version by the community is: following the initial 5 founders, in 2014, three additional developers—Joseph Lubin, Gavin Wood, and Jeffrey Wilcke—became co-founders.

With this, Ethereum completed the formation of its early 8-member core leadership, resembling the "Eight Princes' Politic" during the early Qing Dynasty to prevent the emperor's absolute rule.

The Berlin "Pilgrimage"

In the documentary "Vitalik: An Ethereum Story" released last year, Vitalik recalled how he began his digital nomad life in mid-2013.

It was the prehistoric era of Ethereum when Bitcoin was only $204, over a year since Vitalik and Mihai Alisie had founded Bitcoin Magazine. While building Ethereum, he traveled globally due to invitations from various communities. In 2013 and 2014, Ethereum had headquarters in Switzerland and Berlin, the white paper was released, Vitalik visited China for Ethereum's fundraiser, and met miners.

Berlin was the city where he stayed the longest.

He described his active presence in Berlin's Bitcoin Kiez area as a "pilgrimage" at the time. In Berlin's Bitcoin Kiez area, cryptocurrency payments were very common. Within a few hundred meters, there were over a dozen stores accepting BTC payments. The central meeting place of the community, "Room 77" bar, was also a community hub where tech developers, political activists, and various other individuals frequented.

Room 77 bar, photographed by Vitalik Buterin in 2013, now closed

In an office rented near this area, Ethereum set up its office, just 1.5 kilometers away from the "Room 77" bar, a walk of fewer than 20 minutes for Vitalik. If you now search for the Ethereum office address "Waldemarstraße 37A, 10999 Berlin" on Google Maps, you can still see the address marked with Ethereum Network Launch (30/07/2015) and a group photo of the early Ethereum core members at that time.

In early 2014, most of Ethereum's core members were basically around Vitalik, and the Ethereum team was in a highly cohesive state.

At the January 2014 Miami Bitcoin Conference, Vitalik and his co-founders stood together for the first time to showcase their project to the world, which had a good effect, bringing Ethereum officially into the public eye. However, this was also the eve of a split.

The first Ethereum gathering held in Miami in January 2014, image source: the internet

The Switzerland Split

The entire year of 2014 was not ordinary for the crypto world. The Mt. Gox hack and bankruptcy caused a severe drop in Bitcoin's price, plummeting from a peak of $951.39 to $309.87, a 67% decline. Also in that year, CZ sold his house in Shanghai and went all-in on Bitcoin to become the OK CTO for $600. Meanwhile, SBF, who had just graduated from MIT, was submitting resumes on Wall Street.

For Ethereum, 2014 was an even more important year, witnessing a crypto version of the "Eight Immortals Crossing the Sea." The split at this meeting determined Ethereum's future direction.

On June 7, 2014, all Ethereum's leadership members were in Switzerland for an internal meeting to discuss Ethereum's future direction. The meeting took place at the Spaceship house in Switzerland, which was the birthplace of ETH and Ethereum's first headquarters.

Spaceship house, image source: Mihai Alisie

In fact, before this meeting, this topic had been a long-standing internal dispute, and factions had already emerged. Internal relations at Ethereum became tense, with debates arising such as, "Should we take venture capital money or crowdfund from all people? Should we pursue a for-profit path to become the Google of the crypto world or remain a purely nonprofit organization?"

Recalling this memory, Vitalik said, "I was once convinced to lean towards making Ethereum more enterprise-like. But that never made me feel comfortable; it even made me feel somewhat dirty."

It is said that the meeting that decided Ethereum's "life or death" lasted a whole day, and Vitalik's decision was to choose the decentralized and non-profit route. "Throughout the entire process, I was trying to shift responsibility because I really didn't want to take on that responsibility, but eventually I had to eliminate some people."

This decision became the first major turning point in Ethereum's history, directly leading to the team's first significant split.

Charles Hoskinson was the most prominent opponent in this conflict, advocating for Ethereum to become a commercial company, raise funds through venture capital, and eventually develop into a profitable tech giant. "A flat power structure, where janitors and executives are on the same level, is just insane."

After leaving Ethereum, Charles founded the development company IOHK (later restructured into a venture studio) and launched a PoS public chain called Cardano. This was a year-long altcoin as early development focused on the Japanese market, earning it the title "Japanese Ethereum," and it was also known as a first-generation "Ethereum killer," maintaining a top-ten crypto market cap.

Following Charles Hoskinson, Joseph Lubin also decided to step away from core development and turned to establish the incubator ConsenSys. In 2022, ConsenSys achieved a $7 billion valuation after completing a $450 million Series D funding round, with investors including ParaFi Capital, Temasek, SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Microsoft, and other top VCs. Over the years, ConsenSys has incubated numerous blockchain startups and nurtured batches of rich ecosystem projects for Ethereum, with the most successful being the wallet plugin MetaMask, the most widely used wallet in the Ethereum ecosystem, generating weekly revenues of $300,000 and total revenues nearing $3 billion.

Similar to Joseph Lubin, Anthony is also a wealthy second-generation entrepreneur who got involved in Ethereum to make more money. Therefore, after Ethereum established a non-profit operational model, Anthony gradually stepped back, semi-exiting, and founded Decentral, developing the Jaxx digital wallet (eventually confirming his departure from Ethereum work in December 2015). In 2018, Forbes estimated his net worth to be between $750 million and $1 billion, ranking him among the top 20 richest in the cryptocurrency industry. However, in 2021, he announced for personal security reasons that he decided to "clear out" and withdraw from the industry, no longer funding any blockchain projects, and planned to focus on charity and other endeavors.

Amir Chetrit, on the other hand, left after this Swiss event due to a lack of dedication to Ethereum and criticism from other developers and founders. He then moved on to other industries, maintaining anonymity and a focus on privacy protection, making information about him scarce.

By the end of 2014, when the dust had settled, only four of the original eight co-founders remained in the team: Vitalik Buterin, Gavin Wood, Mihai Alisie, and Jeffrey Wilcke.

Vitalik also reflected on his hasty team selection, acknowledging that he had not taken into account the deep-seated disagreements, conflicting ideologies, and clash of interests among the members. The reality turned out to be much more complex than he had initially imagined. "I did indeed realize at that time that not everyone in the cryptocurrency space is fighting for ideals like I am. Many people are just here to make a lot of money. Human relationships are a real issue."

The work had to go on, and Vitalik and the remaining team members continued their efforts. Fortunately for Vitalik, the Foundation was taking on more work at the time, and his most important technical partner, Gavin Wood, was still by his side.

A Bumpy Foundation Journey

July 30, 2015, marked the historic moment when the Ethereum mainnet went live.

Some early members were gathered in the Berlin office, witnessing the Ethereum launch after 1028201 blocks. A highly significant photo captured some core members at that time. People pictured with Vitalik included several notable core developers:

Gustav Simonsson, an early Ethereum security advisor, played a crucial role in the security of the Ethereum mainnet. After leaving Ethereum, he joined Dfinity and continued to work in the field of decentralized computing networks.

Christian Reitwiessner was the developer of the Solidity programming language, laying the foundation for running smart contracts on Ethereum.

Within the Solidity development team, Liana Husikyan was also a key member. She was one of the main developers of the Remix IDE. Remix is an integrated development environment used for writing and deploying smart contracts, helping to streamline the smart contract development process.

Meanwhile, Christoph Jentzsch is the co-founder of Slock.it and one of the initiators of The DAO. Although a security vulnerability led to a fork in 2016, The DAO remains one of the most significant experiments in blockchain history, driving exploration of decentralized governance models.

Additionally, there are figures like Fabian Vogelsteller, the author of ERC-20 and ERC-725; Vlad Zamfir, who advocated for Ethereum's transition from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake; and Jutta Steiner, the former security lead of the Ethereum Foundation who later became the CEO of Parity Technologies founded by Gavin.

Moreover, this photo also captures a detail that is often discussed: Vitalik is partially obscured in the corner of the photo, while his key technical partner, Gavin Wood, is prominently positioned in the center, resembling a serious CEO figure.

In some past photos, we can see the close collaboration between Vitalik and Gavin. However, no one could have anticipated that this leader of the Ethereum development team and author of the Ethereum Yellow Paper would be one of the next to depart.

On November 28, 2014, the Ethereum Berlin office hosted the 0th DEVCON developer conference where most members gathered in Berlin for the first in-person meeting after prior communications through Skype. In the photos from the event, Vitalik and Gavin are seen as close as ever.

Just three months after the mainnet launch, Gavin Wood chose to depart, believing that Ethereum needed a more centralized engineering management model to be more efficient. However, Vitalik once again said "NO." The significant disagreement eventually led to Gavin's departure from the team, where he founded his own company, Parity (Ethcore). Parity quickly became a key node operator in the Ethereum network, controlling over 40% of the network nodes at one point. Subsequently, Gavin focused on driving the development of Polkadot and, for a long time, was one of Ethereum's significant competitors.

Gavin's departure directly weakened Ethereum's engineering capabilities, as his leadership and technical expertise were crucial in the early development of Ethereum. With his departure, efficiency issues within the team gradually became apparent. The developers of Ethereum's Geth client are distributed globally, and team management and coordination issues frequently arose, thereby affecting the development progress.

Vitalik, Jeff, Gavin, Image Source: Vitalik

However, after Gavin left, the remaining two co-founders, Mihai Alisie and Jeffrey Wilcke, also left during this period.

Mihai Alisie was one of Vitalik's earliest collaborators, co-founding "Bitcoin Magazine" with him. They together assisted in establishing a legal framework for Ethereum in Switzerland, with Mihai serving as the Foundation's Vice President. Mihai's departure was relatively natural, as he did not have intense conflicts with the team, but it further reduced the core driving force behind Ethereum's early development.

Jeffrey Wilcke gradually withdrew after The DAO hack, which resulted in a significant amount of ETH being stolen and Ethereum undergoing a fork. He handed over the development work and technical supervision of the Ethereum Go client, Geth, to his assistant Péter Szilágyi and shifted his focus to game development and spending time with his family, around March 2018.

Jeffrey Wilcke taking care of his child, Image Source: Web

With the departure of these founding members, Vitalik's sense of isolation within Ethereum grew. Some developers revealed that 2015 was a lonely and difficult year for Vitalik, as he often spent nights alone in the Berlin office.

First Generation Foundation

During its early days, many members of the Ethereum Foundation were appointed on a temporary basis. For example, Kelley Becker and Frithjof Weinert briefly served as the Foundation's Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer, respectively, responsible for the Foundation's daily operations and financial management to ensure it had sufficient funds to support Ethereum's development and operations. However, their tenures were short-lived, and they soon left the Foundation.

In 2015, as Ethereum ramped up its hiring efforts, the Foundation also took on more responsibilities, with Ethereum core developers being integrated into the Ethereum Foundation's research team.

It wasn't until April 10, 2015, that the Ethereum Foundation started to have its organizational structure, initiating board selections and gradually getting its operations in order. In mid-2015, Ming Chan, with years of experience in IT and management consulting, was appointed as the new Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation to handle the Foundation's day-to-day operations, ensuring its proper management and overseeing that technical developments and community operations proceeded smoothly within legal and regulatory frameworks.

The Foundation's internal structure also became clearer. Apart from Vitalik remaining a key figure in technology and the community, Lars Klawitter, Vadim Levitin, and Wayne Hennessy-Barrett also joined the Foundation's board.

Lars Klawitter is responsible for integrating technology and innovation within the Foundation, having been active as an entrepreneur during the internet revolution and previously serving as Head of Innovation Business at Rolls-Royce Automotive. Vadim Levitin, a technology expert with extensive international experience who has worked for the United Nations, assists the Ethereum Foundation in expanding its influence globally. Wayne Hennessy-Barrett, another board member bringing a global perspective to the Foundation, has rich operational experience in emerging markets in Africa.

With the addition of these new members, the Ethereum Foundation gradually improved its governance structure, and its core focus shifted from technical development to community coordination and resource allocation.

At that time, the Foundation still held a significant amount of ETH assets and supported the development of the Ethereum ecosystem by funding various research projects and developer teams.

Second Generation Foundation

In 2018, the crypto industry went through the ICO boom and the subsequent 94% crash, ushering in the "regulatory reckoning year" for cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin's price plummeted from a high of $19,870 to around $3,000, and Binance emerged as the world's largest exchange. It was still two years before the emergence of Solana, touted as the "Ethereum killer" focusing on high performance, efficiency, and throughput.

When people talked about Ethereum at that time, two things were usually mentioned: the Ethereum 2.0 upgrade and the Ethereum Foundation selling off coins once again.

The Ethereum Foundation's controlled ETH supply has been steadily decreasing over the years through continuous sell-offs, leading to a predominance of negative sentiment among community members. However, some Ethereum Foundation members have expressed that this intentional decentralization effort is a positive step, stating, "The EF is consciously trying to diminish its influence and role, which is a good thing."

Indeed, since Aya Miyaguchi took over as the new Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation in 2018, succeeding Ming Chan, the Foundation has shifted away from being the central hub of all development work as it was initially. It has now focused more on supporting and coordinating communication and collaboration among different projects, as well as expanding its partnerships with external collaborators like ConsenSys.

Following Aya Miyaguchi's appointment, the EF's responsibilities have been clearly defined, primarily including:

1. Hosting an annual Devcon or Devconnect event;

2. Maintaining an execution client, Geth, but not maintaining any consensus clients;

3. Providing tens of millions of dollars in unconditional funding to the broader community annually;

4. Hosting conference calls, such as the All Core Devs (ACD) hosted by Tim Beiko and the All Devs Consensus (ACDC) hosted by Alex Stokes, among others;

5. Conducting research, which may remain one of the centralized departments, but some EF research teams may potentially become independent;

6. Roadmap planning: Vitalik has updated the roadmap illustration, and then dozens of tasks are being developed in parallel by different teams;

Currently, the Ethereum Foundation's official website only lists three members of the leadership team, which includes Aya Miyaguchi, Vitalik, and board member Patrick Storchenegger.

During this period, several next-generation core developers within the Ethereum Foundation have started to emerge as key figures in Ethereum 2.0 and the entire ecosystem. The following is a list of individuals whom I personally consider important in Ethereum, including Danny Rya, Justin Drake, Tim Beiko, Dankrad Feist, Solidity creator Christian Reitwiessner, and Péter Szilágyi, among others. (In my view, the list is not in any particular order, and I have not listed everyone.)

Danny Ryan is a core member of the Ethereum 2.0 team, hailed by the community as the "Lead Ethereum 2.0 Engineer." He has played a crucial role in coordinating the development process of Ethereum 2.0, particularly in the launch of the Beacon Chain and the merge upgrade, and was featured as the first Ethereum Foundation researcher in the documentary "Vitalik: An Ethereum Story."

Since joining the Ethereum Foundation in 2017, Justin Drake's primary work has also been the transition of Ethereum to Proof of Stake (PoS) and has played a key role in the execution of the ETH merge. Additionally, Justin Drake is one of the primary voices in the community on Ethereum's future technical roadmap, frequently engaging in podcasts and interviews to educate the public. For example, in Ethereum Foundation's Reddit AMA, Justin Drake is also one of the key spokespersons and has a strong presence in the community.

Tim Beiko joined the Ethereum Foundation full-time in 2018 and became one of the leaders of core developers in 2021, responsible for organizing ACD calls and serving as a crucial bridge between Ethereum core developers. As a protocol engineer, his work covers the advancement of multiple Ethereum Improvement Proposals.

Dankrad Feist is a key researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, focusing on research related to statelessness and data availability. The "Danksharding" concept he proposed is integral to Ethereum's sharding roadmap, and the final scaling solution adopted by the Ethereum mainnet is named after Dankrad Feist himself. His research on MEV (Maximum Extractable Value) has also provided new insights into Ethereum's security. However, on this issue, he had a public dispute with Péter Szilágyi, the current lead developer of Geth, which ultimately led to Vitalik stepping in to mediate. Read more: "Ethereum Foundation Faces Internal and External Challenges: Researchers and Engineers Debate, Members Serve as EigenLayer Advisors Leading to Conflict of Interest".

With the solidification of the team members, from 2018 to 2022, the Ethereum ecosystem has gained mainstream recognition. In 2019, DEXes such as Uniswap, Compound, SushiSwap provided generous yields to any DeFi user providing liquidity, and DeFi Summer led to a rapid increase in Ethereum's TVL. In 2021, it was the "Inaugural Year of the Metaverse," with Facebook rebranding to Meta, laying the groundwork for the NFT boom. In 2022, the crypto world experienced a "Lehman Moment," with Luna and FTX collapsing one after another, a heavy blow to the Solana ecosystem, while Ethereum successfully transitioned from PoW to PoS, the Layer 2 sector thriving, enjoying unparalleled glory, and completing its own period of rapid growth.

Midlife Crisis

However, as the moon waxes and wanes, as water overflows, in all things reaching the height of prosperity leads to decline, and excess will inevitably lead to a reversal. In 2024, Ethereum finally faced its own "midlife crisis," with the price of the coin stagnating.

2024 is also an important year, marking the 10th anniversary of the ICO. At 10 years old, Apple almost went bankrupt, with a market cap of only $20 billion. Over the ten years since its IPO, Microsoft's market cap grew from $670 million to $1.3 trillion. Ethereum's market cap stands at $321 billion. Although Ethereum's market cap has grown more rapidly over these 10 years than almost all current tech giants, and was even once thought to surpass Bitcoin.

However, there is a rule in the financial world that when an asset reaches a scale of $300 billion or $500 billion, it will face a "growth bottleneck." As the world's 34th largest asset, ETH's market cap is $321 billion, squarely within this "growth bottleneck." With the "vehicle" too heavy and the "village" too scattered, at this scale, Ethereum's growth is very challenging, almost like struggling against "gravity."

While Ethereum stagnated, Bitcoin repeatedly reached new highs, and Solana experienced a rebirth from the brink of death. No one can succinctly describe the full extent of the issues and stories that existed within the Ethereum Foundation at that time. But what we all know is that the lackluster performance of ETH's price has kept Ethereum and the Ethereum Foundation on the edge of a precipice for the past year or two.

As a decentralized non-profit organization, managing Ethereum's internal organizational structure is not easy. Looking back on Ethereum's journey, from the discord among the 8 founding teams leading to their "separation," staging a crypto version of "the Eight Immortals leaving the East," to the present day against the backdrop of price stagnation, the community's dissatisfaction has fallen into a cyclical cycle of anger, erupting from time to time, with the community constantly mocking ETH price memes. Even the internal complexities and ideological conflicts within the Ethereum Foundation continue, with researchers often engaging in verbal sparring, and it's commonplace for Vitalik to be criticized.

Apart from Vitalik, there is another individual who is also feeling uneasy. That is Aya Miyaguchi, the former Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation.

Over the past year, Aya has faced much criticism from the Ethereum community and has been a controversial figure in both the Chinese and English Ethereum communities.

In the past year, Ethereum's biggest rival Solana has risen from the ashes. Besides founder Toly's efforts in various "Solana gambling culture memes," Solana Foundation Chair Lily Liu's work has also been recognized by the community. For example, proposing the PayFi concept of "earning interest through on-chain staking to pay for real-world transactions off-chain," hosting many high-quality hackathon competitions, and investing in numerous high-quality projects in the Solana ecosystem.

However, in the eyes of many in the Ethereum community, during Aya's 7 years as an Ethereum Foundation Executive Director, there was almost no "achievement" to speak of.

"Being employed for 7 years in an unqualified position, doing no work yet receiving compensation," the English-speaking community, led by CoinMamba, traders, and KOLs, harbors the deepest resentment towards her.

They even attempted to pressure Aya to leave through public opinion: posting statements like "The day Aya leaves will be Ethereum's liberation day," "Within two weeks of Aya's departure, ETH will reach a new high," "If we continue to pressure her, she will resign," and more. Some even resorted to irrational insults and death threats towards her.

If everyone still remembers the time around Chinese New Year when Vitalik made various breakthrough tweets, such as tweeting in abstract language mentioning Milady, or even expressing thoughts about leaving Ethereum during a period of "sound mental state," it was during that time that Vitalik faced tremendous public pressure from the community.

Third Generation Foundation

It wasn't until March 2025 that the Ethereum Foundation finally announced a major leadership change: Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi stepped down from her daily management duties to take on the role of Foundation Chair. Two new co-executive directors were appointed to take over Aya's former position—Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak.

Hsiao-Wei Wang started as a backend engineer and stumbled upon blockchain in 2016. At that time, Vitalik was seeking contributors interested in Ethereum research, and Hsiao-Wei eagerly applied and successfully became one of the core developers.

This blockchain trailblazer from Taiwan, China, has been dedicated to Ethereum's core research for 7 years and has made significant contributions to sharding and the Beacon Chain. Sharding technology is a key upgrade to solve Ethereum's scalability issues, significantly increasing network throughput, making Ethereum more efficient and smooth when handling a large number of transactions. Additionally, she has long been responsible for protocol auditing and Proof of Concept (PoC) development for the Ethereum 2.0 (Eth2) advancement, laying a solid technical foundation.

Despite years of deep technical work, Hsiao-Wei did not confine herself to the code world but actively engaged in community building. She often represented the Ethereum Foundation at various technical conferences and organized them. Especially in the Taiwan region, she planned and promoted many high-quality Ethereum technical exchange activities, successfully bridging the local developers with the global Ethereum ecosystem. For example, at the 2018 Ethereum Sharding Workshop Taipei, she, as an organizer, also held a central position in the technical discussion session.

2018 Ethereum Sharding Workshop Taipei, Hsiao-Wei Wang Takes the Center Stage

Another joint executive director of the Ethereum Foundation is Tomasz Stańczak. As the founder of Nethermind, he is not only one of the Ethereum core developers but has also conducted in-depth research in key areas such as MEV (Maximal Extractable Value) and PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation).

Before entering the blockchain field, Tomasz was a financial market engineer with rich technical experience. In 2017, he officially joined the Ethereum development team as a core developer, was an early member of the FlashBots team, and also served on the Starknet Foundation's board.

He later founded Nethermind, now one of the most important Ethereum execution clients. Initially just an experimental project, under Tomasz's leadership, it quickly grew into one of the most vital infrastructure pieces in the Ethereum ecosystem, alongside Geth, Besu, and Erigon as one of the five major execution clients. Compared to Geth's historical accumulation, Nethermind has attracted more and more developers and institutional users with its efficient code architecture, flexible customization, and robust enterprise support.

Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak were appointed as the new joint executive directors, while the return of former EF researcher Danny Ryan was met with cheers from the community.

As mentioned earlier, Danny Ryan is a core member of the Ethereum 2.0 team, hailed by the community as the "Lead Eth 2.0 Engineer," playing a crucial role in coordinating the development process of Ethereum 2.0, especially in the launch of the Beacon Chain and the merger upgrade. He was also the first featured Ethereum Foundation researcher in the documentary "Vitalik: An Ethereum Story." In an informal community poll for Ether, Danny Ryan was selected as the best candidate to lead the EF. On September 13, 2024, he announced an indefinite exit from Ethereum development for personal reasons, marking the end of his seven-year Ethereum development career. In March of this year, Danny Ryan announced his return to the Ethereum ecosystem, serving as a co-founder of the Ethereum ecosystem's institutional-level marketing and product department at Etherealize.

The Truth About the Mansion Swap

The story of the Mansion Swap had been widely circulated as early as 2024. After the Hong Kong Summit, rumors of the "Ethereum Underground Garage Mansion Swap" even surfaced.

The on-chain data detected a faint trail. From December 2024 to April 2025, Ethereum's price experienced a free fall, but it was also a moment when the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI) quietly turned upwards.

Image source: Glassnode

The HHI is an index measuring asset concentration, representing the trend of chip ownership on the Ethereum chain. While prices plummeted, the HHI was rapidly rising, indicating that ETH was not being widely sold off by the market; instead, it was transitioning from the hands of retail holders to a few whales and even institutional addresses.

Beyond the data and trends, more notably, in this new wave of the crypto strategic reserve narrative dominated by MicroStrategy, it was common to see listed companies playing the role of ETH strategic reserves.

In May 2025, SharpLink Gaming ($SBET) announced a $4.25 billion PIPE financing deal to purchase 176,271 ETH, valued at over $4.6 billion at the time.

In June, BitMine Immersion Technologies ($BMNR) announced a $2.5 billion PIPE financing deal to acquire ETH, explicitly stating a "transition to an ETH infrastructure asset manager." Following the announcement, BMNR saw consecutive days of skyrocketing prices, becoming another "ETH concept stock" after SBET.

Unlike SBET, BMNR is no longer just about "buying and holding coins," but has clearly set its sights on ETH staking rewards, on-chain cash flow, and participation in the DeFi ecosystem. This is the first time a traditional mining enterprise has shifted to a "ETF-like logic" to go long on ETH, indicating that the mindset of whales has shifted from directional bets to structural capture.

Almost simultaneously, BTCS ($BTCS) entered the scene. Rather than loudly announcing how much ETH they bought in one go, they emphasized the innovative nature of their financing structure: a "DeFi + TradFi" hybrid financing model. They didn't just buy ETH; instead, they acquired an anchor asset providing stablecoin liquidity.

Bit Digital ($BTBT) also quietly disclosed its purchase of 20,000 ETH, planning to transition from its original BTC mining enterprise to an ETH staking node operator. In this changing of the guard, some players in the BTC camp have begun to cross over.

From SBET taking the first shot to subsequent actions by BMNR, BTCS, BTBT, and other US stocks and mining companies, the entire process took less than a month, with a rapid, clear, and orderly pace. Related reading: "ETH's Changing of the Guard: From Retail Consensus to Wall Street Conspiracy?"

It is also noteworthy that the largest ETH strategic reserve company at present, SBET, publicly disclosed that its largest individual shareholder is none other than Joseph Lubin, one of Ethereum's eight co-founders. As mentioned earlier, due to ideological differences, Joseph Lubin left Ethereum to establish ConsenSys. Joseph Lubin himself not only holds a significant amount of Ethereum but also, after investing in SharpLink, became its chairman of the board, holding a 9.9% stake in SBET.

Interestingly, at the EthCC7 conference in Brussels in July 2024, after Vitalik's speech, the three core Ethereum founders—Vitalik Buterin, Joseph Lubin, and Gavin Wood—came together for a century-defining group photo, marking a dignified punctuation and reconciliation to the "rupture" of this past era.

An Ethereum Without Vitalik

In Vitalik's father's recollection, when Ethereum was just established, Vitalik had no intention of being a leader. His more of an idea was: "Hey, I came up with a cool idea, let me write it down first, and then maybe some smart and influential people will do something with it."

But then, things took a turn as more people joined the project and told Vitalik, "You should be the one driving this project forward." So, they thrust him into a leadership position, which wasn't a natural fit for him. This was one of his biggest challenges as it took him out of his comfort zone.

"Vitalik had come close to meeting our society's deepened image of a tech founder – a youthful adulation, a fervent infatuation with a certain naiveté that held powerful sway." As Nathan Schneider, an economics professor who has interviewed Vitalik multiple times, put it.

But by 2025, Vitalik was 31 years old.

While in Montenegro doing Zk-Snarks at Zuzalu, he saw people ten years younger than him taking on leadership roles in various projects as organizers or developers. At a hacker meet-up in Korea with around 30 people, he found himself the oldest person in the room for the first time.

Vitalik embodied a generation's idealized image of themselves as young, legendary programmers. He was a symbol, and as he aged, he realized he no longer fit that role. It was a realization he came to on his own.

A decade ago, he had wanted to do something cool and had been hailed as one of the world-changing, impressive, young prodigies like Zuckerberg. But now, post the crypto era, the Russia-Ukraine conflict, life, and death, Vitalik had a new insight: "I'm playing a completely different role now, it's time to pass the torch to the next generation that was once mine." Related Read: "Vitalik's Life Reflection at 30: It's Time to Pass the Torch to the Next Generation".

"I wonder if Ethereum could have survived without Vitalik's leadership?" Earlier, a related Reddit discussion thread garnered much attention: "Over the past few years, Vitalik hasn't really led Ethereum as people imagined," "I've even heard that Vitalik isn't the best person to explain the Ethereum roadmap."

marcocastignoli, who works at the Ethereum Foundation, also shared his personal viewpoint: "While I'm not one of them, I know for a fact that Vitalik is just a member of the EF research team, and the research team are a group of brilliant minds, with Vitalik being just an average among them."

As mentioned earlier, several new core members are gradually emerging as key developers in the Ethereum community.

Furthermore, according to Electric Capital's statistics, there are currently as many as 99 active Ethereum core developers, a number that far surpasses other blockchain projects such as Bitcoin, Cardano, EOS, or Tron. Taking a broader view, the Ethereum network now boasts over 250,000 developers and researchers, making it one of the most decentralized blockchain development communities.

A young Vitalik, abandoned by Blizzard, was able to use his technology to create a new world, seemingly everything was created by technology. However, after experiencing several rounds of reshuffling among the Ethereum team members, he found himself finally powerless. Vitalik's self was deconstructed from this point on.

Just as his reflections on life at the age of 30 concluded: community, ideology, "scene," nation, or very small company, family, or relationship—those are all created by people.

Not created by technology. Furthermore, Vitalik is no longer the youngest, smartest, or even the most representative technical researcher of Ethereum. Vitalik's role will continue to weaken, and one day, Ethereum will become Ethereum without Vitalik.

Perhaps now is the time to imagine an Ethereum without Vitalik.

Author's Note: This article attempts to summarize the changes in Ethereum's core organizational members, but Ethereum's membership is much richer than I know, putting them all in one article structure would require omitting many details, hence some omissions. Thanks to all friends who provided information and other feedback.

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