Brenda Kanana
The Ethereum Foundation released its financial report on Friday, disclosing a treasury worth $970.2 million as of October 31, 2024.
The figure is down by 39% from $1.6 billion which was reported in March 2022. The foundation had come under pressure from the public to provide more information on its finances, the last financial report having been posted over two years ago.
1/ Introducing the Ethereum Foundation Report, 2024 Edition. Learn more about EF, our recent work, Ethereum’s ecosystem of funders, new organizations and policies. The full report is here: pic.twitter.com/uhbzsngaWD
— Aya Miyaguchi (ayamiya.eth) (@AyaMiyagotchi) November 8, 2024
Ethereum Foundation allocates majority of funds to Ether
According to the report, 81.3% of the foundation’s treasury is in cryptocurrency which is worth $788.7 million and 99.45% of this is in ether (ETH). The other $181.5 million includes non-crypto investments and assets. The foundation however said that it decided to invest the bulk of its funds in ETH given its belief in the future of Ethereum.
The report described the foundation’s conservative approach to treasury management. It highlighted the purpose of enabling the provision of public goods for the Ethereum ecosystem even in cases of an extended bear market. From the last treasury snapshot recorded in March 2022, ETH’s price has dropped to the current $2,600 from $3,300 as per the data from CoinMarketCap.
The Ethereum Foundation has spent $105.4m in 2022 and $134.9m in 2023. These figures are consistent with claims by foundation researcher Justin Drake, who revealed in September that the organization has an annual budget of $100 million annually. Drake pointed out that the current foundation’s funds give it a financial cushion of about ten years.
The foundation also pointed out some issues concerning its management practices in the report. It outlined a new conflict of interest policy involving researchers and developers to disclose other work and investments that exceed $25,000 per year. Any proposed investment as well as outside work must be subject to a review process. Employees are not allowed to accept payments in the form of illiquid assets that have no clear market value, including pre-launch advisory tokens.
The foundation put these measures in place after recent incidents that involved leading Ethereum researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist. Both stepped down from the position of advisor at EigenLayer, an Ethereum-based restaking platform. Some of their responsibilities were token payouts, which were seen as potential conflicts of interest.
Strategic focus areas for Ethereum Foundation in 2024
According to the report, the Ethereum Foundation has outlined seven areas of focus for the year ahead. The development of Ethereum’s Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions will continue to be an essential focus. The foundation also intends to develop more applied zero-knowledge cryptography and improve upon the various developer tools.
Notably, major activities will be based on community development and the formation of new institutions. Internal operations will also be considered in order to enhance organizational capacity and governance.
The Ethereum Foundation remains involved in projects that improve the Ethereum ecosystem. Among these are the L2Beat tracker, the Nomic Foundation, and 0xPARC which is currently behind innovation in the field of cryptography and software.
The report also shows that the verified projects within the Ethereum ecosystem have $22.2 billion in reserves. Most of these funds comprise native tokens from leading projects, including Uniswap, Optimism, and Gnosis.
