Ethereum (ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin (비탈릭 부테린) has directly stated his position amid intense criticism over the Ethereum Foundation's role and operating approach.

On May 24, Cointelegraph, BeInCrypto and other foreign media reported that Buterin squarely rejected some calls for the Ethereum Foundation to defend token prices or strengthen marketing. He said the foundation's priority is to uphold core principles such as censorship resistance, open-source code, long-term research, cybersecurity and decentralisation.

He summed this up as the CROPS principles - censorship resistance, openness, privacy and security. "Competing with rival chains on processing speed is not the foundation's role," he said. He also pushed back against criticism of the foundation's ETH holdings.

Buterin said the ETH held by the foundation accounts for about 0.16 percent of total circulating supply, contrasting it with other protocol foundations that typically hold 10 to 50 percent of their native tokens. He said the foundation is operating under a mandate disclosed in March and will shift to a longevity strategy by reducing ETH sales to keep research funding for longer.

It also formally announced an organisational restructuring. Aya Miyaguchi (아야 미야구치), head of the Ethereum Foundation, is leading the transition, and the foundation plans to increase the size of its board to dilute the influence of specific individuals.

Buterin said he will also reduce his own influence within the board. The Ethereum Foundation last month withdrew 21,270 ETH from the Lido staking platform. A sale is not confirmed, but the move is interpreted as showing a shift in the foundation's financial management strategy.

Buterin said he expects external projects and organisations to fill areas where the Ethereum Foundation leaves gaps, and said the foundation plans to provide initial support to them.

Ethereum was trading at about $2,094 as of May 24, remaining more than 50 percent below its all-time high of about $5,000 recorded in August 2025. Cryptocurrency journalist Laura Shin (로라 신) said, "Ethereum's original sin is that it did not consider tokenomics in every decision after the Dencun upgrade."

The Dencun upgrade was a major protocol overhaul carried out in March 2024. It sharply lowered layer-2 transaction fees, with the side effect of a steep decline in revenue for Ethereum's base layer (L1).