Setting "suicide" rules for itself: What is the Ethereum Foundation after?

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Original author: KarenZ, Foresight News

On the evening of March 13, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) Board of Directors released a mission statement, “EF Mandate.”

When you open this mission statement, you may wonder if you have gone to the wrong set - a screen full of stars, elves, magicians, and anime poster-like typography. Peeling off this cool coat, there is an “ideological program” hidden in the current Ethereum ecosystem.

TL; DR

EF core positioning: to be a guardian, not a ruler. EF’s ultimate goal is to pass the “Walkaway Test” - even if the Ethereum Foundation dissolves in place tomorrow, the Ethereum network will still function flawlessly.

The iron law of CROPS is the bottom line: any technology development must meet the requirements of Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy, and Security. All four attributes are indispensable, and no development priority can override them.

EF Philosophy: Foundation subtracts to make Ethereum more resilient. When the ecosystem is mature enough, the Ethereum Foundation will gradually delegate power.

Do not do something: not be a “kingmaker”, an improper rating agency, an improper marketing agency that improperly calls for goods, and discourages Ethereum as a “big casino”.

The ultimate vision: set an eye on the next 1000 years, providing a “digital sanctuary” free from power, capital, AI, and even family exploitation.

What problem exactly does Ethereum solve?

EF believes that there are two things that are rigid at the infrastructure level in the digital age: controlling one’s own data, identity, and assets (self-sovereignty), and collaborating with others without being “stuck” by anyone (sovereign-preserving coordination).

Only pursue the first point, it is enough to run an application locally; Only pursue the second point, the traditional Internet is enough. The unique value of Ethereum is that it achieves both at the same time.

There is a passage in the manifesto that says: Ethereum exists so that no one can “rug” you - whether it is governments, companies, institutions, or AI.

Around this goal, EF came up with an acronym: CROPS. This word appears 32 times in the manifesto.

Censorship Resistance: No one can stop you from doing what is legal, and no matter how much pressure you put on the outside world, you still rely on cryptography to maintain neutrality.

Open Source & Free: All code and rules are spread out, and there is no hidden black box.

Privacy: Your data is yours, not the platform. You decide who you share what information with.

Security: Protect both the system and the user from technical failures and coercion.

These four attributes are defined in the document as an “indivisible whole” and are the bottom line that is the highest priority and cannot be compromised for any reason.

EF’s attitude is clear: I’d rather be slower and get these things right from day one. Because once you give up, it is almost impossible to get it back.

What does the foundation do? What not to do?

EF is making “making yourself unnecessary” the ultimate success criterion.

There is a word in the document called “walkaway test”, which means: If EF disappears tomorrow, can Ethereum continue to run and evolve on its own? EF’s goal is to make this answer “yes”.

Therefore, EF is practicing a “subtractive development” philosophy: focusing on the key things that no one can do and no one wants to do in the ecosystem - core protocol upgrades, long-term technical research, and public safety. Once a domain community can take over, EF takes over, further reducing its relative influence.

At the same time, EF has drawn a long list of “don’ts” for itself, which reads like a solemn disclaimer: not a company, not a kingmaker, not a certification body, not a product studio, not a marketing company, not a boss, not a government agency, not a casino, not an opportunist.

How will EF choose when there is no standard answer?

I talked about a lot of great truths before: CROPS, autonomous sovereignty, and subtraction philosophy. But what if you really encounter specific problems? This chapter is the answer.

It’s a bit like the foundation’s “decision-making algorithm”: when two paths are in front of you, how to choose without going against your original intention?

When choosing a technical solution, choose the one that “will not get stuck in the future”, even if it is slower now. An example in the document is transaction propagation: one scheme performs well but relies on a private relay network (whitelisting), and the other is decentralized but slow to advance. EF’s answer may be the latter, because once the former is implemented, “decentralization in the future” will basically not happen.

When designing or evaluating proposals, don’t just look at the immediate layer, think about the impact on other layers. Some solutions are fine on their own, or even in line with the CROPS principles, but when viewed as a whole, they may create new problems elsewhere. Don’t solve one problem, create ten problems.

User safety is important, but don’t make decisions for your users. Only give users tools for self-defense, never make “paternal” restrictions, and do not let anyone deprive users of their right to choose under the banner of “protecting users”. For example, some wallets will turn on “safe mode” by default, secretly block certain contracts, direct users to designated platforms, and even use opaque AI to determine “risky operations”, and secretly collect user behavior, which the foundation opposes. The real protection is to give users verifiable filtering tools, public rules of black and white lists; No matter what tool it is, it protects privacy by default, and AI components are no exception.

Do you have to have an intermediary? Tear down the threshold and leave a way out: If some fields really can’t bypass intermediaries now, then the entry threshold should be minimized, so that the market can fully compete, and at the same time, users must be left with an alternative of “no intermediary”, and the solution must be easy to use and implement.

When choosing which teams to support, look not at the social aura, but at the actual technology choices. Many projects talk about CROPS, but the actual design hides the core links of closed source, whitelist restrictions, and guiding users to a fixed path, which must be vigilant.

The ideal is very plump, and the reality is very skinny

The declaration was written loudly, but the torture of reality never stopped.

Does this document represent the consensus of the whole or the ideals of some of the authors? If EF changes a group of people, will it still count? Who will supervise the implementation?

The more realistic question is:

EF relies heavily on ETH holdings for its operating funds. When ETH prices are down, budgets are compressed. “Don’t care about the price” is just mental self-discipline, not financial reality.

The CROPS rule is the ideal rule, but the world doesn’t run by CROPS.

What most users really care about is: whether it is fast or not, whether it is cheap or not, and whether it is good or not.

EF insists on “full CROPS from day one”, but will this leave Ethereum behind more “pragmatic” competitors in terms of user experience and commercialization?

How to assess EF’s “doing” and “not doing”? How to be held accountable? How to judge whether “coordination” is good?

The community quarreled: punk ideals vs. reality disconnected

Less than 24 hours after the manifesto was released, community feedback is already polarized:

Critics:

Kydo, a researcher at Eigen Labs, bluntly stated that EF’s current 180-degree U-turn has overturned the previous “pragmatic route” of supporting stablecoins, institutional entry, and RWA, and marginalizing the most marketable applications at present.

The chairman of Forward Ind. complained: “They can build whatever they want, not what you want” - accusing EF of only building according to idealism and ignoring community and market needs;

Hazeflow founder Pavel Paramonov called it “another pile of ideological nonsense” and did not specify the specific direction of Ethereum.

Supporters:

Zainan Victor Zhou, founder of Namefi, believes that this is a constraint on the EF organization, not a restriction on the entire ecosystem.

Omid Malekan, a professor at Columbia Business School, pointed out that CROPS is the foundation of Ethereum’s leadership in the financial field - it provides true “access + verifiability + property protection”.

In the face of the controversy, Vitalik personally clarified that this declaration “is not surprising to many people” and is what EF has been thinking about over the past few months. EF only serves as the guardian of Ethereum, leaving the rest to the broader ecosystem - this is the starting point of a new chapter.

The manifesto ends with a sentence in Italian: “E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle” – from Dante’s “The Divine Comedy: Hell”, which literally means “So we went out and saw the stars again”.

EF also created a “SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE” meme that reads, “If the Foundation fails to keep its solemn promise to Ethereum, let it repay itself and kill itself.”

EF compares itself to a walker through hell, even if it means going through real hardships and doubts, it must move towards the star of “digital freedom”. Of course, time will tell.