The Aave team publicly criticized the Ethereum Foundation: the founder and the team should "not just focus on delivering products."

Author: 0xJigglypuff, BlockTempo

The largest lending protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, Aave, initiated a wave of "diss Ethereum Foundation" discussions in the community yesterday (6). Marc Zeller, the founder of the Aave contribution team, criticized the Ethereum Foundation's inaction in recent years in a post on X. Zeller believes that most of the idle positions and team leaders in the Ethereum Foundation should be immediately dismissed. Although he did not mention Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, many in the comments felt that he should also be held accountable.

Five Major Reform Suggestions

Zeller mentioned that the Ethereum Foundation should implement the following five points to save its inefficient ecosystem operations and controversies:

1. Dismiss 80% of non-developers and many current team leadership positions.

2. Convert the ETH held by the foundation into long-term tested staking alternatives (LST assets).

3. Remove 95% of sponsored projects, especially those that "only run nodes in specific cities (Vorkuta)."

4. Do not dump Ethereum; use staking alternatives (LST assets) in lending protocols to borrow funds and reduce operational costs.

5. Hand over the Twitter account to people who truly understand Ethereum technology and marketing for promotion, such as @JimmyRagosa, @ethereumintern_, @antiprosynth, who can each post 20 tweets daily.

Community Response

After the post was published, it sparked extensive discussions, particularly around why the Ethereum Foundation does not handle funding issues like a lending protocol. Some in the community pointed out that Ethereum has always been reluctant to take sides with any DeFi or LST protocols, yet it spent $2 billion on maintaining Danksharding and beamchain while unwilling to spend a dime on marketing. This should be a point of coordination; otherwise, it should be disbanded. A community member who previously participated in Gitcoin grant reviews, @0xVoltaireon, also chimed in, stating that the Ethereum Foundation is merely a place filled with money:

"What I found most tragic during my time reviewing grants was that the Ethereum Foundation is essentially a place full of money, which is basically drained by the World Economic Forum faction (WEF gang, alluding to Ethereum's upper management close to Vitalik, who have abandoned decentralization and embraced the ideal of a world currency), with endless projects and power dispersion completely unrelated. (Decentralization) is just their fraudulent praise under the guise of social good."

The post also prompted many long-time supporters of Ethereum to quote and share "how to save Ethereum," including Manta core contributor @victorJi15, former enzyme finance core contributor @deepcryptodive, Ethereum OG @intocryptoast, among many others. How to quell this wave of criticism initiated by the Ethereum protocol developer community will depend on how the Ethereum Foundation plans to regain the lost public trust in the near future.