After “suffering from EF for a long time”, can the newly established Ethereum Community Fund rekindle faith in ETH?
Author: Zen, PANews
Once upon a time, it was almost a consensus among cryptocurrency industry practitioners and investors that ETH would rise to $10,000. But the reality is that Bitcoin has been the only one to stand out in this cycle, while the price of ETH has always hovered around $2,000, and even fell below $1,500 at one point.
Faced with the decline in token prices, many people in the community have focused their anger on the Ethereum Foundation (EF), criticizing it from many angles, including but not limited to weakness and inaction, centralized governance, low transparency, lack of brand maintenance, bloated organizational structure, and lack of strategic vision. In response to the above controversies, EF announced a strategic reorganization in June this year, but it is still under scrutiny.
Related reading: "The Ethereum Foundation publicly laid off employees for the first time, and the strategic adjustment caused controversy again. Is the foundation model no longer effective?"
In the face of ETH's slump and the thought of "suffering from EF for a long time", Ethereum core developer Zak Cole took the lead in launching the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF) at the 8th Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC 8) held in Cannes, France in July this year. "ECF will say what the Ethereum Foundation cannot say and do what the Ethereum Foundation is unwilling to do." Cole introduced at the meeting that ECF is positioned as an independent organization with the core mission of "supporting Ethereum in the form of assets" and is committed to pushing the price of ETH to $10,000.
Who is Zak Cole, the leader of ECF?
As the founder of ECF, Zak Cole has a rich and diverse background. Zak was trained as a network engineer in the US Marine Corps in his early years, and during Operation Iraqi Freedom from 2007 to 2008, he and his team were responsible for building mission-critical data infrastructure in Anbar Province, Iraq.
After retiring from the Marine Corps, Zak, who worked as a network engineer, began to get involved in Bitcoin and continued to work in network development, network engineering and applied cryptography. He founded several companies in the fields of advertising technology, web hosting and network security, and eventually came to the Ethereum ecosystem and the broader blockchain field.
In 2017, Zak judged that the market lacked commercial and easy-to-use blockchain system development tools, so he founded Whiteblock, which initially provided testing services, and later decided to transform the testing services into a SaaS platform. According to early information released by Whiteblock, its customers include the US Department of Defense, ConsenSys, Beam, RChain, Syscoin and the Ethereum Foundation.
In addition to Whiteblock, Zak is also active in several influential Web3 projects and organizations. He is one of the co-founders of Code4rena, a smart contract security competition platform, and has served as co-founder and CTO of Slingshot Finance, focusing on decentralized trading experience, and has also served as a mentor for the ETC Labs accelerator. In addition, he is also the chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance Testing Working Group and provides technical consulting for multiple projects such as DeFi Pulse and Syscoin.
What really made Zak Cole famous was the Ethereum Community Foundation (ECF) he recently launched. In his speech, he mentioned that "ETH rising to 10,000 is not a meme, but a requirement, a benchmark, and an instruction." This statement excited many members of the Ethereum community.
At present, apart from the leader Zak, the other core team members and supporters of ECF have not been publicly disclosed, and the specific organizational structure and leadership lineup are yet to be announced later.
How to make ETH great again?
The ECF official website states: "The price of ETH has been ignored for too long, and our mission is to enhance its value through education, funding, outreach and ecological support". To achieve this goal, ECF plans to fund a number of projects that can enhance the underlying infrastructure of Ethereum, while focusing on increasing the amount of ETH destroyed, expanding public goods contributions and promoting network expansion. Zak said that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) does not attach enough importance to ETH as an asset and seeks benefits for all ETH holders.
ECF received community and financial support in its early days. The foundation has raised millions of dollars in ETH to fund projects that meet its goals. These funds mainly come from anonymous Ethereum holders and community donors. ECF has set strict funding standards: it only supports "token-free and unchangeable" projects, and requires that all selected projects must directly promote the destruction of ETH, thereby strengthening the economic value of ETH. This style is described as a "trusted neutral" project funding strategy that avoids any model of diluting value by issuing new tokens.
At the technical and ecological level, ECF has launched several cooperation initiatives. Its first major funding project is the Ethereum Validator Association (EVA). EVA aims to provide a voice channel for network validators, allowing them to vote and prioritize the protocol upgrade route through the staked ETH.
Cole pointed out that EVA will "introduce validator representatives" to enable validators to influence Ethereum's client development and monetary policy direction based on performance. ECF also actively promotes cooperation and exchanges with governments, regulators and traditional financial institutions, hoping to promote the institutional adoption of Ethereum. The foundation emphasizes that all grants and decisions will maintain "radical transparency"; the community can participate in the decision of the grant direction through the "coin voting" mechanism, and all funding movements and project progress will be disclosed publicly.
Regarding the initiatives planned by ECF, some crypto KOLs and users believe that this funding model focusing on token-free, public chain infrastructure will help return to Ethereum's original values and improve network security and reliability; others have questioned the completely token-free incentive model, worrying about issues such as the continued motivation for project maintenance and developer rewards.
Although the establishment of ECF has attracted widespread attention, whether it can really achieve the goal of "ETH returning to $10,000" remains to be seen. Whether it is to promote the value of tokens or to reconstruct the governance and funding logic of the Ethereum ecosystem, this road will not be easy. Whether ECF can continue to attract developers and financial support while maintaining credible neutrality is the key to determining its fate.
However, regardless of success or failure, the emergence of ECF itself sends a positive signal: the Ethereum ecosystem still has the ability to self-update, and there are still developers who are unwilling to remain silent and willing to step forward. The emergence of such diverse voices and new forces is a new hope for Ethereum, which is at a critical turning point.
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