Why the Ethereum Foundation Just Moved $600 Million in Treasury Funds

In brief

The Ethereum Foundation moved $610 million worth of ETH to a new wallet on Wednesday.
The “routine” migration was to a new multi-signature wallet from Safe.
The Foundation is deploying more of its funds into DeFi protocols to support community development.

The Ethereum Foundation moved more than 160,000 ETH—valued at approximately $610 million as of this writing—to another wallet on Tuesday, prompting speculation over the reasons and destination for the bulk of the Foundation’s treasury.

On Wednesday, the Safe Foundation and the Ethereum Foundation announced that the funds had been moved into a multi-signature Safe Wallet, which is designed to secure the funds. Ethereum Foundation Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wen confirmed on X on Tuesday that the funds were moved in a “scheduled” migration.

Safe said that the Ethereum Foundation had been testing Safe since February, experimenting with protocols like Aave, Cowswap, and Morpho. After successfully testing a 3-of-5 multisig configuration in January, the Foundation consolidated its remaining ETH holdings, transitioning from its previous custom-built multisig solution.

“Safe has proven safe and has a great user experience, and we will transfer more of our funds here over time,” Wen wrote on X in January.

Overall, Safe said that it has facilitated over 750 million transactions across 57.5 million accounts created across multiple chains, with more than $65 billion in total assets secured. Safe’s technology serves institutions, DAOs, and individual users including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, who said he stores over 90% of his personal crypto holdings in a Safe multisig.

The Ethereum Foundation said in June that it had updated its treasury policy, adopting a “DeFiPunk” approach as it aims to deploy funds into permissionless decentralized finance (or DeFi) protocols while maintaining operational security.

The Foundation plans to spend approximately 15% of its treasury funds annually, gradually reducing that to 5% over five years as it balances financial sustainability with ecosystem support.

Ethereum has been rising in recent months, soaring to a fresh all-time high just shy of $5,000 in August—and breaking a nearly four-year-old record in the process. Like other top assets, however, ETH has been falling lately and was recently priced at $3,815, down almost 5% over the past 24 hours.

Myriad traders are optimistic, however, predicting a nearly 57% chance that Ethereum rebounds to $4,500 sooner than it can dip back down to $3,100. (Disclaimer: Myriad is a product of Decrypt‘s parent company, DASTAN.)