Ethereum Foundation Treasury Policy | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Thanks to the EFers that supplied helpful enter and suggestions to the draft doc: Bastian Aue, Vitalik Buterin, Bogdan Popa, Tomasz Stańczak, Fredrik Svantes, Yoav Weiss, Dankrad Feist, Tim Beiko, Nicolas Consigny, Nixo, Alex Stokes, Ladislaus, and Joseph Schweitzer.

Thanks to kpk, Steakhouse Monetary, and pcaversaccio for offering helpful and insightful enter and the ultimate evaluate of this doc.

The Ethereum Basis (EF) exists to strengthen Ethereum’s ecosystem and uphold its long-standing non-negotiable targets: enabling “functions that run precisely as programmed with none chance of downtime, censorship, fraud, or third-party interference”. EF Treasury helps EF’s long-term company, sustainability, and legitimacy. Capital deployments must be balanced between in search of returns above a benchmark charge and lengthening EF’s function as a steward of the Ethereum ecosystem, with a specific concentrate on DeFi.

This doc gives the insurance policies and steerage for EF Treasury administration and discusses the important thing indicators and issues.

1. Macro Coverage

To attain its targets, EF will keep and periodically refine an asset-liability administration coverage and a high-level grant allocation technique. EF will handle its property, contemplating danger, length, and liquidity, whereas remaining aligned with Ethereum’s core rules.

Our method focuses on two variables:

A: Annual Opex (expressed as % of present whole treasury)

B: Years of Opex Buffer (variety of years of working runway held in reserve)

The place:

A × B: determines goal fiat-denominated (offchain or onchain) reserves. This worth instantly informs the dimensions and the cadence of ETH gross sales.(TotalTreasury – A × B) defines the worth of ETH reserves: dividing by ETH worth provides the variety of ETH that may stay in core holdings.

At common intervals, the Board and Administration re-evaluate each variables, weighing market dynamics and group enter to maintain short-term operations aligned with long-term technique. Two additional lenses form every evaluate: (1) figuring out pivotal years that benefit heightened ecosystem engagement and (2) sustaining a counter-cyclical posture—stepping up assist in downturns and moderating it in bull runs.

Present targets stand at A = 15% of treasury for annual opex and B = 2.5 years. This coverage displays our conviction that 2025-26 are more likely to be pivotal for Ethereum, warranting enhanced concentrate on important deliverables.

EF expects to stay a long-term steward, however envisions its scope regularly narrowing. We intend to cut back annual opex roughly linearly over the following 5 years, ending at a long-term 5% baseline that’s widespread for endowment-based organizations. This glide path and baseline can be reviewed and adjusted as situations evolve.

2. Crypto Property Coverage

The EF will search to earn acceptable returns on treasury property in a way in line with Ethereum’s underlying rules.

The important thing issues of the on-chain portfolio embrace, however should not restricted to:

Security and safety: favor battle-tested, immutable, audited, permissionless protocols. Encourage positive-sum actors within the Ethereum DeFi ecosystem. Purpose to counterbalance, and never contribute to, systemic dangers to Ethereum as a complete. Frequently re-evaluate tasks for assault vectors and dangers, together with however not restricted to: sensible contract, governance, custodial (e.g., stablecoins), and oracle dangers.Cheap return and danger: choose conservative decisions with larger levels of liquidity as an alternative of chasing solely excessive returns. Guard towards not simply the chance of lack of funds but in addition dangers to liquidity and common portfolio flexibility. Deployments which are considerably larger danger might occur however can be of a extra restricted scale and in segregated sleeves. In all circumstances, purpose to be a modest portion of any single challenge’s whole TVL.
Ethereum’s deeper targets: assist maximally safe, decentralized, open supply, cypherpunk functions. Cypherpunk DeFi is permissionless: no barbed-wire fences. Best protocols are trust-minimized, composable, and maximally privacy-friendly.

We’ll ceaselessly reallocate funds between protocols for causes equivalent to altering market situations, diversification, or new yield alternatives. Withdrawals must be understood on this context and never as anti-endorsements.

2.1 Ether Gross sales

All year long, EF will periodically calculate the deviation of the treasury’s fiat-denominated property from the Opex Buffer (“B”) goal and decide how a lot, if any, Ether can be bought over the following three months. These gross sales will usually be through fiat off-ramps or onchain swaps for fiat-denominated property.

2.2 Ether Deployments

Our present methods embrace solo staking and wETH equipped to established lending protocols. Core deployments are re-evaluated regularly however meant to be long-term. EF might also borrow stablecoins and search larger yields onchain. EF Administration and advisors will vet candidate protocols for contract safety, liquidity danger and de-peg danger, and different components. Because the DeFi ecosystem matures, EF plans to fold choose on-chain allocations, together with to rigorously vetted farms and tokenized RWAs, into its fiat reserve.

3. Fiat-denominated Property Coverage

The EF will allocate its fiat holdings throughout:

Instant-liquidity property: money and different extremely liquid fiat-denominated devices that cowl real-time operational wants;Legal responsibility-matched reserves: fixed-term deposits, investment-grade bonds, and different low-risk devices aligned with longer-term obligations; andTokenized RWAs: ruled by the identical strategic targets and danger tips as native crypto property.

4. Transparency Coverage

The EF Co-EDs are accountable to the Board for the administration of the treasury.

To make sure transparency, accountability, and knowledgeable oversight, a structured inside reporting cadence is in place. Experiences are ready and maintained by the Finance workforce, with distribution primarily based on scope and sensitivity.

4.1. Quarterly Experiences

The Finance workforce gives quarterly experiences to the Board and Administration, together with:

Efficiency (Absolute and towards Benchmarks)All positions (Open & Closed because the final report)A abstract of notable occasions, together with:
Operations (processes, infrastructure, safety updates/incidents)Ecosystem engagement (conferences taken, partnerships, and many others.)

4.2. Annual Experiences

The annual EF Report will embrace additional treasury-related data, together with a abstract of main treasury allocations. For instance, percentages in fiat, idle ETH, and deployed ETH.

5. Cypherpunk Targets

The EF (by means of its analysis, advocacy, and capital deployments) will construct on cypherpunk rules to assist formalize and apply a sensible analysis framework we consult with as “Defipunk” which has the next properties:

Privateness is traditionally uncared for within the broader DeFi area, nevertheless it stays important. Privateness protects market individuals from each digital surveillance (e.g., entrance operating, sandwiching, liquidation sniping, focused phishing, profiling and data-based coercion) and bodily threats (i.e. in-person coercion).

5.1. EF ought to actively assist tasks of their Defipunk journey

Ethereum is poised to draw exponentially bigger flows of capital, expertise, and revolutionary vitality. Progress, nevertheless, is commonly path-dependent: requirements adopted in intervals of chaotic fast development harden into legacy constraints, and designs that privilege transparency can lock in surveillance by default. Incumbent methods typically exert refined pressures that slender the design area for novel DeFi primitives and constrain privacy-focused innovation. The Ethereum Basis will defend towards these pressures.

By way of analysis, advocacy, and strategic capital deployments, the EF might help domesticate an Ethereum-native monetary ecosystem that safeguards self-sovereignty and sustains, at scale, “an open society within the digital age.”

Turning this imaginative and prescient into actual infrastructure takes work. There are quite a few challenges to constructing cypherpunk DeFi protocols at the moment: larger fuel costs for privateness, UX friction, problem bootstrapping liquidity, extra stringent audit wants related to technical complexity and immutability, and, merely put, opponents to privateness. Because of this, a lot of at the moment’s DeFi ecosystem depends on centralized parts: backdoor shutdown mechanisms or funds extraction capabilities, extreme reliance on multisigs or MPC, pervasive use of whitelists, centralized and surveilled UIs, and a common absence of onchain privateness – all depart each DeFi markets and individuals uncovered to systemic vulnerabilities.

Privateness is especially essential to get proper. As A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto factors out, “for privateness to be widespread it should be a part of a social contract”. Privateness has inherent community results, and but it has acquired little or no consideration up to now. This means that robust, early institutional assist from an EF-like entity may be uniquely helpful in flipping the equilibrium towards a extra privacy-focused DeFi panorama.

EF is well-positioned to assist information DeFi’s evolution towards these targets. For instance:

Supporting nascent DeFi protocol to develop privateness featuresEncouraging mature protocols to strengthen Defipunk properties with analysis collaborations, liquidity, legitimacy, and different resourcesPromoting analysis and growth of decentralized UIs

A extra full checklist of standards for challenge assist may be present in §5.3.

5.2. Defipunk begins at house

Advocating for open supply, privateness and different Defipunk targets extends far past EF, however embrace EF’s personal inside operations the place doable. Utilizing Defipunk rules within the EF’s personal treasury administration is a key first step on this regard. Extra usually, the EF can use secureware instruments, construct a prudent operational construction that’s supportive of all certified contributors, together with anon and pseudonymous individuals, and in any other case enhance its safety and privateness practices. This can assist the EF stay principled and develop in energy, stability, and the power to face agency.

Employees concerned in treasury administration ought to use and/or contribute to open-source, privacy-preserving instruments for routine duties, particularly if this requires upskilling in these areas. By taking care to reside and breathe Defipunk rules in its personal actions, EF will keep on track and achieve the capabilities to assist the remainder of the ecosystem in doing the identical.

5.3. Defipunk Standards

These are concrete standards for inside analysis of protocols and UIs, meant to encourage new tasks to begin, and current tasks to enhance. They are going to apply to all of EF’s future onchain deployments. Whereas some standards (e.g., permissionless entry, self-custody, and FLOSS) are easy binary determinants for deployment, others are extra complicated. For now, tasks should not required to take a seat on the “splendid” finish of each axis. We search for credible progress and a roadmap for enchancment, reasonably than perfection on day one. We share the framework brazenly to supply legibility for EF choices and construct alignment on these axes, and in order that the broader group can take into account, adapt, or apply them when forming its personal views.

Permissionless entry
Can anybody work together with the core sensible contracts with out KYC or whitelisting?
Self Custody
Does the protocol enable customers to keep up self-custody and current it as default?
Free-Libre & Open Supply (FLOSS)
Is the contract code free-libre open-source, with both a copyleft license (e.g., AGPL) or a permissive license (e.g., MIT, Apache)? Supply-available (e.g., BSL) does NOT qualify.
Privateness
Transactions: Does it provide choices for shielding tx origins/locations/quantities?State: Is person/private knowledge and/or place data shielded onchain?Knowledge: Does the protocol (and its typical UIs) keep away from pointless assortment of person knowledge (e.g., user-agent) and private knowledge (e.g., IP addresses)?
Open Improvement Processes
Is the event course of fairly clear?Are code repositories publicly accessible and actively maintained?Are protocol adjustments documented with clear rationales and versioning historical past?Is there visibility into the decision-making course of for upgrades, parameters, and roadmaps?
Maximally Trustless Core Logic
Immutability: is the elemental logic of the protocol non-upgradeable or ruled by a extremely decentralized, time-locked, and clear course of? (Keep away from admin keys with broad powers.)Maximal viable cryptoeconomics: does the protocol rely maximally on cryptographic ensures & financial incentives, and cut back using authorized wrappers (like collateralization assurances) or offchain enforcement to the naked minimal required for its core operate?Oracle reliance
Does it reduce reliance on oracles, and reduce losses in circumstances the place the oracle is compromised?Does it use sturdy, decentralized, governance-minimized and manipulation-resistant oracles wherever oracles are vital?

Common Safety
Are the contracts audited, and processes in place to trace the audited commit hash towards what was final deployed, ideally together with monitoring/alerting when the diff adjustments?Are contract properties formally verified or not less than bytecode-verified on block explorers?
Distributed UIs
Are there a number of impartial UIs?Is the first UI open supply and hosted in a decentralized method?Can customers work together instantly with contracts?

Enduring Stewardship

The EF is right here to remain for a very long time and wishes a strong long-term treasury administration coverage. We have now for a very long time merely held ETH, however are actually more and more shifting into staking and DeFi, each to reinforce monetary sustainability and to assist a key utility class that’s delivering on the promise of permissionless safe entry to base civilizational infrastructure for tens of millions of individuals at the moment. EF’s involvement in these areas is well-positioned to set precedents for instrument use that’s accountable and appropriate with its underlying targets. To do that, it is going to make investments closely in skilling up its personal competency over time.

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