Ethereum Foundation internal updates | Ethereum Foundation Blog

Now that Ethereum has launched and is rapidly approaching the homestead phase, over the past few months we at the Ethereum Foundation have finally had the opportunity to take a breather and plan our strategy with a more long-term perspective. From a development perspective, now Development ~ Of tranquility, a major overhaul of the Ethereum protocol that includes powerful software abstraction capabilities, the Casper consensus algorithm, and underlying scaffolding that allows scalability features to be developed over time and with minimal disruption. POC1 has been released, and POC2 is expected to be released in about a month. In parallel, Martin Becze is actively exploring options for optimizing the EVM using WebAssembly, and several groups are currently working to implement various forms of advanced encryption on top of the EVM.

However, as exciting as this work is, there is quite a bit of work that needs to be done on the backend of the Ethereum Foundation itself, even if it is a bit less flashy. Organizations can survive and ideally thrive long enough to implement the full scope of the Ethereum vision.

at that time Last major update of this kind, the foundation’s main challenges were organizational and financial. Combined costs for development, communications, management and security audits were very high, exceeding €400,000 per month. The ecosystem blossomed quickly, with many Ethereum-based companies either revealing themselves or emerging after months of quiet development. This is a saving grace for foundations because they no longer need to sponsor the development of every layer of the ecosystem itself. , it is nonetheless a transition that must be managed to ensure that all relevant stakeholders remain included in the development process. Administrative inefficiencies, including a total of six entities in four jurisdictions, made our problems worse and at times it seemed like there was just too much to handle.

At this point, under the leadership of our new Executive Director, Ming Chan, we have begun the process of streamlining our operations on many fronts to prepare for the long-term future of the Foundation.

The end of an era, the end of one set of challenges, the beginning of a new era, the beginning of another set…

On the non-political side, perhaps the main highlight is our efforts to increase transparency in our research and development processes. our gutter channels For discussion rather than Skype EIP process For protocol upgrades; Both were hugely successful with a lot of discussion in their channels and many EIPs being created and discussed. We are also actively reviewing the state of our other forms of internal and external communication and media, including forums, documentation and tutorials, and actively welcome community feedback on how best we can improve them.

But the biggest challenge of them all was clearly financial. Open source projects are often known to be underfunded. with very unfortunate results, while the unique characteristics of public cryptoeconomic blockchains have provided and may continue to provide opportunities unavailable in most other situations, challenges remain, and we must first I decided I needed to set a goal. It’s about working more efficiently with the money we already have. So, over the past four months, we have had the biggest gains and very positive results.

On the development side, we decided to take a more focused approach and target primarily the core Ethereum software, especially the Go client. It still includes much of the original Ethereum development plan, including the light client (which is progressing well), mobile wallets, and Mist, and continues C++ and Python on a smaller scale, with a particular focus on development tools (Solidity and Mix). Support. ), but we are leaving other aspects of the ecosystem to the wider community. As great as Whisper’s idea is, it currently has no support from any foundation. However, we are actively looking for partnerships and other mechanisms to help develop some of these additional features. Our communications have been greatly streamlined and we now consist of a small team that works part-time but is more widely distributed around the world.

Some of the biggest benefits are administrative costs. Over the past four months, we have begun the process of incorporating the entities through which the Foundation funds Ethereum development. Three of the six companies that operated across Europe until 2015 have now essentially been dissolved and will soon begin the closure process. We have also seen a very large number of developers leave homes they had rented when they expected to work full-time in Zug and are now based in smaller locations in the city center where they can save on staff salaries. monthly rent and utility costs; We have also closed our physical office in London and are actively exploring options to reduce our rental costs in Berlin. With Ming spending more time in Switzerland, we are now less dependent on external contractors for our needs there, saving us even more money.

Now someone else’s electricity bill…

Overall, the Foundation’s monthly spending has now been reduced by more than half from its peak of over 400,000 EUR per month in 2015, with a current monthly total of approximately 175,000 EUR (~188,000 USD). This roughly consists of:

• 22,000 EUR per month for C++ development (~75% reduction)
• 65,000 EUR per month for Go development (~10% reduction)
• 5,000 EUR per month for Python development (~50% reduction)
• 13,000 EUR per month for IT, hosting, build server maintenance, release coordination, etc. (up to 35% reduction, with further cuts coming soon)
• 6,000 EUR per month in communication costs (~85% reduction)
• 20,000 EUR per month for research expenses (almost unchanged)
• 40,000 EUR per month for top-level management and executive, accounting, office administration, legal and other costs (up to 50% reduction, with further cuts coming soon)

The foundation’s current assets include approximately 2,250,000 ETH, 500 BTC, and $100,000 in fiat, giving it a runway of approximately one year from this point, assuming both the price of ETH and budget preferences remain unchanged. Some salaries are paid in ether. Alongside this, we currently have an ongoing agreement with Bitcoin Suisse to convert the Foundation’s ETH into fiat at a rate of 5,000 CHF per day to ensure ongoing liquidity (along with ~$650,000 worth of private sales to individuals and corporations). ). These numbers reflect actual foundation holdings. Almost all ETH from Genesis Premine and Developer Purchase Program has now been distributed to its rightful owners.

In the coming months, we expect optimization and cost reductions to continue, and as overhead costs decrease, we will once again intensify our efforts on several fronts. We will soon be adding Lisa Cheng to the team part-time for communications, and we will cautiously increase our spending on research efforts to speed up Serenity development. At the same time, we are actively exploring a variety of strategies to expand the foundation’s runway. Given the very strong interest in Ethereum we have seen in North America, Europe, and especially Asia, we are confident that we will be able to find an approach that ensures development can continue beyond Serenity. Massively scalable Ethereum 2.0 and above.