The EF’s Endless Manifestos

This week, the Ethereum Foundation released its “EF Mandate.” 

This is yet another public document of Ethereum’s mission, values, and how the EF will steward it, wrapped in flowery language, rainbows, and anime. 

I’m honestly tired of this stuff. 

The time to write a ‘mandate’ of Ethereum’s values, as a guiding document for the direction of Ethereum, was in the 2015-2020 era. And I’m sure there was something like this published back then, too. It seems the main exports of the EF these days are these kinds of mood board documents to remind themselves, and us, what their vibe is. 

I worry that Dankrad's analysis of this document is accurate. This ‘mandate’ from the EF is saying, “Hey, we tried doing the whole ‘maximize Ethereum’s value’ thing, but we’re going back to building cypherpunk stuff only.” 

I’m of the disposition that if you maximize the market value something brings to the world, then that is highly synonymous with maximizing the most good for most people, which is what I’m assuming Vitalik thinks he's doing when he reaffirms Ethereum's trajectory to only support the hardline cypherpunk side of Ethereum. 

In the mandate document, and also restated in Vitalik’s tweet, is the line: “Ethereum is not the world. Ethereum is a specific object in the world  that is here to have specific properties.”

I got into Ethereum thinking that Ethereum could, indeed, become the backbone for the entire world. Rebuild finance from the ground up. Rebuild the entire internet from the ground up. Provide an inter-generational coordination layer for humanity. 

When I read this document, it seems the EF wants to build Ethereum to be a check on the power of the world's most powerful institutions, not to become a powerful institution in its own right. Of course, the ability to check the power of the largest institutions inherently means Ethereum must be valuable, but there is a difference between “just being large enough to do the job” and “trying to maximize Ethereum’s influence on the world.”

I, and many others, have dedicated my life to doing the latter. It seems the EF wants to do the former. 

Maybe, I, like many others, put too much weight on what the EF says and does. Maybe I was too naively optimistic (a disposition I frequently find in myself) about the EF's ability to pivot into an aggressive BD and growth mindset – to not just get the world onchain, but to get the world on Ethereum. 

Maybe I’m thinking checkers, while Vitalik and the EF are playing 4D chess. It’s true no other ecosystem is building with this mindset, and maybe this is where all the value is. 

But nonetheless, it seems that the success or failure of Ethereum in the marketplace… is being left up to the marketplace. It actually seems that Ethereum is doing decently well – its position in the market actually looks quite good right now. While the headwinds of many other chains are growing stronger, Ethereum’s unique properties are truly shining brighter than they have recently. 

So, sure, maybe there’s a little something to the whole emphasizing values thing. 

But man, in 2026 I just don't want to read yet another document from the EF about how they aren’t going to fight for marketshare and instead are going to focus wholly on cypherpunk ideology that isn't going to do much for Ethereum’s market value.