In recent years, the Ethereum Foundation has managed to become a meme within the cryptocurrency community. The fact is that many of the organisation’s ether sales coincided with the local highs of the cryptocurrency’s exchange rate. Therefore, users of the crypto often joke that if the ETF conducts a transfer of ETH to exchanges, it is worth closing all positions and going into stablecoins.

Here’s a timeline of the organisation’s ether sales from early 2021 to late summer 2024. During this period, the giant got rid of 239 thousand ETH worth $654 million, and many transactions were indeed conducted near the historic high of the coin’s exchange rate.

Ether sales by Ethereum Foundation representatives since 2021

Of course, this provides selling pressure on the crypto asset, which in turn angers investors. Some are seriously claiming that Ethereum Foundation is spending too much money and creating problems for cryptocurrency holders.

For example, on October 30, the organisation got rid of another 100 ETH worth $271 thousand.

Ethereum Foundation representatives will sell ethers in October 2024

40 days before that, 300 coins in the equivalent of 760 thousand went on sale.

In the end, the management of the Ethereum Foundation promised to publish a financial report on its activities. And now it is ready.

How many ethers Ethereum Foundation has

As of 31 October 2024, Ethereum Foundation holds $970.2 million in its own reserves. 788.8 million of that amount is in cryptocurrencies, while 181.5 million is made up of investments and assets outside of the coin sphere.

Ether accounts for the majority of cryptocurrencies, which makes sense given the direction of the organisation. Here’s a comment from EF management on the matter, as quoted by The Block.

We prefer to keep most of our savings in ETH. The Ethereum Foundation believes in the potential of Ether, and our ethers reflect that long-term potential.

Representatives of the organisation also said that its savings are aimed at “maintaining important public goods for the Ethereum ecosystem”.

According to them, EF prefers to stick to a conservative fund management strategy. This way, the organisation can ensure that resources are available even in the event of a multi-year downturn in the digital asset market.

This involves periodically selling ETH to accumulate funds for the future, and programmatically increasing our fiat reserves during periods of growth to cover expenses during bear market trends.

As we have already noted, the occasion for such comments has been the criticism of EF’s activities within the community for the organisation’s constant coin sales.

The most prominent example of this was a transaction with 35 thousand ETH equivalent to $94 million dated 23 August 2024. Still, the coin market was not in the best condition at that time, which also raised questions from the community.

Sale of 35 thousand ethers by Ethereum Foundation representatives in August 2024


As noted in the report, throughout 2023, the organisation spent $134.9 million. Here is a breakdown of that amount.


Ethereum Foundation spending through 2023

Ethereum Foundation representatives also added their own policy regarding possible conflict of interest. The reason for this was the scandal when top representatives of the Etherium ecosystem Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist turned out to be freelance advisors of the restacking protocol called EigenLayer, and they received a certain amount of project tokens for their work.

In Drake’s case, it was the equivalent of millions of dollars that would be gradually unlocked over three years. As a result, the mentioned developers left their respective positions in the EigenLayer project.

Etherium developer Justin Drake

The Ethereum Foundation no longer wants a repeat of such scandals. Therefore, the updated policy notes that EF representatives can do third-party work. However, if their annual income for these services exceeds the equivalent of $25,000, then the relevant decision must be approved by the organisation’s representatives.

In addition, employees are prohibited from accepting payment in illiquid tokens whose market value remains unknown. Thus developers cannot receive new tokens for their services and including their certain distribution before the launch of a particular project.

Here is a quote from a document on the subject.

To maintain its integrity, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) introduced a conflict of interest policy this year. Its purpose is to help guide and set some boundaries for EF team members in how they interact with the broader Etherium ecosystem when such connections could affect the reputation or integrity of the foundation itself.

The most important way to maintain the integrity of the fund is to hire people with a high personal level of integrity and rely on their common sense. This policy is designed to support EF employees in making informed decisions by providing clear guidelines, establishing a process for discussing specific situations, and setting the framework we believe is necessary to deal with extreme cases.

EigenLayer Restacking Protocol website


From the looks of it, ether sales by Ethereum Foundation management will continue. And although the organisation's large transactions do affect the ETH exchange rate, it still has the right to do such a thing. Therefore, there is nothing that can be done about such transactions.


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