Ethereum Foundation exploring ways to minimize staking concerns — Vitalik

As Ethereum community members call for the Ethereum Foundation to stake its Ether and earn interest to cover the organization’s expenses instead of selling its tokens, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin said the foundation is exploring ways to minimize its staking concerns. 

On Jan. 20, Josh Stark, who works at the Ethereum Foundation, explained that the organization uses the Ethereum mainnet to swap Ether (ETH) for stablecoins and to pay people with stablecoins and ETH, both on the mainnet and on layer-2 blockchains. 

He said the organization also uses the mainnet for events like Devcon and Devconnect to take onchain payments. 

In response, prominent members of the Ethereum community discussed the idea of the Ethereum Foundation staking their ETH to cover the nonprofit’s expenses instead of selling their ETH. 

Community urges Ethereum Foundation to stake ETH

Anthony Sassano, host of The Daily Gwei, said that instead of swapping ETH for stables, the Ethereum foundation should consider staking a percentage of their holdings and selling the rewards. Sassano said the foundation could also use Aave to borrow stables against ETH. 

Sassano acknowledged that it may be “a bit riskier” but said these two options are better than simply selling ETH to fund development.

DCinvestor echoed the sentiment. The ETH supporter said the foundation could “drop 1,000 ETH” into the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Aave to cover the organization’s expenses. 

Eric Conner, the co-author of Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP-1559), which implemented a deflationary burning feature in Ethereum, criticized Stark’s post, saying that the Ethereum Foundation’s number one use case is “dumping ETH.” 

Conner described the situation as “insane” and argued that the Ethereum Foundation could stake its ETH instead and use DeFi to cover most of its internal budget. 

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Vitalik Buterin explains staking concerns for the Ethereum Foundation

Buterin responded to the discussion by explaining the foundation’s reservations about staking. He highlighted two main concerns: regulatory risks and the potential need to take a position on contentious hard forks in the future.

Buterin stated that while regulatory concerns are lesser than before, the second concern, which forces the Ethereum Foundation to take a position in a potentially contentious hard fork in the future, remains. However, Buterin said there are ways to minimize this concern and that the organization had already been exploring these. 

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