US crypto developer Danny Ryan submitted a proposal in November 2024 to Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s founder, arguing that the Ethereum Foundation could soon take a stronger leadership role without compromising decentralization. Ryan, who had worked for seven years at the EF, said Ethereum had matured and that the foundation could exercise a more influential voice if appointed as the executive director. He told the Guardian that shifting political tides informed his plan, noting how overnight changes could alter the landscape. His views partly drew on his experience with the Securities and Exchange Commission in March 2024, where a case was dropped as a pragmatic move to avoid alienating the tech sector during Joe Biden’s re-election campaign.
By November, with Donald Trump poised to return to the White House as the self-appointed ‘crypto president’, Ryan identified a massive American-shaped opportunity. A leaked pitch to reshape Ethereum’s leadership exposed deep divisions over politics, power and ether’s price. The Ethereum blockchain remains a hub for hundreds of billions of dollars of financial products, and Ether is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization near $400 billion. Following Ethereum’s launch, Buterin and others established the EF as a nonprofit tasked with cultivating the ecosystem and writing grants to ecosystem participants in line with that mission; the EF holds more than $600 million worth of ETH in treasury, and Buterin sits on its board.
Within Ethereum, two camps have defined the space: the Cypherpunks, who prize privacy and decentralization, and a more pragmatic, populist cadre focused on the price of ETH and expanding institutional adoption, according to Paul Dylan-Ennis. Ryan recalled the discussions with Buterin as positive, with the dialogue expanding to include Aya Miyaguchi, the organization’s longtime executive director. After the discussions leaked to the public, some Ethereum users pressured for Ryan’s appointment and even called for Miyaguchi’s ouster; Buterin responded in January 2025, calling the threats against Miyaguchi ‘pure evil’ and saying that the person deciding the new EF leadership team was himself. On 1 March, the EF announced the appointment of two co-executive directors—Tomasz Stanczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang—with a mandate to be more open, communicating more, and being more accountable to the business world.
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