Former Ethereum Foundation Core Member Warns of Potential Funding Crisis in 3–9 Months

ChainCatcher report: Trent Van Epps, former core development coordinator at the Ethereum Foundation, posted that as the Foundation continues to advance its “Subtraction” strategy, its treasury shrinks, and the four-year Client Incentives Program (CIP) expires this April, the Ethereum core development ecosystem may face a slowly unfolding funding crisis within the next 3 to 9 months. Trent noted that sustaining the operations of over a dozen Ethereum client teams, research institutions, and coordinating organizations currently requires approximately $30 million annually. Persistent funding shortfalls could lead to key developers leaving, slower protocol upgrades, and a weakening of Ethereum’s long-term competitiveness in areas such as scalability, quantum computing defense, and network maintenance. The Ethereum Foundation was never designed to be a permanent governance body; over the next decade, new institutions must assume responsibility for protocol development. As the Foundation’s influence wanes, the Ethereum ecosystem urgently needs to establish new funding allocation mechanisms, governance frameworks, and institutional succession structures to ensure the protocol’s long-term sustainable development.