The Defiant

Ethereum Foundation Reveals 80% of Treasury Holdings Are Held In ETH

The Ethereum Foundation holds 80% of its Treasury reserves in ETH.

By: Samuel Haig Loading...

Ethereum Foundation Reveals 80% of Treasury Holdings Are Held In ETH

The Ethereum Foundation, few would be surprised to learn, is bullish on Ether.

The non-profit disclosed yesterday that it holds 80% of its $1.61B treasury fund in the blockchain’s native currency.

“The EF believes in Ethereum’s potential, and our ETH holdings represent that long-term perspective,” said the non-profit, which oversees the development of Ethereum, in a treasury disclosure report published April 19.

In the report, the Foundation shared the size of its treasury (as of March 31, 2022) and detailed how it spent money last year. The report marks the first time the Ethereum Foundation has disclosed its treasury holdings.

The Foundation said that it holds non-crypto investments worth $302M, without disclosing further details about those investments.

Approximately 99% of its crypto holdings, or $1.29B, are in Ether, equating to about 0.3% of the circulating ETH supply. The foundation holds $11M in other cryptocurrencies.

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EF Treasury Breakdown. Source: Ethereum Foundation

The Ethereum Foundation described its treasury’s policy as “conservative” – designed to ensure it can withstand a bear market for several years. The Foundation also said it increases the size of its non-crypto holdings when ETH prices rise to protect against market volatility.

The Foundation spent about $48M last year. Of that, $21.8M supported research and development of the Ethereum mainnet. It spent a further $1.9M on researching Layer 2s and $3.6M on zero-knowledge technologies.

The Foundation also spent $5.1M on operations and salaries, $5.9M on developer platforms and $9.7M on community development.

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The Foundation also granted $19.6M to build out the Ethereum ecosystem. Many of these grants were co-funded with other Ethereum players, such as the $1.5M raised for execution client layer teams like Geth and Nimbus, and all were informed by “domain experts”.

“The EF itself will always have blindspots, and this is why we need to work with the broader community to help allocate resources effectively to fund public goods in the ecosystem,” the Foundation said in the report.

The foundation also distributes funds to non-profit organizations including ETHGlobal and 0xPARC, and supports quadratic funding initiatives from projects such as Gitcoin and CLR.FUND.

“We also believe that more decentralized funding is important for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem. We continuously try to allocate resources to third parties that we believe can make better decisions than us within certain domains,” said the Foundation.

The report also emphasizes the Foundation is here for the long-term. The Foundation wants its impact to be “measured in decades and centuries – not quarters and fiscal years.”

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