Vitalik Plans To Donate ERC-20 Holdings and Cease Investing In Web3 Projects

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder and chief scientist of Ethereum, plans to donate all of his ERC-20 tokens.

In a Sept. 5 tweet, Buterin said he plans to donate all of his proceeds derived from investments in Layer 2 networks and other web3 projects.

Buterin said the funds will go to supporting Ethereum-based public goods or mainstream charities, citing biomedical research and development as an example.

“All proceeds will be donated, again, either to support public goods within the Ethereum ecosystem or broader charity,” Buterin said.

Ethereum’s chief scientist added that he does not plan to make any further investments into “L2s or other token projects” for the foreseeable future, and will opt to make charitable donations instead.

“My goal with giving projects money is to support things that I think are valuable, especially in cases where other parts of the ecosystem might undervalue them,” Buterin said. “Going forward, I plan to just do this with donations.”

On Sept. 3, Buterin unlocked nearly 1.27 million STRK ($503,650), the native token of the Starknet Layer 2, accounting for 60% of his STRK allocation, according to Arkham Intelligence, an on-chain analytics platform. On the following day, Buterin transferred 2.1 million STRK ($858,750) to an unknown wallet — presumably comprising a donation.

STRK was Vitalik’s largest token holding excluding ETH, with Buterin holding 240,277 Ether and wrapped ETH worth $574.4 million.

Charitable donations

Vitalik’s comment followed a recent post clarifying that recent ETH sales linked to his wallet were the recipients of charitable donations offloading Ether. Buterin’s wallet had drawn attention after transferring roughly $10 million worth of ETH in August.

“I haven't sold and kept the proceeds since 2018,” Buterin said. “All sales have been to support various projects that I think are valuable, either within the Ethereum ecosystem or broader charity.”

In mid-August, Buterin also consolidated 200 ETH worth of memecoins ($530,000) that were sent to his wallet by token creators seeking promotion into Ether and donated the funds to an animal welfare fund.

Ethereum Foundation controversy

The scrutiny surrounding Buterin’s wallet came after the Ethereum Foundation came under fire for sending 35,000 ETH worth $94 million to the Kraken centralized exchange on Aug. 23, just as the price of ETH had rebounded 23% from the early-August market bloodbath.

Aya Miyaguchi of the Ethereum Foundation responded that the organization has an annual budget of approximately $100 million annually, with many of its expenses needing to be paid in fiat. Miyaguchi added that the transaction did not comprise a sale, with the foundation planning to gradually sell the funds over time.

On Sept. 6, Justin Drake, an Ethereum Foundation researcher, said the foundation is working towards publishing a financial report intended to provide greater transparency to the community “relatively soon.”