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Is the EF Mandate What Ethereum Needs?

Olivia Capozzalo & Camila Russo
March 17, 2026

gm, Defiers!

Today’s big story:

  • The Ethereum Foundation just published a new mandate, and it has the community split between cypherpunks and pragmatists.

In other news:

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Today’s Big Story

Ethereum's New Mandate Is Principled. It's Also Incomplete.

The Ethereum Foundation just published a new mandate, and it has the community split between cypherpunks and pragmatists.

On one side are those who see this as a return to first principles, a necessary reaffirmation that Ethereum is not a company and should not be run like one. On the other are builders and operators who say this is a concerning turn toward idealism when it’s more crucial than ever to build for the real world. I lean cypherpunk. But with a caveat.

Meet CROPS

At the center of the mandate is a new acronym: CROPS.

  • Censorship Resistance
  • Open Source and free (as in freedom)
  • Privacy
  • Security

This is Ethereum’s ideological core. Its reason for existing.

I agree. But I would argue CROPS is no longer enough.

It needs US. Us, symbolically, as in you, me, and the entire world. And US concretely, as in, to support applications for the entire world, the protocol also needs to prioritize:

  • Usability
  • Scalability

Call it CROPS & US.

A Foundation, Not a Firm

The EF mandate explicitly rejects the idea that the Foundation should act as a central coordinator or leader. Instead, it frames its role as a steward of public goods: funding research, supporting core infrastructure, and preserving Ethereum’s neutrality.

It draws clear boundaries. The EF should not pick winners, drive product strategy or act like a business

In other words, Ethereum is (once more) choosing to remain a protocol, not become an organization.

Timing

Besides the content, the timing is also what makes this contentious.

The mandate comes just after Tomasz Stańczak stepped down as EF’s executive director, following a year in which many felt the Foundation had begun to shift.

Under his tenure, there was a growing sense that the EF was responding to criticism that it had become too insular, too academic, too disconnected from the ecosystem it helped create. There were pushes toward engaging more with applications, highlighting Ethereum products, using its own ecosystem more actively, including DeFi, and moving with greater urgency in the face of competition.

All of this against the backdrop of a louder narrative: that Ethereum was moving too slowly, and losing ground to faster, more vertically integrated ecosystems like Solana.

Now, with Tomasz gone and this mandate out, many are interpreting it as a reversal. A return to the “ivory tower.” And the concern is understandable.

The World Is Already Here

Because at the same time, institutions are arriving. Tokenization is accelerating. The world is, slowly but undeniably, moving onchain.

I understand the frustration, but agree with the EF that their role is to ensure Ethereum remains neutral, credibly decentralized, resistant to capture, and able to survive without any single entity, including itself. Not to do marketing and BD.

The “walkaway test” is a powerful north star. If the EF disappeared tomorrow, Ethereum should keep running.

Still, this is where I side, at least partially, with the pragmatists: CROPS alone is not enough for Ethereum to capture the opportunity in front of it.

If Ethereum is to become the base layer for a world moving onchain, it must also scale to support global demand and be usable by people who are not crypto-native.

These shouldn’t be trade-offs against CROPS. Ethereum shouldn’t sacrifice censorship resistance for scalability, or privacy for usability. But it does need to treat Usability and Scalability as first-class goals.

Because in practice, a system that is too slow or too hard to use risks becoming irrelevant, even if it correctly tends to all its CROPS.

CROPS got Ethereum here.

CROPS + US is what gets it to the world.

With love,

Cami, founder of The Defiant

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