Ethereum Foundation Pivots to UX & Scaling, Buterin Shifts to Research Role

The Ethereum Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to growing the Ethereum ecosystem, is shifting its focus to improving user experience and addressing Layer-1 scaling issues. This follows a leadership reshuffle that took place within the team back in March.

Today, Ethereum Foundation CEO Tomasz Stanczak published a post on X (Twitter), in which he described how the organization has changed after the management structure was updated.

Ethereum Foundation's new goals

Stanczak said the purpose of the changes is to give Vitalik Buterin, the creator of Ethereum, more time for research and experimentation rather than daily tasks and urgent problems.

Such a position suggests that the Ethereum ecosystem is overly dependent on Buterin. And although the development of Ethereum-based projects is managed by other developers, such an approach seems overly centralized.

Tomasz Stanczak also noted that Buterin's recent publications have promoted forward-looking ideas and helped the community re-focus on the organization's core values.

On March 1, the Ethereum Foundation announced that principal investigator Xiao-Wei Wang and Stanchak, who is also the head of Nethermind, will co-chair the project starting March 17.

Since the change in management structure, Buterin has stepped away from handling day-to-day tasks at the senior management level. Since then, he has been publishing proposals related to privacy and performance of the altcoin network.

For example, on April 11, Buterin presented a plan to develop anonymity in Ethereum. In his blog, he proposed features that would allow users' transactions to be anonymized, stressing that they ”ideally should be so by default”.

In addition to transaction privacy, Buterin published a post on the speed and efficiency of Ethereum. He suggested changing the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) smart contract language to improve efficiency and execution speed on the blockchain.

Stanczak noted that while Buterin's proposals ”will always carry weight,” their main purpose is to initiate discussions and stimulate progress in various research directions.

The community can either refine or reject these ideas. In addition, the Ethereum Foundation will now focus most of its research on short-term goals, including improving user experience and scaling in future updates to the protocol.

What's happening to the activity in cryptocurrencies

Meanwhile, activity on cryptocurrency exchanges is declining at a tremendous rate. Spot transaction volume is at its lowest level compared to volume on futures since August 2024 for Bitcoin and since December 2023 for Ethereum.

That said, a slight increase in trading volume can be seen in trading pairs with Solana compared to Ethereum, analysts said.

Despite a brief uptick in activity in early April caused by market volatility due to President Trump's announcements of sweeping import duties, volumes on major crypto exchanges have fallen to their lowest levels in six months in recent days.

The seven-day average of trading volume on Binance, Coinbase and Bitfinex reached just over $32 billion on Saturday. That's the lowest since mid-October 2024.

This metric is down more than 75 percent from a peak of 132 billion in early December 2024. Trading volume on decentralized exchanges in April is likely to be at its lowest level since last October.

Even cryptocurrency ETFs are recording volume declines - though not on the same scale. The trading volume of spot Bitcoin ETFs totaled $1.55 billion on Thursday, when traditional markets were closed on Good Friday. This figure was the lowest since March 25.

At the same time, spot Ethereum ETF trading volume totaled $178.76 million, the lowest since March 27. In addition, traders seem to be getting less and less involved in spot trading compared to futures, suggesting that their appetite is waning.

A moving average of the spot-to-futures volume ratio for BTC shows a decline: the current level is 0.19 points, meaning spot volume is only 19 percent of crypto-based futures volume. This is the lowest level since the beginning of August 2024. The same ratio for ETH is at 0.20 points, and this is the lowest level since December 2023.

The higher the share of trading on the spot, the higher the real demand from regular traders. Lower values, as it is now, indicate that most of the trading takes place on the futures market. Probably with a higher share of speculation and margin leverage.

It is also worth mentioning Solana. According to analysts, this altcoin shows a slight increase in weekly trading volume compared to Ethereum, interrupting the downtrend that lasted from mid-January to mid-March.

The Ethereum Foundation's internal reorganization could be a turning point for the Ethereum ecosystem. Still, the shift in focus to user experience and Layer 1 scaling, as well as Buterin's active involvement in research, create a foundation for future growth and increased attractiveness of ETH among investors and developers. However, the changes still need to become truly global, as the project lost a lot of capital and investor interest the day before.