'Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto' author joins Ethereum Foundation as fourth board member

The Ethereum Foundation has named Pascal Caversaccio, aka pcaversaccio (or "pc"), to its board, which now counts four members, according to an announcement on Wednesday. 

Caversaccio is a co-founder of SEAL 911, an Ethereum security group, as well as a prominent figure within the crypto ecosystem, known for his technical security expertise and philosophical commentary on issues like cypherpunk culture, privacy and decentralization. 

"Very excited to welcome@pcaversaccio to join us at the EF board!" EF President Aya Miyaguchi wrote. "What he brings isn't just security and privacy expertise. He's a living example of what 100% CROPS alignment looks like in practice. Looking forward to the perspective he'll bring, and to being pushed to think much harder about security and privacy."

According to the EF’s statement, the current board members also include Miyaguchi, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin, and Swiss counsel representative Patrick Storchenegger.

"The board acts as a security council to protect the heart and soul of EF, as well as ensuring its compliance as a Swiss foundation," the statement reads. 

This represents the latest shakeup to Ethereum ecosystem governance, including substantial changes at the EF. 

In June, the EF cut 20% of its staff as it reorganized around five core R&D units. This decision followed months of executive-level departures, including its two co-executive directors, the co-leads of the influential Protocol team, and other longtime members. 

The EF noted at the time that it would be tightening its focus on its core values of supporting censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security, or CROPS, as outlined by a controversial internal mandate published in March. 

Of note, Caversaccio is the author of "The Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto," an adaptation of Eric Hughes' "A Cypherpunk's Manifesto" applied to Ethereum, which some believe to have had "subterranean influences on the path toward CROPs."

"In fact, his Manifesto includes Privacy, Security and CR as principles, in 2024," crypto commentator Paul Dylan-Ennis said on X. "Note that these were often seen as minor values prior to this. You can then watch these slowly enter the Ethereum cultural lexicon, until quasi-formalised in the Mandate."

New Ethereum orgs

Since the EF’s reductions, several non-profits and corporations have launched to foster Ethereum adoption, in some sense, taking over some roles the EF had performed or was expected to perform. 

This includes EthLabs, an independent nonprofit R&D studio co-founded by five former senior EF researchers, and Ethereum Institutional, a nonprofit that consolidated prior EF institutional outreach into a neutral organization for banks, asset managers and other institutions.

Earlier this month, EthSystems was founded as a for-profit organization focused on building applied privacy and cryptography tools for institutions, co-founded by the former leaders of the EF’s Institutional Privacy Task Force. 

All three of these organizations received backing from Bitmine and Sharplink, the two largest publicly traded ETH digital asset treasury companies, and Consensys founder Joseph Lubin, among other supporters. 

Lubin, a co-founder of Ethereum, previously told The Block that he expected at least three organizations to spin out of the EF.

On Tuesday, Ethereum Institutional announced that over 100 "ecosystem participants" have signed on to contribute to the organization’s goals, "each contributing capital, time, expertise, and/or amplification to help drive this work forward," according to an announcement. This includes major protocol financial firms like 21Shares, Galaxy and Robinhood, among dozens of other protocols, tech providers, and non-profits like the Linux Foundation.

"This support gives us the mandate and runway to push harder: turning years of institutional engagement into a sustained, global effort to bring tokenization, stablecoins, collateral, and market infrastructure onchain on Ethereum and its ecosystem," Ethereum Institutional wrote.