Ethereum Foundation reports crypto holdings of $788M, tightens conflict of interest policy for staff members

The Ethereum Foundation's financial report for this year revealed that it holds $970.2 million in cryptocurrencies and non-crypto assets as of Oct 31, 2024.

The EF noted that it holds $788.7 million in crypto assets, 99.45% of which are held in ether, representing 0.26% of the total ether supply as of the end of October 2024. According to the report, it holds $181.5 million in non-crypto investments and assets.

“We choose to hold the majority of our treasury in ETH. The EF believes in Ethereum’s potential, and our ETH holdings represent that long-term perspective,” the foundation said.

The EF said its treasury aims to “fund important public goods for the Ethereum ecosystem.” It added a plan to follow a conservative treasury management policy that ensures it has "sufficient resources even in the case of a multi-year market downturn.”

“This requires periodically selling ETH to ensure sufficient savings for future years, and programmatically increasing our fiat savings in bull markets to fund spending in bear markets,” the foundation said.

This follows scrutiny and negative reactions from the community in response to several large, unexplained transactions and ether sales by the foundation without prior notice, prompting calls for greater transparency.

Implementing conflict of interest policy

Last week, Ethereum researchers Justin Drake and Dankrad Feist posted on X that they had resigned from their advisory positions with Ethereum restaking protocol EigenLayer, for which they were paid in Eigen tokens, sparking concerns regarding potential conflicts of interest.

The EF outlined additional details on its conflict of interest policy in today’s report. Specifically, the foundation’s staff may take on outside work but must inform the organization and consult with their team lead. If the total value of the outside work is above $25,000 annually, it must be reviewed by an internal discussion group, according to the report.

However, “EFers cannot take on work outside the EF and get paid in illiquid assets with an unknown market value,” the foundation said, citing “advisorship token packages for pre-launch projects” as an example. It added that this is prohibited upfront but may be allowed in “rare exceptions.”

2023 expenditure

In 2023, the EF’s largest expenditure was on “new institutions,” totaling $47.4 million compared to $28.6 million in 2022. This category includes grants to new institutions supporting the Ethereum ecosystem. The foundation also spent $34.7 million on Layer 1 research and development, up from $32.1 million in 2022, according to the report. 

“EF’s long-term thinking keeps us focused on supporting a sustainable and open ecosystem,” Aya Miyaguchi, executive director of Ethereum Foundation, wrote on X. “We’re more committed than ever to planting seeds that may only mature years down the line, ensuring Ethereum’s resilience and collaborative growth.”

Ethereum has seen steady momentum over the past few months. The number of active addresses on the Ethereum network reached 13.7 million in October, up from 12.3 million in September, according to The Block’s data dashboard. Its on-chain volume expanded to $108.6 billion in October, up from $90.9 billion in September and $57.1 billion in the same period last year.

Ether gained 2.4% over the past 24 hours to trade at $2,912 at the time of writing, The Block’s data showed. It has risen 19% over the past five days amid a broader market rally.

The article has been updated to add more details on the foundation’s conflict of interest policy.