Now, for the first time, the Ethereum Foundation has released a financial report showing that the Foundation’s treasury has financial reserves of Ethereum worth over $1.3 billion, other cryptocurrencies of worth around $11 million and non-crypto investments worth over $300 million. The Foundation itself owns almost 0.3% of all ether stocks in existence.
The Ethereum Foundation regularly provides information on distributed funds, who is funded, and what is funded. But a full annual financial report was never published. This happened now on 03/31/2022 with the financial report for the year 2021 for the first time in the history of the Foundation.
Despite the continued increase in the Foundation’s grant and support expenditures, the Foundation’s assets are steadily increasing. This guarantees long-term financial support for the entire Ethereum community and thus long-term growth of the entire Ethereum ecosystem.
Ethereum Foundation – organization and objectives
Ethereum is not a company or organization controlling Ethereum. No, the Ethereum Foundation is a non-profit organization based in Zug, Switzerland. The Foundation is part of the larger Ethereum ecosystem and was created to support Ethereum community projects and institutions, both financially and through non-financial means.
The Foundation organizes Devcon, the annual conference that brings together all the developers, thinkers and designers who work for Ethereum and who are from companies that work with Ethereum or belong to the wider Ethereum community. And with the Foundation grant program, new ideas around Ethereum are encouraged and funded. So that the Ethereum ecosystem can continue to grow and become even more decentralized.
What does the Ethereum Foundation (EF) do and does?
More voices on the annual report
In a statement to the annual report, Ethereum Foundation Director Aya Mayaguchi again emphasizes the importance of third parties in the further development and gradual decentralization of the entire Ethereum ecosystem. She strongly believes that in many areas, others can make better decisions and drive development more decisively than us.
“[Wir glauben]that more decentralized funding is important for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem”… “We are constantly trying to outsource resources to third parties who we believe can make better decisions than us in certain areas. ”
Funding and Funding in 2021
The annual report shows that the Foundation released $48 million in grants and grants in 2021.
$21.8 million Layer One R&D grant
Of this, $21.8 million for Layer 1 R&D, including grants for Ethereum mainnet upgrades and external network stress tests.
$26.2 million in ecosystem support grants
The remaining $26.2 million was spent on community development, as well as grants and endorsements to third parties who have been involved in supporting the Ethereum ecosystem. Of this amount, $9.7 million was spent on community developments, an additional $5.9 million on the development platform, $5.1 million on internal operations and support, 3.6 million for zero-knowledge (ZK) applied R&D and an additional $1.9 million for level two R&D, such as development tools and software developments.
$19.6 million in additional grants approved
The report also shows that $19.6 million in grants and additional grants for ecosystem support have already been approved and will be disbursed shortly.