Author: KarenZ, Foresight News

On the evening of March 13, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) Board of Directors issued a mission statement "EF Mandate".

When you open this mission statement, you may wonder if you are on the wrong set - the screen is full of stars, elves, magicians, and a layout similar to that of an anime poster. Peeling off this cool coat, hidden inside is the "ideological program" of the current Ethereum ecosystem.

TL;DR

• EF core positioning: a guardian, not a ruler. The ultimate goal of EF is to pass the "Walkaway Test" - even if the Ethereum Foundation is disbanded tomorrow, the Ethereum network will still be able to operate perfectly.

• The iron law of CROPS is the bottom line: Any technology development must meet the requirements of Censorship Resistance, Open Source, Privacy and Security. All four attributes are indispensable, and no development priority can be placed above them.

• EF philosophy of doing things: Only by subtracting the foundation can Ethereum be more resilient. When the ecosystem matures enough, the Ethereum Foundation will gradually delegate power.

• Something not to do: It is not a "king maker", a rating agency, a marketing agency that calls for orders and sells goods, and it is not encouraged to treat Ethereum as a "big casino".

• Ultimate Vision: Focusing on the next 1,000 years, providing a "digital refuge" from power, capital, AI, and even family exploitation.

What problem does Ethereum want to solve?

EF believes that there are two things that are urgently needed at the infrastructure level in the digital age: control of one's own data, identity, and assets (self-sovereignty), and the ability to collaborate with others without being "stuck" by anyone (sovereignty-preserving coordination).

If you only pursue the first point, running an application locally is enough; if you only pursue the second point, the traditional Internet will do. The unique value of Ethereum is to achieve both at the same time.

There is a passage in the manifesto that says: Ethereum exists so that no one can "rug" you - whether it is governments, companies, institutions, or AI.

Around this goal, EF proposed an abbreviation: CROPS. The word appears 32 times in the manifesto.

• Censorship Resistance (resistance to censorship): No one can stop you from doing legal things. No matter how the outside world puts pressure, you can rely on cryptography to maintain neutrality.

• Open Source & Free (open source and free): All codes and rules are laid out, and there is no hidden black box.

• Privacy (Privacy): Your data is yours, not the platform’s. You decide what information you share with whom.

• Security: Protecting both systems and users from technical failures and coercion.

These four attributes are defined in the document as an "indivisible whole" and are the bottom line that has the highest priority and cannot be compromised for any reason.

EF's attitude is clear: it would rather be slower than getting these things right from day one. Because once you give up, it’s almost impossible to get it back.

What does the Foundation do? What not to do?

EF is making "making yourself unnecessary" the ultimate success criterion.

There is a word in the document called "walkaway test", which means: if EF disappears tomorrow, can Ethereum still run on its own and continue to evolve? The goal of EF is to make this answer "yes".

So EF is practicing a philosophy of "subtractive development": focusing on key things that no one can do or want to do in the ecosystem - core protocol upgrades, long-term technology research, and public safety. Once the community in a certain field can take over, EF will hand it over, further reducing its relative influence.

At the same time, EF also drew a long list of "Don'ts" for itself, which reads like a solemn disclaimer: not a company, not a kingmaker, not a certification agency, not a product studio, not a marketing company, not a boss, not a government agency, not a casino, not an opportunist.

How will EF choose when there is no standard answer?

I talked about a lot of big principles before: CROPS, autonomy, subtraction philosophy. But what should we do if we encounter specific problems? This chapter is the answer.

It's a bit like the foundation's "decision-making algorithm": when two paths are presented in front of you, how do you choose without going against your original intention?

• When choosing a technical solution, choose the one that "will not get stuck in the future", even if it is a little slower now. The example in the document is transaction propagation: one solution has good performance but relies on a private relay network (whitelisting), and the other solution is decentralized but slow to advance. EF's answer may be the latter, because once the former is implemented, "future decentralization" will basically not happen.

• When designing or evaluating a proposal, don’t just look at the layer in front of you, think about the impact on other layers. Some solutions are fine when viewed individually, and even comply with the CROPS principles, but when viewed in the context of the entire ecosystem, they may create new problems elsewhere. Don't solve one problem and create ten.

• User safety is important, but don’t make decisions for your users. Only give users tools for self-defense, never impose "paternalistic" restrictions, and do not allow anyone to deprive users of their right to make independent choices in the name of "protecting users." For example, some wallets will turn on "safe mode" by default, secretly block certain contracts, direct users to designated platforms, and even use opaque AI to determine "risk operations" and secretly collect user behavior, which the foundation is opposed to. Real protection is to provide users with verifiable filtering tools and black and white lists of public rules; no matter what the tool is, it protects privacy by default, and AI components are no exception.

• Do you need an intermediary? Just remove the barriers and leave a way out: If there are some fields where intermediaries are really unavoidable, then the barriers to entry should be lowered to a minimum to allow the market to fully compete. At the same time, users must be left with “intermediary-free” alternatives, and the solutions must be easy to use and implementable.

• When choosing which teams to support, don’t look at the social halo, look at the actual technology choices. Many projects talk about CROPS, but the actual design hides closed-source core links, implements whitelist restrictions, and guides users to follow fixed paths. We must be wary of these.

Ideals are full, reality is skinny

This declaration is written loud and clear, but the torture of reality never stops.

Does this document represent the consensus of all, or the ideals of some of the writers? If EF changes a group of people, will it still count? Who will supervise implementation?

A more realistic question is:

• EF’s operating funds rely heavily on ETH assets held. If ETH prices are low, budgets will be squeezed. "Don't care about the price" is just mental self-discipline, not financial reality.

• CROPS rules are ideal rules, but the world doesn't run on CROPS.

• What most users really care about is: whether it is fast, whether it is cheap, and whether it is easy to use.

• EF insists on being "completely CROPS from day one", but will this make Ethereum lag behind more "pragmatic" competitors in terms of user experience and commercialization?

• How to assess the "dos" and "don'ts" of EF? How to hold accountable? How to judge whether "coordination" is good or not?

The community is in turmoil: the disconnect between punk ideals and reality

Less than 24 hours after the manifesto was released, community feedback is already polarizing:

Critics:

• Eigen Labs researcher Kydo bluntly stated that EF’s current direction has turned 180 degrees, overturning the previous “pragmatic route” of supporting stablecoins, institutional entry, and RWA, and marginalizing the most marketable applications;

• The chairman of Forward Ind. complained: "They can build whatever they want, not what you want" - accusing EF of only building according to idealism and ignoring community and market needs;

• Hazeflow founder Pavel Paramonov called it "another bunch of ideological nonsense" and did not clarify the specific direction of Ethereum next.

Supporters:

• Namefi founder Zainan Victor Zhou believes that this is a constraint on the EF organization, not a restriction on the entire ecosystem;

• Columbia Business School professor Omid Malekan pointed out that CROPS is precisely the basis for Ethereum's leadership in the financial field - it provides true "access + verifiability + property rights protection."

In the face of controversy, Vitalik personally came out to clarify: This declaration "is not surprising to many people" and is also the direction that EF has been thinking about in the past few months. EF only serves as the guardian of Ethereum, leaving the rest to the wider ecosystem - this is the starting point of a new chapter.

The declaration ends with an Italian phrase: "E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle" - from Dante's "Inferno", which literally means "So we come out and see the stars again."

EF also created a meme "SOURCE SEPPUKU LICENSE (source code seppuku license)", which reads: "If the foundation fails to keep its solemn commitment to Ethereum, let it reap the consequences and kill itself."

EF compares itself to a walker through hell, even if it has to go through the hardships and doubts of reality, it must move towards the star of "digital freedom". Of course, time will tell.