Since March 2025, the Ethereum Foundation has taken many measures to enhance governance and community participation, such as appointing two co-executive directors, establishing a consulting group, and having researchers return to the foundation.
Vitalik Buterin also reiterated his views on wallet security issues, stating that ‘not only preventing theft, but also considering how to deal with the risk of asset loss,’ and proposed a governance model of ‘AI handling data analysis, humans providing strategic decision-making.’
On March 17, 2025, the ‘Hoodi’ testnet for ETH validators to exit testing went live, and the mainnet activation time for the Pectra upgrade is expected to start as early as April 25, 2025. With the upcoming upgrade and the expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem, the Ethereum Foundation has also paid more attention to issues such as ‘Ethereum must adhere to decentralization, adhere to the principle of open source, prevent technology from being monopolized by a few centralized entities, and avoid deviating from founding values’.
Ether Foundation Dynamics
Personnel appointment
On March 1, 2025, the Ethereum Foundation announced the appointment of Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak as Co-Executive Directors, effective March 17, 2025.
Ethereum Foundation’s newly appointed executive director resume introduction
- Hsiao-Wei Wang: Has been working as a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation for seven years, dedicated to the research of the Ethereum ecosystem for a long time.
- Tomasz Stańczak: Founder of the Nethermind ETH client development team, with rich experience in talent cultivation in the Ethereum field.
The newly appointed Co-Executive Director Hsiao-Wei Wang will also join the Ethereum Foundation Board of Directors, whose members include:
• Board Chair: Aya Miyaguchi
• Founder of Ethereum Foundation: Vitalik Buterin
• Swiss legal advisor: Patrick Storchenegger
Establish Consultation Team
After the announcement of the management personnel appointments, the Ethereum Foundation also announced the establishment of a new advisory group, Silviculture Society, one of the goals of which is to ensure that Ethereum continues to adhere to the open-source principle. By providing independent advice continuously, it aims to prevent Ethereum from deviating from its core values. With the expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem, industry professionals are concerned that Ethereum may be influenced by external interests and deviate from its founding values, especially the open-source principle, which was the initial mission, becoming centralized.
Vitalik Buterin defines the Silviculture Society as an ‘experimental’ attempt. Although this group is not the official governance committee of the Ethereum Foundation, its core function is to collect and provide feedback from deeply involved participants in the Ethereum ecosystem.
Currently, the group consists of 15 members, including Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University in the United States, and Lefteris Karapetsas, the founder of the privacy platform Rotki. Most members choose to remain anonymous, which aligns with the spirit of early cryptocurrency and cypherpunk culture.
Former technical researcher returns to the Ethereum Foundation
On March 1, 2025, former Ethereum Foundation researcher Danny Ryan announced in a post that he would join Etherealize in a co-founding role, returning to Ethereum.
Before this, Danny Ryan served as the chief technical coordinator for the ETH merge upgrade, overseeing the launch of the beacon chain. Ryan has also been actively involved in many Ethereum improvement proposals.
Industry Voices What is a truly robust wallet security solution
△ Vitalik Buterin X platform February 28, 2025 post screenshot
On February 28, 2025, Vitalik Buterin posted on the X platform: ‘The ecosystem needs to build truly robust wallet security solutions, not only to prevent theft, but also to consider how to deal with the risk of asset loss.’
Many users lose their cryptocurrency assets not because they are stolen, but due to software vulnerabilities, forgotten passwords, lost devices, accidental damage to paper wallets, etc. Due to the lack of accountable attackers, many victims are shy to discuss these losses, but in reality, such incidents occur frequently.
Previously, Vitalik Buterin has repeatedly discussed the importance of Social Recovery Wallet, emphasizing enhancing users’ control over assets through a trusted contact mechanism to reduce the risks of private key loss or theft.
AI + Human Collaborative Governance Model
On February 28, 2025, Vitalik Buterin discussed in his blog post ‘AI as the Engine, Humans as the Steering Wheel’ how AI integrates with governance systems, proposing a model where AI handles data analysis while humans provide strategic decision-making. This approach aims to utilize AI’s efficient computing power while maintaining human judgment to avoid potential risks of complete AI dominance.
△ Vitalik Buterin blog post “AI as the engine, humans as the steering wheel” content screenshot
The ‘AI + Human’ collaborative governance refers to combining the analytical capabilities of AI with the decision-making abilities of humans, which can create a more efficient and sustainable governance model. Vitalik Buterin also proposed using the ‘Futarchy economic model’ to formulate policies, which means using market prediction results to formulate policies; or transforming collective opinions into executable AI instructions through ‘Distilled Human Judgment’.
Vitalik Buterin emphasizes in this blog post that decentralized and open-source AI models must be developed to prevent technology from being monopolized by a few centralized entities, ensuring that AI serves as an extension of human will rather than a replacement for it.
Pectra Upgrade Update
Ether Square Pectra has upgraded and launched four testnets so far: the Mekong testnet launched on November 7, 2024, the Holesky testnet launched on February 24, 2025, the Sepolia testnet launched on March 5, 2025, and the ‘Hoodi’ testnet launched on March 17, 2025.
Ether Square Pectra encountered a technical failure during the Sepolia testnet upgrade, manifested as an error caused by abnormal configuration of the Deposit Contract, leading to the phenomenon of empty block mining, resulting in errors for some execution layer clients. The Ethereum development team has fixed the bug and pushed an update. The network has returned to normal after the validator node upgrade.
The launch of the Hoodi testnet is aimed at addressing key issues faced by the Holeseky testnet, especially the problem of congestion in the validator exit queue. If the testnet progresses smoothly, the mainnet upgrade is expected to take place as early as April 25, 2025.
