US crypto developer Danny Ryan submitted a proposal in November 2024 to Vitalik Buterin, the founder and symbolic leader of Ethereum, a prominent blockchain powering the world’s second-largest cryptocurrency. Ryan, who had worked for seven years at the Ethereum Foundation (EF), Ethereum’s de facto governing body, suggested that Ethereum could be on the cusp of an era-defining shift.

Since its founding in 2014, the foundation had prioritized technical upgrades and had avoided centralizing power while its user base was growing, but Ethereum had now grown up, and the cryptocurrency world around it had grown up, too. The EF could now “exercise a stronger voice” without compromising its ethos of decentralization, Ryan said – and he was open to leading that charge if appointed as the foundation’s new executive director.

Ryan told the Guardian that he could see how political tides were changing “overnight”, which informed his proposal. In part, his thesis drew from personal experience: He’d been served by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in March 2024, only to have the case summarily dropped, which he suspects was a pragmatic move to avoid alienating the tech sector during Joe Biden’s re-election campaign. By November, with Donald Trump poised to return to the White House as the self-appointed “crypto president”, Ryan could identify “a massive American-shaped opportunity”.

Trump’s re-election was heavily bankrolled by crypto companies and advocacy groups; the sector had established lucrative ties to the Trump family, and expected a slate of policy changes in its favor. A second Trump administration was likely to bolster the crypto industry’s ability to expand into the traditional financial sector, and vice versa, further buoying up Ethereum’s prospects. These new political and economic realities meant a “stronger voice” from the EF that could mean a windfall for Ethereum – a logic that helped catalyze a high-profile leadership shakeup within the Ethereum ecosystem, and, once the dust settled, anointed new leaders tasked with wooing Wall Street.

Despite strong winds at the industry’s back, the value of Ethereum’s proprietary cryptocurrency, ether (ETH), is down 20% from one year ago, part of a widespread slump in crypto’s value. The price has remained almost unchanged since November 2024, when Ryan made his pitch, which is the same as it was in 2022, an asset at risk of depreciating in a world of high risk.

ETH’s dual, dueling factions

The Ethereum blockchain is a hub for hundreds of billions of dollars of financial products. Ether is the world’s second largest cryptocurrency, with a market capitalization hovering around $400bn. Founded in 2013 by programmer Buterin, ether is also the largest cryptocurrency to have a known leader. The identity of the founder of Bitcoin, the world’s most valuable cryptocurrency, is not publicly known. Following Ethereum’s launch, Buterin and others established the EF as a non-profit tasked with cultivating the Ethereum ecosystem – a centralized, neutral entity designed to grow a decentralized technological movement – and writing grants to ecosystem participants in line with that mission; the EF holds more than $600m worth of ETH in treasury. Buterin sits on the EF’s board.

“In crypto in general, there are two sides of the space: there’s what they call the computer, and what they call the casino,” said Timour Kosters, the founder of Edge City, a series of pop-up residency programs affiliated with Ethereum. The “computer” side looks to tackle systemic issues by building tech solutions, Kosters explained; the “casino” side leans into finance, including some scams. The two most prominent ideological camps within Ethereum follow this rule of thumb. On one end is Ethereum’s traditional and more libertarian ideological base, the “Cypherpunks”, who see privacy, decentralized protocols and freedom from state power as tools for individual freedom. On the other end, according to Paul Dylan-Ennis, a scholar who studies Ethereum’s subcultures, is a more “pragmatist” and “populist” cadre motivated by the price of ETH and seeking to expand institutional adoption of Ethereum and ETH.

Ryan recalled the discussions with Buterin of his proposed strategic plan for the EF as being “positive”, and said the dialogue expanded to include other leaders within the foundation. That included Aya Miyaguchi, the organization’s longtime executive director and a steward of Ethereum’s traditional ideological core. But then news of these discussions was leaked to the public – opening the floodgates on social media.

On X, some Ethereum users clamored for Ryan’s appointment, and lobbied for Miyaguchi’s ouster. Eric Conner, a veteran Ethereum developer, suggested “it’s revolt time” if the foundation failed to appoint Ryan as its new executive director. Some social media users posted death threats against Miyaguchi, which incensed Buterin.

ETH holders pressure their leaders

Some Ethereum community members had been calling for leadership change at the EF over the course of 2024 – long before Ryan’s strategic meetings with EF leadership. Many pragmatists thought the foundation was not proactive enough in growing Ethereum’s adoption, including among financial institutions. Others blamed Miyaguchi for Ether’s relatively static price, as ETH had not skyrocketed in value the way bitcoin and other coins had with Trump’s rise.

Paul Brody, who leads blockchain initiatives at Ernst & Young and is the chairman of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance, a coalition of large businesses adopting Ethereum-based technology, said that, while critiques against Miyaguchi were “tinged with misogyny”, calling for a leadership change because of Ethereum’s static price resembles standard investor discontents.

“In some ways, the Ethereum community is behaving a lot like pretty normal shareholders … They want a return on their investment,” he said.

In January 2025, Buterin responded to this community pressure, framing the threats levied against Miyaguchi as “pure evil”. He added that the complaints were “decreasing the chance I have any interest whatsoever in doing ‘what you want’”.

“The person deciding the new EF leadership team is me,” he tweeted.

A former member of the EF, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal foundation matters, said Buterin’s social media post was a “turning point” and “uncharacteristic”, as the founder typically “pretended that [Ethereum] was in the hands of the community”. The former EF employee told the Guardian that EF management organized a foundation-wide retreat “in order to force” Buterin into naming a new executive director quickly, as Buterin “couldn’t really make up his mind”, and Miyaguchi had wanted to step back “for a while”. The source added that, in personal conversation, Buterin dismissed Ryan’s backers as a small but vocal American subset of the global Ethereum ecosystem. By the end, “the old management” was “almost universally hated” by the EF’s employees, they said.

Another former EF employee, likewise speaking on the condition of anonymity, similarly noted that Buterin’s tweets were a departure from his typical “cosplaying” that he didn’t control Ethereum. Buterin and Miyaguchi have a close relationship, the former employee alleged, which informed Buterin’s reluctance to find Miyaguchi’s replacement more expediently, the source hypothesized.

They claimed Buterin “isn’t over” the rejection of his work visa by US authorities in 2012 and remains “resolutely” against EF staff talking to US politicians. The former employee suspected this disfavor counted against Ryan, an American. Buterin only finalized a leadership change once he realized the extent of dissatisfaction within the EF, not just online, the employee concluded.

Change is in the air, finally

On 1 March 1, the EF announced the appointment of two co-executive directors: one from each strand of Ethereum’s culture, according to Dylan-Ennis, the Ethereum scholar: Tomasz Stańczak, a former vice-president at Citi, and Hsiao-Wei Wang, a veteran Ethereum-focused engineer.

The EF’s new leaders were brought on specifically with a “mandate of being more open, communicating more, and [being] responsible to the business world”, which is home to “builders focused on real-world use cases”, Stańczak told the Guardian in November. “Compared to previous years, there is probably much more green light for institutions to adopt Ethereum,” he added. The EF now operates a landing page designed for institutions interested in understanding and potentially adopting Ethereum technology.

Two former EF employees said these basic changes highlight the extent to which the foundation had previously adopted a “defensive posture” and had “worried about the SEC”, using opacity and plausible deniability to avoid legal action. To that end, the EF only published a public-facing organizational chart over the summer, partly anonymizing its employees prior to that shift. The foundation’s growth and clear hierarchy also depart from its longstanding decentralized ethos; during her time as executive director, Miyaguchi had called for the EF to “subtract” in size and power over time.

“The surprising twist in recent times is now the EF is seen as very much directing ‘Ethereum the protocol’ and, to some extent, ‘Ethereum the culture’,” Dylan-Ennis said. “In this sense, [the foundation] has become more important than ever. It is too early to say whether this is for the better or the worse.”

‘American-shaped opportunity’

Ryan emphasized in an interview that he has “the utmost respect for Aya Miyaguchi”. The public leak of their discussions around the EF’s future led to “a lot of toxicity” that “threw off” their dialogue, he added. Buterin and Ryan decided to amicably “close the door” on their discussions by January 2025. Ryan said this was not solely because of the online campaign, but also due to differences in opinion about the Ethereum Foundation’s next steps – including the “American-shaped opportunity” lying beyond the EF’s interests.

Connected to other Wall Street-facing Ethereum evangelists by senior EF leadership, Ryan announced in February 2025 that he was co-founding Etherealize, an EF-aligned organization building and marketing Ethereum-based products for traditional financial institutions. Etherealize frequently exercises a strong voice for Ethereum as it does the rounds on Capitol Hill and Wall Street.

Vivek Raman, a co-founder of Etherealize, said Ethereum-focused sales cycles with large financial institutions once spanned years and involved frequent rejection, but are now accelerating, a sign Wall Street is warming to cryptocurrency. Major firms like JP Morgan, Fidelity and BlackRock are seeking to offer financial products issued on blockchains, in a process called “tokenization”, he said, predicting that a wave of these products will enter the market in 2026 after December 2025 launches.

However, ether, like other major cryptocurrencies, is still crawling back from a sudden drop in value.

“The price of crypto has fallen like 40% in the last six months,” said Brody of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance. “You don’t see people talking about the current leadership … the way they did about Aya 18 months ago. You just don’t.”