Vitalik Sells Over $8 Million in ETH to Launch Five-Year ‘Mild Austerity’ Plan

The Ethereum Foundation, or EF, supports Ethereum protocol research and development and the broader ecosystem. Before 2026, its annual spending amounted to about 15% of its remaining treasury, with a goal of lowering that figure to roughly 5% after 2030. The restructuring is designed to secure funding for the core roadmap and shift EF toward a long-term operating model similar to a university endowment. The foundation has not disclosed the budget's absolute value.

Vitalik Buterin announced on June 23, 2026, that EF would cut this year's budget by about 40%, while the foundation confirmed a 20% reduction in headcount the same day. Nine senior executives have departed since January 2026. EF will gradually wind down its Privacy & Scaling Explorations unit, scale back Devcon and reorganize the unit into a specialist client team using AI-assisted formal verification.

The Ethereum Foundation relies on ETH sales to fund its operations, and its frequent transactions have drawn close market scrutiny because they could create selling pressure. The foundation has sold about 20,000 ETH and raised more than $45 million so far in 2026, prompting co-founder Vitalik Buterin to pledge to cut spending and sell less ETH.

As of May 25, 2026, the wallet “0x50b…” held a 47,600 ETH short position with a notional value of about $100.72 million, using roughly 23 times cross margin leverage. The position was opened at $2,094.92. After ETH recovered to about $2,115, its unrealized loss approached $994,000, with the price only about 1.7% below the $2,150 liquidation level.

The Ethereum Foundation recently established a dedicated DeFi team and introduced the “DeFipunk” concept, advocating financial infrastructure built around permissionless access, censorship resistance and privacy-first principles. The move reflects Ethereum’s effort to reaffirm its decentralized-finance positioning. It has also put the foundation’s policy direction and the asset movements of key figures under market scrutiny.

Onchain data show Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has sold more than 10,000 ETH since early February, realizing about $21.74 million in total. The close timing of the DeFipunk team’s formation and the large ETH sales has prompted community debate over whether they send conflicting signals. However, there is currently no evidence directly linking the transactions to the team’s creation.