Ethereum Foundation Report 2024 Edition: Total Expenditure in 2023 is $134.9 Million

Translation: Plain Language Blockchain
(2024 Ethereum Foundation Report) Hot off the press. This article summarizes the key points of this report. In this article, you will learn about the latest developments of the Ethereum Foundation (EF), recent work achievements, as well as funders, emerging organizations, and the latest policies within the Ethereum ecosystem.
 
1. Ethereum Foundation (EF)
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) is a non-profit organization that supports the Ethereum ecosystem. We are part of a larger community composed of numerous organizations, individuals, and companies working together to fund protocol development, expand the community, and advocate for Ethereum.
We are at the forefront of a new type of organization: one that supports the blockchain ecosystem without controlling it. This model is continually evolving. Every day, we learn and explore what EF should be to support Ethereum's long-term development.
The Ethereum Foundation's internal organization consists of several independent teams. We believe that a structure composed of small autonomous teams is the most effective way to get work done. New teams typically grow organically in response to new needs in the ecosystem, often through forking existing teams.
The teams at the Ethereum Foundation contribute to multiple areas of the Ethereum ecosystem. Some teams are responsible for building software or exploring the cutting edge of the Ethereum roadmap. Other teams help foster developer and user ecosystems globally. Some teams focus on education and advocacy, showcasing the utility and potential of Ethereum to the world.
Over the past decade, the Ethereum Foundation has experienced the ups and downs of Ethereum's brief history.
This process has taught us many valuable lessons. Over time, the three core concepts have gradually formed and helped guide the foundation's development and influence our decision-making.
These are our three core values: long-term thinking, simplicity principles, and value first.
 
2. Ethereum Foundation Team
The Ethereum Foundation has several teams that cover a wide range of areas and are dedicated to promoting the development of the Ethereum ecosystem. Some teams focus on crucial Ethereum infrastructure construction, while others research and guide the Ethereum roadmap or assist in coordinating ecosystem efforts.
The Ethereum Foundation supports important work within the ecosystem through funding. Funding comes in various forms and amounts, with many Ethereum Foundation teams involved in the approval and evaluation of grants. The Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) regularly reports on funding activities.
Expenditure Category Description
This category includes all research and development work related to mainnet upgrades, Geth, internal security research, cryptography R&D, economic models and mechanism design, aimed at achieving the long-term research of the Ethereum community roadmap, as well as funding for external execution and consensus layer clients. This category also includes many other funding for external parties, covering areas ranging from network stress testing to external research on specialized cryptography.
L1 Research and Development
This category includes internal teams contributing to L2 R&D, as well as projects providing funding to external parties to improve the L2 ecosystem. These funding include educational resources, blockchain explorers, developer tools, security audits, etc., covering multiple supports for external projects.
L2 Research and Development
This category includes funding provided to the privacy and scalability exploration teams (pse.dev) that are involved in projects like MACI, Anon Aadhaar, TLS Notary, etc. This category also includes many funding efforts covering projects such as ZK developer tools, ZK ceremony design UX, and ZK application proof of concept.
Application ZK Research and Development
This category includes all work related to improving the Ethereum developer platform. This includes project support for development libraries such as Solidity, Remix, Ethers.js, and Web3.js, as well as support for the Python ecosystem.
Developer Platform
This category includes various work supporting different segments of the Ethereum community. This work covers interactions with the core protocol community (such as supporting the staking community), the Next Billion team, Devcon and Devconnect, as well as support for Ethereum.org and other educational resources. It also includes funding for local and regional Ethereum communities and events around the world.
Community Development
This category includes various daily expenses that support all teams within the foundation. This includes all costs associated with internal and external legal, accounting, and financial services, as well as subscription and service provider costs across the organization, covering data services, operational tools, and technical infrastructure. It also includes all costs associated with individual investments in our financial management strategy, as well as salaries for all operational and administrative personnel.
Internal Operations
This category includes funding provided to support new institutions within the Ethereum ecosystem. In 2022 and 2023, the foundation provided funding to organizations including Nomic Foundation, 0xPARC, and L2BEAT.
Over the past two years, the foundation has been dedicated to nurturing and supporting many emerging organizations that are now driving the Ethereum ecosystem forward, such as Argot Collective, Geodework, L2BEAT, Nomic Foundation, and 0xPARC. We are very proud to work alongside them.
Ethereum is a large global project that encompasses a wide and diverse range of work, involving every layer of the Ethereum ecosystem and regions around the world.
Today, many individuals and organizations contribute to this work. However, there is still much work to be done, especially in supporting and maintaining public goods. Relying on a few organizations to do most of the work poses risks to the ecosystem.
 
3. Ethereum Foundation Treasury
As of October 31, 2024, the financial reserves of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) are approximately $970.2 million, of which $788.7 million is in cryptocurrency and $181.5 million is in non-crypto assets and investments.
The vast majority (99.45%) of our cryptocurrency assets are held in ETH. These ETH represent 0.26% of the total supply of ETH as of October 31, 2024.
We choose to hold the majority of the treasury's assets in ETH. EF believes in the potential of Ethereum, and our ETH holdings represent this long-term belief.
At the same time, the EF treasury's goal is to fund important public goods within the Ethereum ecosystem, ensuring that this goal can be achieved for years to come.
To achieve this goal, we must adhere to conservative treasury management policies to ensure sufficient resources even after years of market downturn. This requires regularly selling ETH to ensure enough reserves for the coming years and gradually increasing fiat reserves during bull markets to support expenditures during bear markets.
 
4. The Ecosystem Faces Challenges
Ethereum Ecosystem
In 2024, the Ethereum ecosystem received billions of dollars in support from the treasuries of foundations, organizations, and DAOs.
This chart shows the total value in the project treasury, including liquid funds available for the project and funds still in lockup. All non-EF data comes from Deep DAO (deepdao.io/organizations), with data as of October 17, 2024.
Most treasury holdings of projects are primarily composed of the project's native tokens. This means that the total value of the project treasury is much higher than the total value that can be immediately deployed in fiat. If a project attempts to sell a significant portion of its treasury, it could have a huge impact on the project's token price.
Conversely, this chart shows the depth of resources available to the Ethereum ecosystem in the long term. Even a small portion of this capital gradually deployed over the next decade will provide significant resources for the growth and maintenance of the Ethereum ecosystem.
In 2022 and 2023, various organizations within the Ethereum ecosystem collectively invested over $497 million to support various projects within the community.
 
5. Summary
We are proud to see that, just like the development process of Ethereum, the funding support for the entire ecosystem has now become a collective effort. This collaboration helps developers within the Ethereum ecosystem discover more innovative pathways.
Additionally, the Ethereum Foundation has established a conflict of interest policy to ensure the integrity of all our work. We hope this will be an important step in enhancing the credibility of the entire ecosystem.
At the Ethereum Foundation, we firmly believe in the concept of an 'infinite garden' — an ecosystem composed of shared values, long-term thinking, and distributed growth that can thrive in the long term. As a community, we can collectively ensure that Ethereum is always built by everyone and for everyone. Let us continue to build the future together!
Click the link to view the full report: https://ethereum.foundation/report-2024.pdf.
 
 