Ethereum Foundation reveals spending after speculation over massive transfer

Ethereum Foundation (EF) contributor Josh Stark posted a breakdown of the organization’s expenditures for the past two years on social media on Aug. 27.

Stark shared the information after growing speculation that the foundation might plan to sell a large amount of Ethereum. The rumors sprang up after a wallet linked to the foundation made a large transfer.

Stark also hinted that the foundation intends to publish an expenditure report before this year’s Devcon, which is scheduled for Nov. 12.

Funding breakdown

Stark shared two pie charts showing the foundation’s fund allocation for 2022 and 2023. The charts contain seven main areas: new institutions, L2 R&D, applied ZK, community development, developer platform, internal ops, and L1 R&D.

In both years, research and development (R&D) of Layer 1 improvements and new institutions were allocated the highest funding. Stark explained:

“Those graphs capture both internal and external spend. For example, ‘L1 R&D’ includes grants to external client teams, and it also includes internal EF researchers. In both years, internal spend was about 38% and external spend was about 62%.”

Internal spending is related to the teams working under the EF umbrella in different sectors, such as client Geth’s, Solidity, Devcon, and the Ethereum Organization’s teams.

Meanwhile, external spending is related to grants provided by the foundation’s Ecosystem Support Program (ESP). Between 2022 and 2023, the ESP provided $91.1 million in grants to 895 different projects, according to data gathered from their website.

Stark highlighted that ESP publishes quarterly reports on the grants conceded to new projects, with the latest edition describing the grants provided in 2024 Q1.

Addressing the “new institutions” category, Stark highlighted that this is one of the foundation’s efforts to “help build up new organizations that can strengthen and support the Ethereum ecosystem in the long run.”

Stark mentioned entities such as open…