Ethereum Foundation Holds Nearly .3% of All ETH: Report

The Ethereum Foundation treasury has $1.3 billion in Ethereum, $300 million in non-crypto investments, and another $11 million in other cryptocurrencies, according to a 2021 financial report released today.

As of March 31, 2022, the foundation’s Ethereum holdings amounted to nearly .3% of the entire ETH supply. 

The foundation regularly announces grant spending and donations on its blog, but this is the first time it has published an annual financial report.

As the network matures, the foundation has been supporting third-party allocators, said Ethereum Foundation director Aya Mayaguchi.

“[We believe] that more decentralized funding is important for the future of the Ethereum ecosystem,” Miyaguchi wrote in the report. “We continuously try to allocate resources to third parties that we believe can make better decisions than us within certain domains.”

She said on Twitter that she’d provide more details on the foundation’s vision and principles at a Devconnect event in Amsterdam. 

Last year the foundation spent a total of $48 million. Layer-one research and development accounted for $21.8 million, including the Ethereum mainnet upgrade and external grants for network stress testing. 

Ethereum Foundation spending

The Ethereum merge, which will transition the Ethereum network to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus model, was recently pushed to Q3 of 2022. 

“It won’t be June, but likely in the few months after,” Tim Beiko, an Ethereum core developer, said on Twitter. “No firm date yet, but we’re definitely in the final chapter of [proof of work] on Ethereum.”

Community development accounted for $9.7 million; developer platform accounted for $5.9 million; internal operations and support accounted for $5.1 million; applied Zero-Knowledge (ZK) research and development accounted for $3.6 million. 

Layer-two research and development, which includes developer tooling and software development kits, accounted for $1.9 million in spending.

The report also said that the foundation gave out $19.6 million in grants through its Ecosystem Support Program.

Editor's Note: This article has been updated on April 18, 2022, at 11:30 am EST to show that the Ethereum Foundation holds .3% of all Ethereum. The previous headline and text indicated this figure was 3%.