2 Groups Now Control Ethereum's Future. Here's What They Want.

**Paul Dylan-Ennis** (0:00)
I think this is probably one of the more underrated, fascinating moments that we've ever had, at least in Ethereum, that will be looked back upon as extremely consequential. So I do see ETH Labs as the culmination of that populist revolt.

**David Canellis** (0:18)
Nothing said on The Breakdown is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are opinions, not financial advice. Hosts and guests may hold positions in the company's funds or projects discussed. Welcome back to The Breakdown, everybody. I'm your host, David Canellis, as always. With me today is returning guest, Paul Dylan-Ennis, lecturer at the University of College of Dublin. Thank you so much for joining us today, Paul.

**Paul Dylan-Ennis** (0:39)
Yeah, very happy to be back.

**David Canellis** (0:41)
Cool. So I mean, yeah, Ethereum is the topic. And I mean, anyone who's been following this as well, I mean, there's been kind of a restructuring of the Ethereum Foundation. I mean, not just recently, but over the past six months as well. And we've had now a subset of the Ethereum Foundation, quite senior, kind of split off and start another non-profit called ETH Labs. That, I mean, how I saw, I'm interested to how you style it in your own thoughts, but I'm kind of like starting this as like a biz dev non-profit for Ethereum for want of a better term. I have some ideas about what really they're trying to do.
But I'm wondering before, if we could just start with your experience with the Ethereum Foundation, because like I have this tweet for the Ethereum Foundation, I think it was about this time last year, when was it? February 2025, that named you part of the EF Silviculture Society, which is described as a loose collection of individuals from outside the foundation who provide informal counsel to the EF intending to the dark or otherwise forest in the infinite garden of Ethereum to make sure we sustain the core values of open source privacy, security and censorship resistance. Is that still ongoing? Like I'm curious, like your experience with the EF to date.

**Paul Dylan-Ennis** (1:57)
Yeah, I mean, many times in the past, I've had to tell people that I don't work for the Ethereum Foundation.
The difference is I researched the Ethereum Foundation. So that's my, a lot of my academic work is either, it's mostly on like Ethereum governance. But then that also means that effectively, let's say I'm, the main entity that I'm most interested in is going to be the Ethereum Foundation historically. And the Silviculture Society is effectively, I guess, a cypherpunk external advisory group. I think that's the, what the idea behind it is. Now the, actually what happens, we're not allowed to speak about, right? So we're not actually allowed to talk about what goes, what goes on in the discussions. But I think you can kind of imagine what we're talking about. Effectively, we're, I guess we're, when the Ethereum Foundation makes decisions, they can come to us and ask us, does this sound like something which is maybe deviating from the traditional cypherpunk values? And because we're external, and I think also it's important that all of us are like fairly independent minded people, as in like we don't really have any vested interest, we're not working for any projects, myself work in a university, I'm a tenured professor, like I can say what I want, including to the Ethereum Foundation.
And so that's the general idea. And yeah, so I mean, it's still ongoing, there's still kind of questions that get asked of us every so often. But I do think that it's less relevant now than maybe it was in the beginning. So it arises around that time that there's a populist revolt against the Ethereum Foundation. So you do have this group of, say, post-ideological pragmatist people, more focused on ETH asset, more focused on institutional adoption, and they're arguing against the Ethereum Foundation. And then they effectively get Tomas in as a representation of this cultural faction, let's say. And that's when the Civil Culture Society is inaugurated. And I guess maybe the idea was, is the organization going to shift too much in this post-ideological pragmatist direction? And then the more cypherpunk-minded people in the Ethereum Foundation, would they be able to ask the external observers what they think of their direction? Nowadays, where Ethereum Foundation is effectively, has one executive director now, which is Bastian. So Bastian is very cypherpunk. In fact, I would call him a hardline cypherpunk, even more cypherpunk than myself. Like on the spectrum, such that, you know, you could say the Ethereum Foundation has become a cypherpunk organization. Actually in a way that goes far beyond that I ever actually even imagine myself as somebody who's long advocated for cypherpunk values.