Another interesting revelation relates to how the Ethereum Foundation currently has $300 million "in non-crypto investments and assets."
The Ethereum Foundation has revealed that it holds just 0.3% of all ETH currently in circulation.
This crypto haul was worth $1.29 billion as of March 31, 2022 — and represents 99.1% of the organization's investment in digital assets.
Just $11 million has been allocated to other cryptocurrencies, with the foundation declaring that it "believes in Ethereum's potential."
The 2021 financial summary is somewhat refreshing given how some crypto projects hold a large chunk of their token's total supply, raising questions about decentralization.
Another interesting revelation relates to how the Ethereum Foundation currently has $300 million in "non-crypto investments and assets" — representing about 20% of the total funds in its treasury.
The report's authors explained that the foundation "follows a conservative treasury management policy" to ensure it has sufficient funds "even in the case of a multi-year market downturn," adding:
"We also increase our non-crypto savings in response to rising ETH prices, which provides a greater safety margin for our core budget and would enable us to continue funding non-core but high leverage projects through a market downturn."
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What is the Ethereum Foundation?
The Ethereum Foundation describes itself as "a non-profit that supports the Ethereum ecosystem" — and says it's best described as a community of teams rather than a traditional organization. While some teams focus on developing new pieces of technology, others examine the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Stressing that it has a long-term mindset, the foundation said the impact of its community "will be measured in decades and centuries — not quarters and fiscal years," adding:
"Like a gardener, we are planting seeds that we may not live to see grow."
Lofty ambitions indeed.
All of this comes as Ethereum continues to work on plans to move away from an energy-intensive Proof-of-Work blockchain — and make miners obsolete by switching to a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism.
The high-stakes project, which is arguably equivalent to completely renovating your house while you're still living in it, has been delayed once again. This means that a long-awaited "merge" between both blockchains won't be happening in June as scheduled.
Last week, Ethereum Core developer TIm Beiko revealed on Twitter that this milestone will likely happen in a few months' time, adding:
"No firm date yet, but we're definitely in the final chapter of PoW on Ethereum."
He also "strongly" suggested that current Etherem miners shouldn't be investing in new equipment at this stage.
Any prospect of further delays is far from good news for Ethereum.
Beyond the environmental impact, moving to Proof-of-Stake is regarded as crucial for lowering fees to more affordable levels… and increasing the number of transactions it can handle per second.
Exasperation over how long the merge is taking has sparked a rise in so-called "Ethereum killers" such as Solana, Cardano and Polkadot — with all of these protocols wrestling away market share for things like non-fungible tokens and decentralized finance protocols.
