Is The Ethereum Foundation Selling ETH?

The Ethereum Foundation transferred $654 million in ETH to a wallet typically used for sales. A liquidation of that size could move token markets when it happens.

The community has been speculating about the Foundation’s plans, but the situation is unclear. Circumstantial evidence leads some analysts to believe that a portion of these funds will go to underpaid veteran developers.

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Ethereum Foundation Prepares Sale

Arkham Intelligence is a formidable presence in on-chain analysis, finding major reserves of overlooked assets and identifying market-moving transactions.

Today, the platform made another such discovery, as the Ethereum Foundation transferred over $650 million in ETH tokens.

In the last month, the Ethereum Foundation has sold small amounts of ETH and financially supported independent DeFi projects, but both transfers were under $10 million.

Today, however, is a much larger transfer. This has naturally spurred a lot of speculation; assuming that the Foundation wishes to sell these tokens, why is it doing so?

For example, the Ethereum Foundation made a major sale last month to fund research and development, but that transfer was 16 times smaller than today’s. ETH’s price and blockchain infrastructure have both faced real crises recently, and a token dump could only exacerbate problems. So far, at least, this transfer hasn’t moved token values much.

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A Nest Egg for Developers?

A long-brewing crisis at the Ethereum Foundation might help explain this impending sale. After months of clashes with the Geth team, veteran developer Péter Szilágyi recently resigned, claiming that the EF severely underpaid its core developers.

For example, Szilágyi claimed that he earned $625,000 before taxes during his first six years at the Ethereum Foundation. During this time, he saw ETH’s market cap go from zero to $450 billion.

Several community commentators bitterly criticized this pattern, especially in light of the impending sale.

However, although this developer resigned two days ago, a current Co-Executive Director at the Ethereum Foundation responded to his complaints this afternoon. He struck an apologetic tone, claiming that “all of you [veteran builders] are underpaid for the value that you brought.”

Who knows, then? Hopefully, the Foundation can use some of this Ethereum to properly compensate its dedicated builders. The project employs a huge number of experts, after all, many of whom could’ve made millions working elsewhere in Web3.

Even if only a fraction of the $650 million went to this, it’d be life-changing, and a real publicity coup besides.

To be clear, though, all of this is speculation. Timely messages of regret aside, we don’t have any concrete inclination to believe that the Ethereum Foundation is preparing nest egg payouts to its builders.

Assuming that this sale does take place, we’ll need to keep an eye on ETH markets and assess the long-term impact.