Looking at Ethereum's technological breakthroughs and organizational evolution from The Merge

From ETHPanda's interview with Hsiao-Wei, Co-Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation, we can distill a few key highlights of Ethereum's current development:

1) At the technical level, The Merge successfully realized the transition from PoW to PoS, which has been described as "changing engines in flight", demonstrating Ethereum's ability to complete core architecture upgrades without downtime. Notably, she emphasized that The Merge's biggest challenge is not the technology itself, but the "integrators" – coordinating developers, clients, and stakeholders.

2) In terms of organizational structure, EF is experiencing significant functional differentiation and specialization. EF was internally reorganized into three business groups, while separating certain functions into external organizations such as Etherealize, focusing on the interface with traditional finance and Wall Street. This division of labor reflects the gradual transition of the Ethereum ecosystem towards a decentralized governance model;

3) In terms of funding strategy, EF is no longer limited to simple ETH sales, but actively explores diversified management methods such as DeFi lending, staking, and asset tokenization, showing more mature financial thinking. Notably, Hsiao-Wei points out that EF sells coins as a last resort - there are two or three hundred people in the foundation, and about 75% of the expenditure needs to be paid in fiat currency, a realistic need that explains why it needs to be "sold" even in times when the market is not ideal.

I think what is most thought-provoking is Hsiao-Wei's candid attitude towards the Ethereum Foundation's responsibilities. She bluntly states that "if there is an organization in the community that can take the place of EF, the Foundation may shrink in size" — in effect, the EF does not seek permanent centrality, but is willing to cede power when the time is right. This idea of actively thinking about self-boundaries and gradually fading out is in stark contrast to the continuous expansion of the boundaries of power by the founding teams of other blockchain projects. In addition, in terms of future application trends, Hsiao-Wei specifically mentioned several directions worth paying attention to. It is pointed out that Identity, Social design, and Mini Program ecology are potential innovation directions, which are in line with the current trend of Web3 penetration into daily applications.