A certain Ethereum Core Developer Criticizes EF Compensation System, Reveals a Total Compensation of Only $625,000 Over 6 Years

October 20th - Péter Szilágyi, an Ethereum core developer and Geth client developer, publicly disclosed today that he had sent a letter to the leadership of the Ethereum Foundation (EF) a year and a half ago. In the letter, he admitted that he was "disappointed in the Ethereum Foundation" and pointed out serious issues within the Foundation, such as significant salary disparities, conflicts of interest, and centralized power. He stated that since joining, "economically, working for the Ethereum Foundation has always been a bad decision." According to his disclosure, his total compensation during his first six years at the Foundation was only $625,000 (pre-tax, without incentives), while the total market cap of ETH increased from 0 to $4.5 trillion. He believes that this low salary structure has forced those who truly care about the protocol to seek compensation elsewhere, ultimately laying the groundwork for the "capture of the protocol by interest groups." He also criticized the Foundation for long undervaluing employee contributions and "overly relying on those who are willing to stay out of idealism." The Foundation deliberately hid salary information internally, allowing opacity to become the norm. In his view, this structural imbalance is one of the key reasons why Ethereum has gradually deviated from its original vision. When discussing the ecosystem power structure, Szilágyi stated that Ethereum has formed a "circle" around Vitalik Buterin. A small group of 5 to 10 opinion leaders and 1 to 3 venture capital firms control the most influential project investments and direction decisions in the ecosystem. "Ethereum appears decentralized on the surface, but Vitalik and his core circle's indirect control over the ecosystem is almost absolute." He concluded that Ethereum has "shifted from idealism to realism," and the Foundation's governance structure and compensation mechanism have "designed the protocol to be a capturable system," admitting that it is "difficult to see a bright future."