Original Author: 1912212.eth, Foresight News
The author previously wrote an article titled "Severe Wealth Effect Loss, Can Ethereum Survive the 'Midlife Crisis'?" detailing the huge challenges Ethereum faces in this cycle, with issues such as lack of innovation, direction, and bloated teams leading to harsh criticism from the community. Vitalik has also been knocked off his pedestal and heavily criticized. However, the market has rebounded after extreme pessimism. In April this year, ETH rose from $1,400 to nearly $2,800.
Are Ethereum's fundamentals improving? What notable changes has the heavily criticized Ethereum undergone recently?
Continuous Net Inflows in Ethereum Spot ETF
Once, Ethereum spot ETF was long in a state of net outflow. However, since April 22 this year, market funds have been continuously flowing in. As of June 5, there were only seven days of net outflow, with the rest being net inflows, with even four days of single-day net inflows exceeding $90 million, and seven instances of single-day net inflows over $60 million.
SoSoValue data shows that the cumulative net inflow of the US Ethereum spot ETF has risen to $3.23 billion, with no signs of slowing down.
Negotiating Ethereum-Based Cooperation with Sovereign Wealth Funds
Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys CEO Joe Lubin said on Tuesday that his company is negotiating with the "primary sovereign wealth fund and bank" of a "very powerful" country about potentially building on Ethereum, involving layer one and two infrastructure. However, the cooperation details have not been disclosed, and the market's reaction is more based on expectations. If this news is ultimately confirmed and announced, it would undoubtedly provide a significant boost to market confidence.
Additionally, ConsenSys led the $425 million financing for SharpLink Gaming, with Joseph Lubin set to become SharpLink's board chairman after this round of financing.
Bitcoin has continuous Strategy accumulation, followed by more companies imitating, driving strong buying pressure. Ethereum should have companies driving purchasing power.
As a Nasdaq-listed company, SharpLink plans to use this financing to purchase Ethereum's native asset ETH and use it as its primary treasury reserve asset.
According to Bloomberg, Joe Lubin said that about six months ago, influenced by the most famous digital asset accumulation advocates, he decided to establish a company to invest in Ethereum's native token. "I had dinner with Michael Saylor, did some research, and started discussing with colleagues how cool this idea was," said Lubin, founder and CEO of Ethereum software infrastructure company ConsenSys, in an interview. "No one in our company had previously deeply researched this direction. Later, we found that this strategy didn't seem particularly dangerous."
Ethereum Foundation Layoffs and Operational Expense Reduction
The Ethereum Foundation has been criticized for its bloated team. On June 3, the foundation finally took action to lay off some employees and restructure its research and development team, renaming the department to "Protocol" to focus on the core challenges of protocol design. This adjustment aims to address the community's continuous criticism of the foundation's management and strategic direction. The foundation stated that the restructured Protocol team will work around three priority areas: expanding the scalability of Ethereum's underlying network, advancing blobspace expansion in data availability strategies, and improving user experience.
The foundation's announcement mentioned that "some R&D team members will no longer continue," and encouraged other teams to absorb this talent. The number of layoffs was not disclosed. Additionally, the foundation stated that the restructured team will be dedicated to improving upgrade timelines, technical documentation, and research transparency. Co-executive director Hsiao-Wei Weng said on social media X that she hopes the new structure will drive core projects to move forward more efficiently.
However, some believe key issues remain unresolved. Multicoin Capital co-founder Kyle Samani commented on X, "Note that the definition of 'focus' usually means less, not more, especially when goals should not conflict with each other. But when we look from the perspective of goal 3 (L1, L2 network expansion, improving user experience), goal 1 (layoffs) and goal 2 (clarifying responsibilities) are contradictory."
The Ethereum Foundation published a new fiscal management policy in June 2025, aimed at ensuring long-term financial sustainability. According to the official blog, the foundation set annual operating expenses not to exceed 15% of total assets, planning to gradually reduce to 5% in the next five years. Additionally, the foundation will maintain a 2.5-year operational expense buffer, regularly assessing whether to sell ETH to replenish fiat reserves. This policy reflects the foundation's prudent approach to treasury management, especially in a market environment with significant ETH price volatility.
The foundation also emphasized that on-chain funds will only be deployed in audited, decentralized DeFi protocols, focusing on low-risk strategies such as staking and lending. This move not only reduces fund risk but also echoes Ethereum's "Defipunk" principle and privacy protection concept.
In the past, the Ethereum Foundation's token selling behavior often caused community dissatisfaction when monitored. Now, the foundation has finally chosen a more cautious approach to respond to spending issues. These measures indicate that the foundation is laying the groundwork for Ethereum's long-term development by reducing operational costs and optimizing resource allocation, while also providing market reassurance by reducing selling pressure.
Gas Limit Adjusted to 60 Million
Recently, Ebunker tweeted that with 15% validator support, Ethereum is expected to raise the block Gas Limit to 60 million. The higher the Gas Limit, the more transactions a block can process, thus improving network speed. Among many scaling paths, raising the Gas Limit can be considered the most immediate method. Moreover, raising the Gas Limit does not require system upgrades or code modifications; as long as PoS nodes continue to "signal" support when producing blocks, the network can gradually adopt this change.
Although Ethereum has always scaled through L2 and Rollups, this has also created significant issues. "L2 greatly weakens ETH's value capture and can easily lead to a fragmented landscape," said Continue Capital founder Pi Ma in a voice conversation.
Mainnet scaling is now imperative. At the ETHGlobal Prague conference, Vitalik stated that Ethereum will expand L1 scale by about 10 times within a year, then "catch its breath" before the next leap.
Ethereum's current TPS peak has been raised to around 60, and it remains to be seen to what extent Ethereum will improve in the future.
Summary
Ethereum is undergoing multiple transformations in technology, funding, and ecosystem. The foundation's fiscal reform and R&D restructuring lay the foundation for its long-term development. ConsenSys's cooperation with sovereign wealth funds signals Ethereum's new role in global finance, while Gas Limit adjustments and ETF fund inflows inject vitality into network efficiency and market momentum.
Despite short-term selling pressure and cost controversies, Ethereum's technical advantages and institutional endorsement still maintain its leading position in the crypto market. In the future, Ethereum needs to continuously focus on technical optimization and community governance to address challenges from competitors like Solana. 10x Research recently analyzed ETH's performance, stating, "Although we expected a pullback a few days ago, the actual trend is far more resilient than anticipated. From a technical perspective, Ethereum is approaching the apex of a large triangular consolidation structure, and the ultimate breakthrough direction could potentially push prices to $2,000 or $3,000. This trend will be crucial and may be triggered by fundamental changes or simply by the entry of a large buyer."
