Various active participants in the Ethereum community fear that the sales of ether (ETH) by the Ethereum Foundation (FE) are excessively affecting the price of the cryptocurrency.
These users demonstrated their disagreement in a publication by Josh Stark, a member of the non-profit entity. At the time of writing, and although this also depends on other market factors, The price of ether has shown poor performance compared to other cryptocurrenciesdropping more than 1.5% in the last thirty days.
The post that sparked community comments stated that the Ethereum Foundation uses ETH, the network’s native cryptocurrency, to make internal and external payments.
FE uses Ethereum all the time, for example, to (1) exchange ETH for stablecoins (usually @CoWSwap) and (2) pay people (beneficiaries, team members) in stablecoins and ETH, on the mainnet and in layers 2. The events we host (like Devcon and Devconnect) accept on-chain payments and use on-chain IDs for entries.
Josh Stark, miembro de la Ethereum Foundation.
According to Stark, the use of the ETH cryptocurrency for these exchanges and payments is known, since there are “very followed accounts that are dedicated to publishing every time we sell through a DEX (decentralized exchange), and everything related to Devcon/ nect is widely advertised and obvious to any attendee or viewer.” Devcon is a developer conference held annually. According to Stark, the financing of these events is also done in a chain.
The community says: the first use case of ETH cannot be to bring down its price
In response to Josh Stark, a user suggested two alternatives for the entity to generate profits and affect the price of the cryptocurrency less). One of them was that the Ethereum Foundation makes use of the network staking protocol and sell the rewards obtained of this activity.
Instead of trading ETH for stablecoins, consider staking a percentage of ETH and then selling the rewards. This is a bit riskier, but EF could even use Aave to borrow stablecoins in exchange for ETH. In my opinion, both are better than simply selling ETH to fund development.
Sassal0x, user of the social network
Other users were more severe or angry upon learning of the Ethereum Foundation’s sale of ether, leaving comments like this: “Who would have thought that the main use of ETH was to take it down?” Or this: “Maybe the ETH Foundation shouldn’t be a group of live role-players and should actually use the technology that makes ETH important in some meaningful capacity (…).”
Another participant in the discussion personalized his criticism of the Ethereum Foundation:
For an investor, it is “the final nail in the coffin” when the number one use case for the Ethereum Foundation is to get rid of my investment.
Cancelproofeth, user of the social network
Comments like these occur in Josh Stark’s X post. These demonstrate the concern of Ethereum investors and participants, who have seen the cryptocurrency perform poorly so far this year. When ether has dropped almost 2% in the last thirty days, cryptocurrencies like XRP or SOL have risen about 30% and 50%, respectivelyat the time of writing.
The above also means that Ethereum is having this last month worse performance than stablecoins anchored to the dollar, which NoticiasVE unraveled in its encyclopedia.
This is a curious fact, taking into account that cryptocurrencies are tending to experience market rises due to the favorable fundamental climate surrounding the ecosystem. For example, a strong performance of bitcoin (BTC) above $100,000 and the inauguration of Donald Trump as president.