Ethereum Foundation Launches Silviculture Society

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) just announced the Silviculture Society, a new 15-member advisory council, in response to leadership controversy. This diverse collection of Ethereum builders is focused on one goal: defending the project’s core values.

Vitalik Buterin claimed that this Society is an experimental effort to promote community governance. The EF will build separate organs and advisory groups to tackle other problems, but the project’s direction is the first priority.

Can The Silviculture Society Uphold Ethereum Values?

Ethereum is finally starting to resolve leadership issues that have rocked the community. Two days ago, Aya Miyaguchi announced that she would become the Foundation’s next President after serving as Executive Director for seven years.

Today, the EF announced its new advisory organ: the Silviculture Society.

“The EF Silviculture Society: a loose collection of individuals from outside the Foundation who provide informal counsel to the EF … to make sure we sustain the core values of open source, privacy, security and censorship resistance. Ethereum’s success depends on having talented and committed developers building with these values in mind,” it claimed.

The Silviculture Society consists of 15 members from a very diverse range of backgrounds. Some have fairly conventional public-facing careers, like Matthew Green, a cryptography professor at Johns Hopkins University, or Lefteris Karapetsas, founder of Rotki, a privacy protector.

However, the majority of the Silviculture Society’s members appear to be totally pseudonymous, only using handles like “Aleph,” “dystopiabreaker,” or “mashbean.” The whole cohort strongly espouses the old-school crypto community’s values and cypherpunk culture.

Still, as one member noted, the Silviculture Society is not a governance council. Rather, it gives the EF “arm’s length feedback from the PoV of ecosystem participants.”

This same member also reposted a comment from another ecosystem builder, who noted that some EF criticism may not have happened in good faith. Instead, “price down pointless rage” may be to blame.

Ethereum Price in Turmoil, Fueling Criticism

While the EF has been embroiled in its leadership crisis, the price of Ethereum has been in dire straits. For example, a major controversy was related to how the Foundation handled business expenses.

This was resolved thanks to DeFi loan protocols, but discontent remained. Today, Ethereum’s price is at multi-month lows, and the whole crypto market may be turning bearish.

Ultimately, however, it doesn’t really matter if some of the community attacked EF leadership over price frustrations.

The Silviculture Society unequivocally looks like a good-faith effort, gathering a team of veteran builders to approach the same goals from many perspectives. It seems like a net positive for Ethereum’s project and ecosystem.

Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, has already been actively defending the Silviculture Society from social media criticism. He called it “an experimental effort to create more channels for builders and other community voices to influence the EF,” and this initiative is focused on defending core values.