Leadership Under Fire Ethereum’s Answer To Critics

At Consensus 2025 in Toronto, Ethereum broke its silence. Facing criticisms about its governance, technical roadmap, and talent drain, Paul Brody (EY) and Josh Stark (Ethereum Foundation) defended a clear vision: that of a complex but fundamentally robust network. While the ETH price stagnates and competition intensifies, Ethereum’s leaders bet on the long term and remind that markets will eventually catch up with the technology, not the other way around.

Challenged Leadership, Defended Stance

While recent Ethereum news is dominated by a prolonged drop in the ETH price and a visible decline in developer engagement, criticisms focus on a sensitive point: the governance of the Ethereum Foundation.

Josh Stark, panelist at Consensus 2025 from May 14 to 16, openly acknowledged the community’s expectations :

The ecosystem needs stronger leadership […] on the roadmap, its execution, and the coordination of efforts to address major challenges.

This partial self-criticism, however, did not prevent the speakers from defending the work already accomplished.

Paul Brody, president of the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance and a key figure at EY, took the opportunity to praise Aya Miyaguchi’s work, former executive director of the Foundation: “Looking objectively at the results of her term, I give her an A+“, he stated.

Here are the main points raised regarding the governance of the Ethereum network :

• Structural criticisms : lack of coordination, strategic ambiguity, perceived loss of momentum compared to more agile competitors ;
• Internal responses : acknowledgment of the need for stronger leadership and improved communication around the project’s fundamentals ;
• Management assessment : defense of Aya Miyaguchi’s mandate, in office since 2018, credited with a profound transformation of the Foundation ;
• Recent reorganization : appointment in March 2025 of two co-executive directors – Hsiao-Wei Wang and Tomasz Stańczak, to structure the next phase of strategic development.

This institutional clarification aims to stabilize a sprawling project often seen as lacking clarity since its transition to proof-of-stake.

While the effects of this reorganization on the ETH price or community dynamics remain to be proven, it nonetheless signals a stated intent to regain narrative and strategic control within a sometimes divided ecosystem.

A Recognized but Divisive Technical Complexity

Beyond organizational aspects, representatives of Ethereum defended the network’s technological direction, particularly the deliberate choice of a “rollup-centric” model.

Paul Brody reminded that Ethereum is now a proof-of-stake blockchain supporting more than 120 layer 2 solutions, with a daily capacity between “300 and 450 million transactions“.

He emphasized that on these L2s, transaction fees have been below one cent for three months. Facing criticisms denouncing excessive fragmentation or loss of network coherence, Brody did not back down: “I am delighted“, he asserted regarding the current roadmap.

Josh Stark defended this modularity as a visionary choice, stating that “no ecosystem will be able to avoid this type of structure long term“.

This technical positioning is not without consequence. While it allows a drastic reduction of usage costs and unprecedented scalability, it also introduces new vulnerabilities.

Rollups raise complex questions about security, cross-chain trust, and user experience, sometimes creating counterproductive silo effects.

However, for Stark, these obstacles are normal in a deep innovation process: “We are the ones who have advanced furthest on this path, and we face the turns and challenges“, he explained.

The implications of this debate go far beyond Ethereum. They touch on a fundamental question: is technical complexity a barrier or an asset in building a long-term infrastructure network? While Bitcoin benefits from a simplified narrative around being a store of value, Ethereum claims a more sophisticated vision, less readable for short-term markets but potentially more fertile. Josh Stark is convinced: “markets always end up reflecting value. And Ethereum is the most important project in crypto history“.