Ethereum Foundation releases updated guidelines outlining its responsibilities and fundamental principles.

The document arrives during a pivotal moment for the organization, following alterations in the blockchain’s technical roadmap and the departure of a co-executive director.

What to know:

• The Ethereum Foundation has issued a 38-page document detailing its philosophy and responsibilities as a steward of the network.
• This mandate emerges amidst significant changes in Ethereum’s roadmap and leadership, including the recent exit of one of the foundation’s co-executive directors.
• The document underscores that Ethereum’s primary mission is to facilitate user self-sovereignty and that development should uphold censorship resistance, open source, privacy, and security.
• The EF seeks to lessen its influence as the ecosystem evolves.

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has unveiled an extensive new document that articulates its philosophy, priorities, and long-term responsibilities in managing the world’s second-largest blockchain network.

The 38-page “EF Mandate,” published on Friday, positions the blockchain, with its ether (ETH) token trailing only bitcoin BTC$71,859.13 in terms of market capitalization, as a technology aimed at safeguarding individual liberties in an increasingly centralized digital landscape, and lays out the principles that the nonprofit asserts should steer its development.

The document appears at a time of transformation for the organization, following recent changes in Ethereum’s technical roadmap and the earlier resignation of a co-executive director this year.

"The Ethereum Foundation is the original steward of the Ethereum project,” the document states. “The Foundation is not the parent, owner, or ruler of Ethereum. We are not ‘the system’ itself.”

Central to the mandate is the idea of self-sovereignty, which the foundation identifies as Ethereum’s fundamental purpose.

“The primary objective is to ensure Ethereum becomes and remains a decentralized and resilient instrument for self-sovereignty,” the manifesto conveys. “Our first essential principle is that a user has the ultimate authority over their identities, assets, actions, and agents.”

To uphold that aim, the foundation asserts that four characteristics must remain integral to Ethereum’s development: censorship resistance, open source and freedom, privacy, and security, collectively referred to as CROPS.

“We assert that these characteristics – CROPS – must persist, as an indivisible whole, as the essential foundation of all Ethereum’s development priorities, which cannot be supplanted,” the mandate articulates.

The foundation also indicated that it will gauge its long-term success by how superfluous it becomes. For the present, it will concentrate on tasks that are unlikely to be addressed by other ecosystem participants, such as long-term protocol research, public-goods security efforts, and coordination across development teams.

Once the broader ecosystem can assume those roles, it plans to withdraw.

“Our aim is to diminish the Foundation’s relative influence over time,” the team stated. “Subtraction is fundamentally a process of ensuring Ethereum’s maturity: a trajectory of growth with decentralization, strong enough to outgrow and outlast us."

More broadly, the document positions the blockchain within an ecosystem of open technologies that foster free and decentralized systems. The EF characterizes Ethereum as part of an “infinite garden,” an expanding network of builders, communities, and institutions striving to maintain open and resilient digital infrastructure.

“The World Computer is decentralized infrastructure for permissionless computation, communication, and association,” the mandate asserts.

The manifesto concludes by reaffirming the foundation’s long-term goal: safeguarding Ethereum’s potential as an open system that enables individuals and communities to collaborate without dependence on centralized authorities.

“Our efforts are not aimed at seizing markets, corporations, or states, nor at assisting them in extraction or domination,” the document states. “We exist to liberate the individual and to solidify their freedoms of association.”

Read more: Ethereum Foundation leadership shake-up: Tomasz Stańczak out as co-executive director