Foundation publishes mandate defining its role, core principles

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) released a sweeping new document outlining its philosophy, priorities and long-term role in stewarding the world’s second-largest blockchain network.

The 38-page “EF Mandate,” published Friday, frames the blockchain, whose ether (ETH) token is beaten only by bitcoin BTC$70,815.75 in market capitalization, as a technology designed to protect individual freedom in an increasingly centralized digital world and lays out the principles the nonprofit says must guide its development.

The document comes at a time of transition for the organization, following recent shifts in Ethereum’s technical roadmap and the resignation earlier this year of one of the foundation’s co-executive directors.

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

At the center of the mandate is the concept of self-sovereignty, which the foundation describes as Ethereum’s core purpose.

“The first aim is to ensure Ethereum becomes and stays a decentralized and resilient tool for self-sovereignty,” the manifesto states. “Our first fundamental principle is that a user has the final say over their identities, assets, actions, and agents.”

To preserve that goal, the foundation says four properties must remain central to Ethereum’s development: censorship resistance, open source and free (as in freedom), privacy, and security, collectively known as CROPS.

“We hold that these properties – CROPS – must remain, as an indivisible whole, the sine qua non of all Ethereum’s development priorities, which cannot be displaced,” the mandate says.

The foundation also said it will measure its own long-term success by how unnecessary it becomes. For the time being, it will focus on work that no other ecosystem participants are likely to undertake, including long-term protocol research, public-goods security work and coordination across development teams.

Once the broader ecosystem can take over those functions, it plans to step back.

“Our goal is to reduce the Foundation’s relative influence over time,” the team wrote. “Subtraction is rather a process of ensuring Ethereum’s maturity: a trajectory of growth with decentralization, robust enough to outgrow and outlast us.”

More broadly, the document situates the blockchain within an ecosystem of open technologies that support free and decentralized systems. The EF describes Ethereum as part of an “infinite garden,” an expanding network of builders, communities and institutions working to keep digital infrastructure open and resilient.

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

The manifesto concludes by reiterating the foundation’s long-term goal: protecting Ethereum’s promise as an open system that enables individuals and communities to coordinate without relying on centralized authorities.

“Our work is not about capturing markets, corporates, or states, nor about helping them extract or capture,” the document says. “We are here to uncapture the individual, and to entrench their freedoms of association.”

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