Ethereum Foundation’s strategy chief lays out plan to kill MEV and make privacy a protocol default

The Ethereum Foundation is done treating maximum extractable value as an inconvenience. It now considers it a structural threat to the network’s neutrality, and it has a plan to act accordingly.

Bastian Aue, the EF’s Chief Strategy Advisor and interim co-Executive Director, published a six-part execution thread on June 22 laying out a sweeping operational pivot. The plan treats toxic MEV extraction as a fundamental problem to solve, elevates privacy to a default protocol feature, and shifts the foundation’s own compensation structure toward ETH and Ethereum-native stablecoins.

What the execution plan actually says

Aue’s thread is essentially a roadmap for turning the Ethereum Foundation into a more focused, more aligned organization. The six sections cover three major commitments that together represent a significant change in how the EF thinks about its role.

First, MEV. For the uninitiated: maximum extractable value is the profit that block producers and searchers can capture by reordering, inserting, or censoring transactions within a block. Some forms of MEV are relatively benign. Others, the “toxic” variety, directly harm regular users through front-running and sandwich attacks.

The EF’s new position is that these toxic forms of MEV aren’t just a user experience problem. They’re a threat to Ethereum’s credibility as neutral infrastructure. Aue’s plan calls for systemic solutions that reduce the ecosystem’s reliance on private order flow, which is currently the primary band-aid users apply to avoid getting sandwiched.

Second, privacy. The execution thread commits the EF to making privacy a default feature of the Ethereum protocol rather than something users have to opt into through third-party tools. This aligns with the foundation’s CROPS principles, an acronym covering censorship and capture resistance, open source development, privacy, and security.

Third, and perhaps most immediately tangible: the EF is moving its staff compensation and major financial relationships to ETH and Ethereum-native stablecoins. Exceptions will only be made for operational necessities.

The backstory matters here

The organization formalized its co-Executive Director and President structure back in April 2025. Then, in February 2026, Tomasz Stanczak departed, leaving Aue to step in as interim co-Executive Director alongside his strategy advisor role.

Vitalik Buterin himself laid the groundwork for this direction in May 2026, articulating a vision for a leaner EF that focuses more on longevity and less on selling ETH. Aue’s execution thread operationalizes that guidance, translating Buterin’s philosophical directives and those of EF President Aya Miyaguchi into concrete organizational commitments.

What this means for investors

The compensation shift is the most straightforward signal. When the EF pays its staff in dollars and sells ETH to fund operations, that creates persistent sell pressure. Moving compensation to ETH and Ethereum-native stablecoins directly reduces that dynamic. It also creates something investors have long wanted: skin in the game. Foundation employees now have a direct financial incentive tied to ETH’s performance, aligning their interests with the broader holder base.

The MEV commitment is harder to price in, but potentially more consequential over time. Toxic MEV extraction is one of the most common complaints from both retail users and institutional players evaluating Ethereum. Every sandwich attack is a tax on usage. Every front-run erodes trust. If the EF can drive meaningful progress on systemic MEV solutions, it removes one of the key friction points that pushes activity to competing chains or private relay networks.

Default privacy at the protocol level would be a significant differentiator. Most blockchains treat privacy as an add-on. Making it native to Ethereum could attract entire categories of institutional use cases, from payroll to supply chain, that currently can’t justify operating on a fully transparent ledger.

The foundation is intentionally minimizing short-term market optimization in favor of long-term protocol resilience, which means holders looking for quick catalysts may find this strategy frustrating.