Camila Russo

EF exodus or necessary reset? @camirusso sits down with @dankrad, @laurashin, @chainyoda, and @wmougayar to unpack the real question behind the Ethereum Foundation drama: if the EF is doing less, who steps up to keep Ethereum competitive - and what does that mean for ETH? This debate gets into leadership turmoil, the talent departures, Vitalik's direction, tokenomics, and whether Ethereum is still built to win. Watch the debate here 👇🏻

🚨 StablR just got exploited. Both its euro and dollar stablecoins depegged over 20% after an attacker needed just one compromised key to drain the minting contract. Losses estimated between $2.8M and $10M. thedefiant.io/news/hacks/sta…

👀 More EF departures are coming, according to @wmougayar "If everybody now is up in arms this week because six or seven people left, there's going to be more people leaving, and it was by design." "Expect less from the EF." William explains why that's a good thing 👇🏻 x.com/DefiantNews/st…

@cryiepto @wmougayar yeah, it's a balancing act with four people who need to talk in one hour, tried to give everyone a chance to have their say, I think everyone did

@wmougayar @CamiRusso Love the discussion, but the moderator needs to be sharper with guiding the conversation and allow each guest to speak more. I felt a lot was left to be said.

thanks @CamiRusso for inviting me. Looking forward.

@realpeteyb123 in spite of. not because of.

Most people talking about New York City aren’t actually walking NYC. I’m born and raised here, and today I walked over 25,000 steps through Lower Manhattan. Brookfield Place, the Oculus, Battery Park, Financial District, World Trade Center, West Side Highway. I even took the subway because I wanted to see what’s really happening on the ground. First time in a couple of decades. And honestly? NYC felt safe. Clean. Busy. Alive. Almost Disneyland-ish again, like the Bloomberg era. This is not the de Blasio era people still have stuck in their heads. I’ve said before that if Mamdani wins, the first four years will probably be very bullish for NYC because that entire movement knows it cannot afford to fail publicly. Adams also deserves credit because the city did get safer coming out of the chaos. The crowd rushing in and pushing rents to new all time highs is a movement. We might not agree, but they are absolutely doing great. Maybe it starts failing in 4 years, but right now, New York is pumping. Real estate booming. Restaurants packed. Businesses overloaded with work. Gorgeous people everywhere. Energy everywhere. Everybody I know here with a legitimate business is busy and turning down jobs because demand is so strong. You can trust propaganda if you want. I trust my eyes and the miles I walk. What we do need is pressure and accountability so the city keeps improving and never slides backward again. Keep chimping out. But if you actually walk New York City instead of consuming narratives online, you can feel it immediately. New York City is back.

There's a talent exodus at the Ethereum Foundation What's happening at the EF? Does it matter for the ETH? Join us to discuss LIVE today at 11am EST w/ Dankrad Feist @dankrad Laura Shin @laurashin Ajit Tripathi @chainyoda William Mougayar @wmougayar twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

Hey Anett, Dankrad was an Ethereum researcher who left the EF last year, his post on a new Ethereum org was one of the most cited today Laura shin wrote an Ethereum book, has covered the EF extensively, her post on the EF ‘original sin’ was also among the most cited today Ajit is an OG , Long time community member who has worked at Ethereum related projects including Consensys, Polygon and Eigen All hugely knowledgeable and relevant to the conversation

@DefiantNews @dankrad @laurashin @chainyoda Couldn’t choose more random guests to host podcast on this topic

🚨 Why is top EF talent leaving? What's next for ETH? Join us LIVE MAY 22 @ 11AM EST to discuss w/ Dankrad Feist @dankrad Laura Shin @laurashin Ajit Tripathi @chainyoda twitter.com/i/broadcasts/1…

guests have been: part of the EF, closely covered ethereum, or worked in ethereum projects for many years, so I think will be a valuable discussion. also, don't want to make this about pro or anti ethereum, more interested in talking about the current and future role of the EF and the impact the departures may or may not have

@DefiantNews @dankrad @laurashin @chainyoda Why aren’t you talking to insiders who really know, or not balancing the panel at least, @CamiRusso with someone pro Ethereum.

will be a good one 👇

2026 'body-possitive' celebs are now skinny eth maxis are ethless, crypto is corpo award-winning fiction is written by robots

NEW: An EF exodus. $ETH down ~60% from its highs. Now top voices are calling for a $1B organization with one job: Make ETH number go up. Read more: thedefiant.io/news/blockchai…

some realpolitik thots on the EF: Tomasz seeded a quite pragmatic generation into the EF. you can see them at events. young, energetic, focused. and people never give the EF credit for its positive ecosystem efforts. but they are there, if you are paying attention. now, i also disliked the pledge, on principle. and lament the losses of cypherpunk-aligned folks. that aside, it is crystal clear in the Mandate what the hardline Cypherpunks in control of the EF intend to focus on: ineliminable CROPS at L1, support for CROPS adoptees at higher layers of the stack. this is completely unambiguous in the text (which i was amazed to discover in Prague most people had not heard of or really looked at) so a reality check: unless you intend to perform a coup at the EF you are not likely to make them budge. there is more chance of my hairline returning than the current EF leadership adopting a a corporate, pragmatist business school revenue-first ETH institutional etc. mindset. which means that any changes we want to see on that front will have to come from elsewhere. this i think was the implicit message of the Mandate: 'this is our job, the rest is yours.' this could be in the form of the second foundation idea that is sometimes touted. or more emergent efforts. but the answer is not coming from the EF any time soon. in other words, the Mandate is a mirror back at us, ask not what the EF can do for Ethereum (unless its CROPS) but what you can do for Ethereum.

I think Ethereum’s original sin was not considering tokenomics with every move it made from Dencun on. The ultrasound money thesis was a good one and with Dencun (or the L2 roadmap generally) they should have stopped to say that this was going to hurt the ultrasound money thesis and consider how to preserve it. Most people, like David, don’t want to believe in something that isn’t also putting up points on the scoreboard. When the main offering becomes ideology/communism and money/tokenomics/capitalism are overlooked, the peasants are going to revolt — as they’ve been doing for two years now. Look at the public reaction to Tomasz: broad praise, a sense of hope, excitement, the price pumping … only for him to be gone a year later with the new ED being someone who cannot even be found online except for a Wayback Machine url with his name that has some really questionable statements on it (and I should say the EF denied that this website, which was taken down a few weeks after he was appointed to the board, is his). They’re going to be really mad at me for even mentioning that but in the place of a void, these are the kinds of things people will glom onto. Then there was the manifesto — I mean, mandate, which they backtracked on forcing people to sign. (Btw, this is the second bit of news that seems to relate to Bastian. And now the third would be all these departures. There’s nothing else for us to point at and say about him — when I searched for his name on Google News just now only 14 links came up. He seems to be some kind of invisible hand behind the scenes.) I don’t think ideology and capitalism/tokenomics/number go up are mutually exclusive. I think you can have CROPS values and also consider how each step of the roadmap affects the tokenomics and even have teams for BD/ecosystem growth. It feels like the EF doesn’t realize the moment that crypto is in. The competition is only just starting. We are in the phase of real world adoption. The Ethereum Foundation’s CROPS principles are great ones, and they are worth fighting for. But the EF seems to want to sit back on its laurels and act above it all when all its competitors are all getting down and dirty on the field to gain market share. Maybe it is the right approach. I don’t know. I’m just saying that more competitive people won’t align with it. And so they will leave … and community members will as well. I personally don’t think it’s good for Ethereum if its most competitive people depart. Ethereum’s unwillingness to stop the brain drain will only benefit its competitors — or spawn new ones. Giving a shit about price and tokenomics and BD doesn’t hurt CROPS. It just helps ensure that these principles get spread to more people and that other chains that don’t have these principles don’t get a leg up. All the commentary may be pointless. It seems Vitalik tried what everyone wanted and it didn’t align with his vision, so he brought in a new person he felt more comfortable with. It makes me sad to see people become so disaffected with Ethereum, but maybe this is V’s Brian Armstrong/no politics at Coinbase moment where he lays down what the EF will work on and asks everyone else to leave. That was the right move for Coinbase, but I view them as fundamentally different issues. We’ll see whether Ethereum maintains its lead with a foundation that isn’t willing to fight for it.

we needed new media we got livestreams and clips

@TomMurphyTweets Ahhhh yes ve been saying this. Incredibly sad.

This makes me irrationally mad. Journalism has been gutted & VC Firms’ hot new phrase is ✌️new media✌️which is really just programming to pump their companies. The real reporters/broadcasters are either out of a job or in their second act, and the substitutes are not the same.

adding: x.com/raulvk/status/… and x.com/_julianma/stat…

EF departures since @tkstanczak stepped down in Feb: @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko and today @CarlBeek why?

@ivangbi_ @joonian @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek It is an issue. Because of lost talent, sure, but mostly because something is obviously going on behind the scenes but there’s no transparency around what it is that is making people leave.

@CamiRusso @joonian @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek They are amazing people and OGs, I’ve looked up to many of them - but no, not necessarily, changes happen.

@ivangbi_ @joonian @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek you don't see an issue with 7 top EF people leaving in three months?

@joonian @CamiRusso @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek Tell what? People leave? Companies dont post that when they have 200+ people. People individually post (as the tweets shared above). I really don’t see any issue here.

@TrustlessState @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek :( who else?

@CamiRusso @tkstanczak @trent_vanepps @0xstark @barnabemonnot @TimBeiko @CarlBeek theres been more than this