Vitalik Buterin discloses $139k salary amid EF spending talks

As the Ethereum Foundation’s spending comes to light, Vitalik Buterin shared his annual salary and hinted at an upcoming report on the organization’s activities.

Vitalik Buterin told users on X that he earns around $139,000 per year as a member of the Ethereum (ETH) Foundation. Despite his significant ETH holdings that would give him a net worth of around $1 billion as of June 2024, the Ethereum co-creator has not sold any Ether tokens for personal gain since around 2018.

Buterin’s public statement comes amid a social media debate over how the Ethereum Foundation allocates its resources, with many stakeholders raising questions about the gas fees collected by the nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing ETH’s overall ecosystem.

Buterin and EF fellow Josh Stark, in turn, provided a preview of the foundation’s priorities, noting that the full report will be available ahead of Devcon SEA, a four-day event planned for November in Bangkok, Thailand.

According to early data, 36.5% of the Ethereum Foundation’s resources in 2023 were focused on supporting “Startups.” In 2022, the same category accounted for 23.8% of the EF’s budget, indicating increased support for Ethereum-related initiatives.

Buterin explained that this category includes grants to the Nomic Foundation, the Center for Decentralized Research, layer-2 analytics provider L2Beat, the 0xPARC Foundation, and other organizations designed to support the long-term vision of Ethereum.

The second-largest allocation was for layer-1 research and development, which covers on-chain testing and upgrades for Ethereum’s mainnet, like the Dencun update earlier this year. Stark also noted that EF has given several grants to internal teams like Geth and distributed more than $11.4 million to external teams in Q1 2024.