Vitalik Buterin discloses $139k salary amid EF spending talks

As the spotlight fell on the Ethereum Foundation’s spending, Vitalik Buterin shared his annual salary and pointed to an upcoming report on the organization’s activities.

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

Buterin’s public disclosure came amid social media discussions about how the Ethereum Foundation allocates its resources. Many stakeholders raised questions about the gas fees collected by the non-profit organization dedicated to advancing ETH’s general ecosystem.

In response, Buterin and fellow EF member Josh Stark provided a preview of the foundation’s priorities. They indicated that the full report would be available before Devcon SEA, a four-day event scheduled for November in Bangkok, Thailand.

Per the initial data, 36.5% of the Ethereum Foundation’s resources in 2023 were focused on supporting “New Institutions.” In 2022, the same category accounted for 23.8% of EF’s budget, showing increased support for Ethereum-adjacent initiatives.

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

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