Ethereum Beyond the Foundation
Ethereum Korea One: Genesis · Day 2 · 2026-09-29 · 35:37 · In English
As the Ethereum Foundation slims down, who keeps the ecosystem growing? At Ethereum Korea One: Genesis, the people behind EthCC, Octant, and ETHGlobal discuss the work happening beyond the Foundation.
Speakers
- Jerome de Tychey, Founder, EthCoordinate
- Mashal Waqar, CMO, Octant
- Kartik Talwar, Co-Founder, ETHGlobal
- Jay Jang, Head of Business, Sunnyside Labs (moderator)
About this session
Moderated by Jay Jang of Sunnyside Labs, this panel brings together organizations that have supported Ethereum outside the EF through conferences, grants, and hackathons. The panelists share candid views on the EF, debate whether it should be smaller or bigger in five years, reflect on how events and funding have changed, and offer advice to the Korean Ethereum community.
Key takeaways
- Jerome de Tychey (EthCoordinate, EthCC) said Ethereum is "number one on everything but market cap," which makes the EF hard to judge fairly, and that no single foundation can understand every market. EthCC, run as a nonprofit by Ethereum France, tries to anchor a hub by meeting in the same place at the same time each year.
- Mashal Waqar (Octant) said that in conversations with college students, Ethereum is often not the first thing they mention, ahead of Ripple, Solana, and Bitcoin. Octant has run 14 funding rounds and given out over 4,000 ETH to over 200 teams, made possible by staking yield from the Golem Foundation's 100,000 ETH treasury, and in 2021 also built an accelerator to reduce grant dependence, which has graduated 20 projects.
- On the EF in five years, de Tychey hopes it will be bigger in funding, which requires the ETH price to keep rising to fund clients and research such as post-quantum and privacy. Another view was that the EF is cutting back under a subtractive philosophy, with teams formerly at the EF carrying the mission forward. Kartik Talwar (ETHGlobal) expects the EF to be "as big as it's ever been," noting that the Linux Foundation has only grown.
- De Tychey said EthCC held on to its cypherpunk, open source values, expecting that to keep institutions away, but the opposite happened: Société Générale came on as a sponsor last year. Because EthCC, nearing its tenth year, belongs to a French nonprofit, he expects it to be around for the next 10 years.
- Talwar said ETHGlobal hackathons moved from protocol developers building proofs of concept such as the beacon chain, to app builders, and now to institutions sending their blockchain teams. Over nine years, ETHGlobal has held over 350 events in 130 cities, bringing more than 200,000 people together in person. It launched Pragma for non-developer audiences three years ago, is preparing ETHConf in New York for financial institutions, and now averages two events a week, bringing in about 1,000 newcomers each week.
- Octant moved from generic rounds to themed rounds (its current one focuses on privacy), excludes teams with VC funding or a token, and looks at past work, due diligence, references, and realistic timelines, with a community vote. For Korea, Talwar urged ignoring vanity metrics (ETHGlobal's first event in 2017 had 400 people), de Tychey suggested a monthly meetup on a fixed date like "the first Wednesday of the month," and Waqar advised event organizers to understand sponsors' goals.
Chapters
- Opening and panelist introductions
- What the EF does, and why it is hard to judge
- Octant: funding and support beyond grants
- Why ETHGlobal started
- Should the EF be smaller or bigger in five years?
- EthCC's ten-year journey
- Hackathons and institutional demand
- How Octant selects grantees
- Advice for the Korean Ethereum community