The handle @Ethereum will be used as a general account to share updates about the network, while @EthereumFndn will focus on sharing specific announcements regarding the nonprofit, such as grants and disclosures for treasury movements.
Ethereum is the second largest blockchain network by market capitalization at $367.7 billion.
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Posted January 13, 2025 at 4:48 pm EST.
After Ethereum community members criticized the network’s lack of online marketing, namely on X (formerly Twitter), the Ethereum Foundation (EF) – a nonprofit organization of teams supporting the Ethereum ecosystem – announced a new approach to the network’s “social layer,” aka its social media presence.
On early Monday not only did the Ethereum Foundation unveil a new X account, @EthereumFndn, but the handle @Ethereum, which rarely makes its own posts, tweeted “hello world computer.”
@EthereumFndn aims to share updates from EF teams, projects, grants, and disclosures about treasury movements, while the @Ethereum handle will be more active as a general account, the EF announced on X, adding that these changes have also been launched on other social networks such as Farcaster, Lens, and Bluesky.
“This is the beginning of a new approach to the @ethereum social accounts, not the end. We plan to iterate and expand how these social accounts are used over time, in response to how the needs of the ecosystem evolve,” stated the EF.
A representative of the Ethereum Foundation declined Unchained’s request for comment.
One Ethereum builder is excited to see the EF take the @Ethereum account in a new direction. Joseph Schiarizzi, an Arbitrum delegate and founder of stablecoin provider Nerite, told Unchained over Telegram, “We, the builders of Ethereum, asked for it to be more active and highlight the awesome things happening in the ecosystem. I’m hopeful that’s exactly what is going to happen.”
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Newsletter Drama Precedes New Social Media Strategy
The announcement of the new approach to the blockchain’s social layer comes after several ETH figures quarreled online at the start of the year about the deprecation of the newsletter, “Week in Ethereum.”
The WiE newsletter writer Evan Van Ness and the Ethereum Foundation’s Josh Stark argued about whether the EF had been funding the newsletter and why it was sunsetted. This sparked a days-long discussion in which Ethereum community members continued to air on social media their grievances about the foundation, in particular its lack of marketing and its general absence from social media.
Those arguing the EF lacks an effective marketing strategy highlighted the sparseness of tweets from the @Ethereum account. @YugaCohler said on Jan. 2, “The Ethereum Foundation, despite all of the good it has done, is troublingly ineffective at PR/marketing/narrative, and this fact is an existential threat to the entire Ethereum ecosystem that the Foundation has a responsibility to mitigate.”
The world if the @ethereum account posted 1 cool app on ethereum per day
The bar is literally so low pic.twitter.com/mrn8SgeMHm
— JOSΞPH 🍩 (@CupOJoseph) January 3, 2025
The social presence of @Ethereum on X is largely composed of reposts. Since June 22, 2021, the account has published 14 original tweets. Last year saw a single tweet, while 2023 had none. @Ethereum wrote four of its own tweets in 2022 and nine in the second half of 2021.
Mark Beylin, an associate at early-stage investment firm Boost VC, published a governance post in Ethereum’s forum discussion on Dec. 20 that argued Ethereum’s social layer is broken as a result of a number of “mafias,” defined as a highly organized, often opaque, network of individuals, acting to counter Ethereum’s core values. One way to address Ethereum’s broken social layer, according to Beylin, is “to evolve the way that the EF and its members communicate with the outside world.”
babe wake up https://t.co/bGpM3vCEou
— Mark Beylin ⏻ (@MarkBeylin) January 13, 2025
Ethereum developer Tim Beiko, who did not immediately respond to Unchained’s request for comment, wrote on Thursday in the forum discussion agreeing with Beylin on the need to strengthen channels for feedback on Ethereum via social media. “We also need a better digital town square for our social layer,” Beiko added.
ETH Underperforms as EF Offloads
The complaints capped off a year in which price-oriented observers expressed frustration about the price of ETH, particularly its performance against the other major crypto assets, Bitcoin and Solana.
While BTC and SOL reached new all-time highs in 2024, ETH has yet to reclaim its record level of $4,878, according to CoinGecko. The price of ETH has dropped 18.7% in the last 30 days and 4.5% in the past 24 hours to trade slightly above $3,100.
Community members were also unhappy that the Ethereum Foundation had been selling ETH. Blockchain sleuthing account @LookOnchain spotted the EF selling 100 ETH for $336,000 worth of DAI on Jan. 8, adding that the organization has offloaded nearly $13 million since Jan. 2.
In response, @H8KUcom said, “They have time to market dump but not to post or say anything nice about people doing cool things on Ethereum.”
https://t.co/ZJaUT40Umb pic.twitter.com/Lxb027nmzX
— lewi (@lewifree) January 8, 2025
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