The Ethereum Foundation (EF), a non-profit responsible for the financial support of the Ethereum ecosystem, has revealed it holds $1.6 billion (roughly Rs. 9,927 crore) in its treasury as of March 2022, of which 80 percent is held in Ether. While mostly numbers, the 28-page report published on April 18 outlines the amount of money the non-profit spent on research and development as it prepared for the “Merge” as well as its current treasury holdings after selling Ether at the very top.
As per the report, the EF has $1.3 billion (roughly Rs. 9,927 crore) in Ether, $300 million (roughly Rs. 2292 crore) allocated to non-crypto investments, and $11 million (roughly Rs. 84 crore) invested in several cryptocurrencies. The foundation's ETH holdings represent nearly 0.3 percent of the entire Ether supply.
In 2021, the Ethereum Foundation spent a total of $48 million (roughly Rs. 367 crore) of which $20 million (roughly Rs. 153 crore) was directed towards expenses in external expenditure including grants, delegated domain allocations, third party funding, bounties, and sponsorships. The other $28 million (roughly Rs. 214 crore) was spent in funding the teams and projects within the Ethereum community.
If the funds were to be categorised differently, the report claims that $21.8 million (roughly 167 crore) was spent for Layer-one research and development, that includes Ethereum mainnet upgrade and external grants for network stress testing.
Further, community development accounted for $9.7 million (roughly Rs. 74 crore) in costs, while developer platform expenditures totaled $5.9 million (roughly 45 crore), $5.1 million (roughly Rs. 39 crore) went to internal operations and support, while $3.6 million (roughly Rs. 27 crore) went to applied Zero-Knowledge (ZK) research and development.
Layer-two research and development including developer tooling and software development kits, accounted for $1.9 million (roughly Rs. 14 crore). The foundation separately allocated $19.6 million (roughly Rs. 150 crore) in grants through its Ecosystem Support Program.
The Ethereum Foundation team further explained why it sold Ether to increase its non-crypto holdings. The EF noted that the reason for selling during parabolic rallies in the ETH market was to offer a great security margin for its core budget.
Speaking of the foundation's upcoming developments, the report notes that the Ethereum network's much awaited 'Merge' which will upgrade its network to a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus model, now won't be conducted in June. The merge is now speculated to be pushed to the third quarter of 2022.
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