Ethereum's next governance problem may be less about a hard fork than about who pays for core protocol work as the Ethereum Foundation deliberately reduces its central role.

Former Ethereum Foundation contributor Trent Van Epps, now involved with Protocol Guild, said in recent comments and a post on Ethereum institutions that the ecosystem needs stronger successor institutions for the next decade. CoinDesk reported that Van Epps estimates core protocol development requires roughly $30 million a year, even as the foundation's treasury and direct role become more constrained.

The issue sits inside the EF's "subtraction" philosophy. In its March mandate, the foundation said its long-term goal is to reduce its relative influence over Ethereum, framing success as an ecosystem that can outgrow and outlast the organization. That stance is meant to protect Ethereum from dependence on a single steward, but it also raises a practical question: which organizations will fund shared work that does not naturally monetize itself?

Van Epps' warning does not mean Ethereum is about to stop functioning. The network has many client teams, researchers, coordinators, and independent companies around it. The risk is institutional: if funding becomes fragmented or temporary, contributors maintaining client diversity, security work, and upgrade coordination may face weaker support.

The timing makes the question sharper. The foundation recently completed a restructuring that reduced headcount and reorganized work around a narrower mandate. For Ethereum, the test is whether decentralizing authority can be matched by durable funding mechanisms for the public goods that keep the base protocol moving.