PANews reported on January 20 that according to a discussion on Twitter between Eric.eth and community members such as Josh Stark, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) has been criticized for long-term direct sales of ETH held and converting it into stablecoins to support internal budgets. The community believes that EF can completely cover budget needs by staking ETH and using DeFi strategies (such as yield products) instead of selling directly in the market to avoid negative impacts on ETH prices.

In response to this, Vitalik Buterin responded to the community’s doubts on Twitter. He mentioned that there were two main reasons why the Ethereum Foundation did not choose to pledge ETH in the past:

1. Regulatory factors : The previous regulatory environment may have created potential legal risks for EF pledge behavior, but such concerns have been significantly reduced;

2. Hard fork stance issue : If EF chooses to pledge, it will be forced to take a stand in any controversial hard forks that may occur in the future, because staking will make the foundation more deeply bound to the main chain. This is still the main concern at present, but Vitalik said that he is exploring solutions to reduce this impact.

Spot On Chain responded that even if EF chooses to stake ETH and obtain staking rewards, it still needs to sell ETH to meet funding needs, so it is still questionable whether its staking income can completely replace the current selling model. At the same time, it is recommended that EF give priority to over-the-counter transactions (OTC) when selling ETH to reduce the price impact of direct selling on the market.