One of the questions that keeps nagging at me as I dive deeper into crypto is this: Where does the money actually come from?
Until recently, my mental range of answers went from “it’s funded by fresh newcomers” to “venture capital throws it in.” Though even calling that an “answer” might be too generous - it’s more a vague gut feeling than a conclusion.
Today I stumbled across an article - The End of the Foundation Era in Crypto - that gave me a new perspective and introduced something I hadn’t considered before: crypto foundations - nonprofit organizations created to bring some structure and stability to the space.
Ironically, I seem to have discovered foundations just as they’re becoming less relevant. Still, that doesn’t make them any less fascinating. In fact, I feel like I’m beginning to assemble a sort of historical chain of crypto evolution - from its early, anarchic days (when Bitcoin and its network quietly emerged), through the rise of nonprofit foundations often launched by the very creators of commercial networks, all the way to today’s regulatory clashes - like the U.S. SEC Framework for “Investment Contract”.
With Trump’s return to the scene, crypto’s march toward institutionalization has accelerated - just look at the draft bill to regulate the offer and sale of digital commodities.
Crypto (and especially its organizational scaffolding, like foundations) is bumping up more and more against the machinery of the state.
It’s interesting that something similar is happening in Russia as well. The digital ruble is being pushed forward alongside tightening crypto restrictions - like “qualified investor” designations and the Digital Ruble Law.
The article argues that foundations are now becoming something of a bottleneck. Their core intent - to be “outside the market” and thus not subject to market-driven feedback loops - sounds good on paper for certain missions. But in practice, it’s leading to friction.
For example: to comply with SEC regulations, any major crypto project might need to drop half a million dollars on legal consultations before even trying to figure out how to legally align the “foundation” work of its team with the revenue-generating side - down to questions like: “Can the same people even be in the same Slack channel without violating regulations?”
For me, just learning that foundations exist is enough of a revelation for now. There are quite a few of them - from the Ethereum Foundation to the Uniswap Foundation. And their goals clearly go well beyond onboarding newcomers into staking workflows.
At the end of the day, this is just another entry point into the crypto world. And where else would I have stumbled upon something like this all-in-one visual of Ethereum’s ecosystem? Okay, probably lots of places - but still, I found it through the foundations.
