Ethereum Foundation keeps selling ETH after telling the market it was staking 70,000 coins
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) introduced on Apr. 8 that it would convert 5,000 ETH into stablecoins via CoWSwap’s TWAP function to fund analysis, grants, and donations.
The announcement reopened a debate over what the basis’s treasury overhaul was ever meant to perform. Over the final yr, EF moved treasury belongings into DeFi, borrowed towards ETH collateral, after which launched a staking initiative centered on about 70,000 ETH.
The actuality described in EF’s June 2025 treasury coverage prompt a unique mannequin. It tied monetization to a fiat-denominated working buffer and stored ETH gross sales, staking, and stablecoin borrowing inside the similar treasury framework.
On Feb. 13, 2025, EF Treasury stated it had deployed 45,000 ETH throughout Spark, Aave Prime, Aave Core, and Compound. On May 29, it borrowed $2 million in GHO towards its Aave place.
The transfer carried symbolic weight as a result of it confirmed EF utilizing DeFi rails to lift working capital with out selling spot ETH.
By early April, that interpretation had filtered into retail discourse, as a Reddit publish argued that EF was “not selling.” One commenter replied that “it’s good that they stopped selling.”
Despite anecdotal proof, this type of chatter reveals how the stronger model of the thesis had already entered circulation earlier than EF introduced the Apr. 8 conversion.
The selling continues
As EF launched its staking initiative on Feb. 24, it stated it would stake 70,000 ETH, with rewards routed again to the treasury.
On Mar. 14, it finalized a 5,000 ETH OTC sale to BitMine at a median price of $2,042.96. On Apr. 3, on-chain exercise pushed the staked complete to roughly 69,500 ETH, near the goal. Then got here the Apr. 8 CoWSwap conversion, highlighting that selling and staking had already been working aspect by aspect for weeks.
At an ETH price round $2,220.76, a 5,000 ETH conversion equals about $11.1 million, whereas ETH staking reference charges in early April sat round 2.73% to three.00%.
Applied to 70,000 ETH, that produces roughly 1,912 to 2,102 ETH a yr, price about $4.25 million to $4.67 million at present costs. A single 5,000 ETH sale equals about 2.4 to 2.6 occasions the full-year yield from the total 70,000 ETH staking sleeve.
The staking program improves treasury effectivity and reduces funding necessities, however it stays effectively beneath the scale wanted to exchange treasury gross sales.
The EF June 2025 framework set annual opex at 15% of treasury and the working buffer at 2.5 years, which means a fiat-denominated reserve equal to 37.5% of treasury.
Applied solely as an illustration to EF’s final full treasury snapshot, the Oct. 31, 2024, report confirmed $970.2 million in total treasury and $181.5 million in non-crypto belongings, implying a coverage goal reserve of about $363.8 million.
EF had already publicly added stablecoin publicity after that snapshot, deploying 2,400 ETH and about $6 million in stablecoins into Morpho in October 2025, and it later introduced further ETH-to-stablecoin conversions in October 2025 and April 2026.
The precise present dimension of EF’s fiat-like bucket and whether or not tokenized RWA holdings have already been added in materials dimension are nonetheless unknown. So the 2024 snapshot ought to nonetheless be handled as illustrative relatively than as a stand-in for as we speak’s steadiness sheet.
EF’s personal allocation replace confirmed $32.6 million in grants for the first quarter of 2025. At as we speak’s ETH worth, that equals roughly 14,700 ETH. The Apr. 8 conversion covers solely about 33% of that quarter’s grant complete, excluding protocol analysis, staffing, operations, and broader trade help.
Yield and borrowing depart the fiat-denominated finances intact and nonetheless require periodic monetization.
Potential outcomes
The bull case for EF rests on easy treasury arithmetic, as a better ETH worth and a decrease long-run opex ratio would permit the basis to take care of its greenback buffer whereas monetizing fewer coins.
| Scenario | What modifications | Likely treasury impact |
|---|---|---|
| Bull case | ETH worth rises, long-run opex ratio falls | Fewer coins must be offered to take care of fiat buffer |
| Base case | Mixed technique continues | Staking, DeFi, borrowing, and periodic gross sales coexist |
| Bear case | ETH worth weakens, spending strain rises | More ETH might must be monetized to protect runway |
| Key implication | Reserve goal stays fiat-denominated | “Less selling” narrative breaks down if ETH falls |
In that setting, staking rewards and selective borrowing can cut back quarterly gross sales and provides EF extra flexibility round venue selection, whether or not via OTC blocks, TWAP execution, or conservative DeFi positions.
Treasury modernization would then present up in decrease cadence, smaller clips, and higher execution.
The bear case runs via the similar framework in reverse, as EF’s reserve goal is denominated in fiat phrases.
A weaker ETH worth can pressure extra monetization to protect runway, particularly if the basis leans into its counter-cyclical mandate and spends extra aggressively throughout tougher market situations.
Under that setup, a big staking sleeve nonetheless generates yield, however the reserve requirement can rise quicker than that yield offsets it.
Public expectations constructed round “much less selling” then collide with the balance-sheet self-discipline EF had already written into coverage.
The Apr. 8 conversion introduced that self-discipline again into view. EF’s treasury technique had already mixed DeFi deployment, stablecoin borrowing, staking, and periodic ETH gross sales.
The market narrative prolonged past the written coverage and past the basis’s personal post-staking transaction document.
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