Vitalik Buterin breaks down 2023 Ethereum Foundation spending

Following community questions about the Ethereum Foundation's spending, co-founder Vitalik Buterin and spokesperson Josh Stark provided a breakdown of the foundation's 2023 spending in an Aug. 27 in X social media post.

Spending on "new institutions"—new organizations or entities that bolster the Ethereum ecosystem— was by far the biggest expense category at 36.5%. Layer-1 (L1) research and development accounted for 24.9% of the Ethereum Foundation's expenses in 2023.

Stark noted that the L1 expenses included grants to external teams and internal research and development at the Ethereum Foundation, including grants to core Ethereum client Go-Ethereum (Geth), Solidity research and development, Devcon, Ethereum's Robust Incentives Group, and others.

Community development was the foundation's third-largest spending category in 2023, at 12.7%. The remaining 25.9% of the foundation's capital expenditures were split between applied zero-knowledge work, which captured a significant 10.4%, internal operations, layer-2 research, and the developer platform.