preferred on<\/span> The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced on Apr. 8 that it would convert 5,000 ETH into stablecoins through CoWSwap\u2019s TWAP feature to fund research, grants, and donations.<\/p>\n
The announcement reopened a debate over what the foundation\u2019s treasury overhaul was ever meant to accomplish. Over the last year, EF moved treasury assets into DeFi, borrowed against ETH collateral, and then launched a staking initiative centered on about 70,000 ETH.<\/p>\n
The reality described in EF\u2019s June 2025 treasury policy suggested a different model. It tied monetization to a fiat-denominated operating buffer and kept ETH sales, staking, and stablecoin borrowing inside the same treasury framework.<\/p>\n\n\n
A lot of the market had started to treat staking as a partial answer to the Ethereum Foundation sell pressure. The new sale shows that staking rewards and DeFi borrowing may improve treasury flexibility, but they still do not remove the need to sell ETH for operating cash.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/aside>\n
On Feb. 13, 2025, EF Treasury said it had deployed 45,000 ETH across Spark, Aave Prime, Aave Core, and Compound. On May 29, it borrowed $2 million in GHO against its Aave position.<\/p>\n
The move carried symbolic weight because it showed EF using DeFi rails to raise working capital without selling spot ETH.<\/p>\n
By early April, that interpretation had filtered into retail discourse, as a Reddit post argued that EF was \u201cno longer selling.\u201d One commenter replied that \u201cit\u2019s good that they stopped selling.\u201d<\/p>\nA timeline charts the Ethereum Foundation’s treasury moves from February 2025 through April 2026, spanning DeFi deployment, GHO borrowing, staking, and ETH conversions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nDespite anecdotal evidence, this kind of chatter shows how the stronger version of the thesis had already entered circulation before EF announced the Apr. 8 conversion.<\/p>\n
The selling continues<\/h2>\n As EF launched its staking initiative on Feb. 24, it said it would stake 70,000 ETH, with rewards routed back to the treasury.<\/p>\n
On Mar. 14, it finalized a 5,000 ETH OTC sale to BitMine at an average price of $2,042.96. On Apr. 3, on-chain activity pushed the staked total to roughly 69,500 ETH, close to the target. Then came the Apr. 8 CoWSwap conversion, highlighting that selling and staking had already been operating side by side for weeks.<\/p>\n
At an ETH price around $2,220.76, a 5,000 ETH conversion equals about $11.1 million, while ETH staking reference rates in early April sat around 2.73% to 3.00%.<\/p>\n
Applied to 70,000 ETH, that produces roughly 1,912 to 2,102 ETH a year, worth about $4.25 million to $4.67 million at current prices. A single 5,000 ETH sale equals about 2.4 to 2.6 times the full-year yield from the entire 70,000 ETH staking sleeve.<\/p>\n
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<\/div>\n
Related Reading<\/span><\/p>\nEthereum\u2019s liquidity crunch is deepening as ETFs dump $3B and the Foundation locks up 70,000 ETH<\/h3>\n Ethereum investors navigate mixed messages from key figures as Buterin sells and Foundation stakes ETH.<\/p>\n
Feb 24, 2026<\/span> \u00b7<\/span> Oluwapelumi Adejumo<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\nThe staking program improves treasury efficiency and reduces funding requirements, but it remains well below the scale needed to replace treasury sales.<\/p>\nA bar chart shows the Ethereum Foundation’s $11.1 million April 8 ETH sale and $4.25\u20134.67 million annual staking yield fall well short of its $32.6 million Q1 2025 grant spending.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nThe EF June 2025 framework set annual opex at 15% of treasury and the operating buffer at 2.5 years, which implies a fiat-denominated reserve equal to 37.5% of treasury.<\/p>\n
Applied only as an illustration to EF\u2019s last full treasury snapshot, the Oct. 31, 2024, report showed $970.2 million in total treasury and $181.5 million in non-crypto assets, implying a policy target reserve of about $363.8 million.<\/p>\n
EF had already publicly added stablecoin exposure after that snapshot, deploying 2,400 ETH and about $6 million in stablecoins into Morpho in October 2025, and it later announced additional ETH-to-stablecoin conversions in October 2025 and April 2026.<\/p>\n
The exact current size of EF\u2019s fiat-like bucket and whether tokenized RWA holdings have already been added in material size are still unknown. So the 2024 snapshot should still be treated as illustrative rather than as a stand-in for today\u2019s balance sheet.<\/p>\n
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CryptoSlate Daily Brief<\/span><\/p>\nDaily signals, zero noise.<\/h3>\n Market-moving headlines and context delivered every morning in one tight read.<\/p>\n
5-minute digest<\/span> 100k+ readers<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n
Free. No spam. Unsubscribe any time.<\/p>\n
Whoops, looks like there was a problem. Please try again.<\/span><\/p>\n You\u2019re subscribed. Welcome aboard.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nEF\u2019s own allocation update showed $32.6 million in grants for the first quarter of 2025. At today\u2019s ETH price, that equals roughly 14,700 ETH. The Apr. 8 conversion covers only about 33% of that quarter\u2019s grant total, excluding protocol research, staffing, operations, and broader industry support.<\/p>\n
Yield and borrowing leave the fiat-denominated budget intact and still require periodic monetization.<\/p>\n
Potential outcomes<\/h2>\n The bull case for EF rests on straightforward treasury arithmetic, as a higher ETH price and a lower long-run opex ratio would allow the foundation to maintain its dollar buffer while monetizing fewer coins.<\/p>\n
\n\n\nScenario<\/th>\n What changes<\/th>\n Likely treasury effect<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n \n\nBull case<\/strong><\/td>\nETH price rises, long-run opex ratio falls<\/td>\n Fewer coins need to be sold to maintain fiat buffer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \nBase case<\/strong><\/td>\nMixed strategy continues<\/td>\n Staking, DeFi, borrowing, and periodic sales coexist<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \nBear case<\/strong><\/td>\nETH price weakens, spending pressure rises<\/td>\n More ETH may need to be monetized to preserve runway<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n \nKey implication<\/strong><\/td>\nReserve target stays fiat-denominated<\/td>\n \u201cLess selling\u201d narrative breaks down if ETH falls<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nIn that setting, staking rewards and selective borrowing can reduce quarterly sales and give EF more flexibility around venue choice, whether through OTC blocks, TWAP execution, or conservative DeFi positions.<\/p>\n
Treasury modernization would then show up in lower cadence, smaller clips, and better execution.
A weaker ETH price can force more monetization to preserve runway, especially if the foundation leans into its counter-cyclical mandate and spends more aggressively during harder market conditions.<\/p>\n
Under that setup, a large staking sleeve still generates yield, but the reserve requirement can rise faster than that yield offsets it.<\/p>\n
Public expectations built around \u201cless selling\u201d then collide with the balance-sheet discipline EF had already written into policy.<\/p>\n
The Apr. 8 conversion brought that discipline back into view. EF\u2019s treasury strategy had already combined DeFi deployment, stablecoin borrowing, staking, and periodic ETH sales.<\/p>\n
The market narrative extended beyond the written policy and beyond the foundation\u2019s own post-staking transaction record.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
DeFi,Featured,Market,Staking#Ethereum #Foundation #selling #ETH #telling #market #staking #coins1775732436<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Make CryptoSlate preferred on The Ethereum Foundation (EF) announced on Apr. 8 that it would convert 5,000 ETH into stablecoins through CoWSwap\u2019s TWAP feature to fund research, grants, and donations. The announcement reopened a debate over what the foundation\u2019s treasury overhaul was ever meant to accomplish. Over the last year, EF moved treasury assets into<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8247,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[342,601,31,1266,43,609,168,3907],"class_list":{"0":"post-8246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ethereum","8":"tag-coins","9":"tag-eth","10":"tag-ethereum","11":"tag-foundation","12":"tag-market","13":"tag-selling","14":"tag-staking","15":"tag-telling"},"yoast_head":"\n
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