Ethereum began with the cypherpunk idea that anyone should be able to transact without permission. Ethereum's protocol delivers these guarantees today, but in practice, many of them are lost on the way to the end user. Over the years, layers of intermediation have grown around the protocol, and most people now access Ethereum through centralized RPCs, wallets, frontends, and block explorers—each of which can compromise some degree of censorship resistance, security, or user privacy.
One of my core focuses at the EF has been gathering firsthand evidence about this gap: who needs strong self-sovereignty guarantees, what their technology-use patterns reveal in practice, which failure modes affect them most, and which trade-offs make sense in real-world conditions. These insights help inform what the Foundation prioritizes in its technical work, so that both the protocol and the access layers around it can evolve with real user needs in view.
Ethereum Foundation Blog