Early Days of Ethereum

Preserving the history and stories of the people who built Ethereum.

stiftung ethereum ("Ethereum Foundation")

Stiftung Ethereum is a non-profit organization which was incorporated in Zug in July 2014. It is more commonly known by its English name - the Ethereum Foundation.
Stiftung Ethereum

Stiftung Ethereum (commonly known in the English-speaking world as the Ethereum Foundation) is a non-profit company which was incorporated in Zug, Switzerland, on 14th July 2014 by Vitalik Buterin, Taylor Gerring and Mihai Alisie. Ethereum project legal activities which had previously been organized under the for-profit EthSuisse legal entity were quickly transitioned to the Stiftung after its formation in the aftermath of the "Red Wedding".

B2Bhint.com has public information on the legal entity which shows the following timeline, arranged by epoch:

Stiftung Ethereum and ETHDEV (July 2014 to February 2015)

The Interregnum (March 2015 to June 2015)

  • No changes

The Ming Dynasty (July 2015 to January 2018)

  • 4th Aug 2015: Taylor and Mihai resign and are replaced by Lars Klawitter, Vadim Levitin and Wayne Hennessy-Barrett (the "professional board")
  • 17th Dec 2015: Lars, Vadim and Wayne resign en-masse after getting Minged, leaving Vitalik as the sole board member for seven months. See Nora for more on that. It appears that the Foundation might have been in legal breach during this period as there were no domiciled (legally resident) Swiss board members during this period, which is a requirement. Mihai had been a resident.
  • 26th July 2016: Ming Chan is appointed as the second board member. Swiss citizen, often resident.
  • 21st Oct 2016: Patrick Storchenegger is appointed as the third board member. Another Swiss citizen and resident.

The Infinite Garden (February 2018 to February 2025)

  • 7th Jun 2018: Ming resigns and is replaced by Aya. This "paperwork" happened months after the actual switch, with Ming's final day being 31st Jan 2018.
  • 22nd May 2019: MUTARA Audit AG replaced by Grant Thornton AG as auditor

Wartime CEO? (March 2025 onwards)

For many years, https://ethereum.org/foundation was the only public information on the Ethereum Foundation. As you can see from that snapshot in February 2019, as well as being totally inadequate, the information was also chronically outdated, with Aya nowhere to be seen and with Jeff Wilcke still listed years after his departure.

They finally set up their (now useful) website, https://ethereum.foundation, as part of the https://ethereum.org community reboot which started in April 2019.

There is even an actively maintained org chart:

org chart