Tom Lee, BitMine’s chairman and Fundstrat co-founder, used a Proof of Talk presentation in Paris on June 2 to argue that public Ether treasuries could become a major funding source for Ethereum’s ecosystem. His comments focused on the changing role of the Ethereum Foundation, the growth of corporate ETH holdings, and the possibility that staking rewards could support grants and public-goods work across the network.
Tom Lee Says Ether Treasuries Can Fund Ethereum
Lee framed his argument around the reduced role of foundations in mature crypto networks, pointing to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s recent comments that the Ethereum Foundation should narrow its responsibilities. “Vitalik wrote about this this year. He says that the Ethereum foundation is basically going to slim its role, that it’s not going to be the entire centralized repository for all things Ethereum,” Lee said during the presentation.
The shift, in Lee’s view, is partly financial. He said the Ethereum Foundation once held 17% of ETH supply, but that figure had fallen to 1% by 2020, then to 0.3% last year, and now to about 100,000 ETH, or 0.1% of supply. “That’s not a lot of Ethereum. That’s about $200 million worth,” Lee said, adding that under a conventional foundation model based on a 5% return, that balance could support only about $10 million in annual grants.
Lee argued that Ether treasuries can fill part of that funding gap. He said BitMine, SharpLink and other Ethereum treasury holders now collectively own 7% of ETH supply, with BitMine representing 4.5% of supply and roughly 65% of treasury-held ETH. “But we also own the yield. Now, the yield is around 3%. So today, these public treasuries are generating 500 million a year in rewards,” he said, describing those rewards as capital that could be used for grants and ecosystem funding.
Tom Lee: Ethereum DATs can use ~$500 million in annual staking rewards to fund grants for Ethereum ecosystem
“The Ethereum Treasuries — Bitmine and Sharplink among others — now own 7% of the Ethereum supply… Treasury stock is essentially supply permanently taken out from the… pic.twitter.com/5YJgmBl3Po
— Etherealize (@Etherealize_io) June 2, 2026
Treasury Yield Could Reshape Ethereum Grants
Lee contrasted the pre-2024 period, when foundations played a central role in funding public goods, providing legal and operational infrastructure, coordinating ecosystems, protecting neutrality and bootstrapping adoption, with what he described as a more mature Ethereum environment. He said foundations should still steward long-term research, including quantum resistance and privacy, while coordinating private-sector work, developing standards and representing the ecosystem publicly.
To explain why a single foundation may no longer be sufficient, Lee cited Ethereum’s scale. He described Ethereum as a $240 billion network-value entity that has operated for 11 years without downtime, with 11,500 nodes across 89 countries and 15,000 developers. “I think this is too big to be coordinated by a single foundation,” he said, comparing Ethereum’s potential coordination model to industry bodies in mobile, semiconductors and broadcasting.
Lee said Ethereum already has the “skeleton” of a post-foundation model, with private companies, Layer 2 teams and treasury holders supporting enterprise engagement, standards and funding. He also said BitMine expects to support spin-outs from the Ethereum Foundation. “If you ask me, my opinion, I think Ethereum is in good hands because the foundation’s going to be stronger by staying focused. We’ve got a lot of private sector companies already building products and important L2s in Ethereum, and of course, the treasuries are here to help with funding and granting,” Lee said.
Lee’s presentation outlined a view in which Ethereum funding becomes less dependent on the Ethereum Foundation’s own ETH holdings and more connected to yield generated by large public treasuries. The model remains a proposal from one major treasury participant, but it highlights a broader question for Ethereum: how a large, decentralized network should finance research, standards, grants and public goods as its institutional and private-sector base expands.
AI Transparency Note: This article was prepared with the assistance of an AI system based on the sources listed and was reviewed, edited, and approved by a human editor before publication. All quotes, data points, and factual claims are intended to be grounded in the cited source material; however, errors cannot be ruled out entirely.
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