Interview with Hsiao-Wei Wang, Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation: Growth History, Upgrade Outlook and EF Operation Strategy

Source: ETHPanda

ETHPanda Talk is a show that focuses on how to build a bright digital future based on Ethereum. We will invite outstanding Ethereum builders to share their motivations and projects that are being promoted, as well as relevant experiences and gains, including their prospects for the future. I hope that by exploring the stories and concepts behind these, we will bring you more diverse perspectives or inspiration to inspire everyone to participate in the construction of Ethereum.

Hsiao-Wei Wang, a guest of ETH Panda Talk , joined the Ethereum Foundation as a researcher in 2017, and has been working within the Ethereum Foundation for nearly 8 years, participating in multiple important Ethereum upgrades including The Merge, Shapella, Dencun, etc. In April 2025, she just took over as co-executive director of the Ethereum Foundation, which was also the first interview she received since taking office.

In this issue, we discussed her growth experience with Hsiao-Wei, the details determined by the Ethereum technology roadmap, the highlights and difficulties of community construction, and her work at the Ethereum Foundation. I hope it can bring you new ideas and thoughts.

01. Hsiao-Wei Wang Personal growth experience

Bruce:

You first joined as a researcher and grew up step by step, so I believe many viewers are more interested in your growth experience. You just mentioned that you have entered this industry in 2017. Are there any more important people who have brought you here all the time, and why you joined Ethereum, and what are your mental journeys you can share with you.

Hsiao-Wei:

My personal background is computer science and I entered the field of telecommunications after graduating from graduate school. Base in Taiwan. During this period, one day, the company's internal training topic happened to be blockchain, which mainly talks about Bitcoin.

In 2016, there were not many blockchain startups in Taiwan at that time, mainly exchanges, which allowed ordinary people to buy Bitcoin in Taiwan. When I was wondering if it was time to switch the track, my college classmate happened to tell me that their company was about to set up a blockchain research department, so he submitted his experience. Later, I was honored to meet a former colleague of mine, Mr. Chen Chang-wu (now at ImToken) during this previous job. He first went to the Ethereum Foundation to be a researcher. Around 2017, the foundation was recruiting researchers in Asia, so I also invested. The foundation is a very special opportunity for me, because when I was in the previous company, I learned about Ethereum and felt the community culture of Ethereum. I feel that in addition to Bitcoin, there are many blockchain innovations in this world. Ethereum is particularly attractive, so it has joined the Ethereum Foundation.

Bruce:

In the career of a researcher for so many years, what have you done or learned, which makes you feel like you have suddenly upgraded and gained a huge breakthrough or a sense of accomplishment?

Hsiao-Wei:

As Ethereum researchers, half of our research will be adopted, and the other half may not be adopted. Beacon Chain has many roadmap changes. I think it wasn't until Beacon Chain went online that we felt that we had finally found a definite route. Whether it is PoS, there is also Sharding's part to find an integrated route. The other previous research has not been in vain, and some of them have been applied, but I feel that I feel that I have ended my hardships and sweetness.

Bruce:

We also know that it was in 222 that Ethereum completed The Merge and then officially switched from PoW to PoS. This difficulty is often compared to changing the engine during an aircraft flight. After participating in the whole process, what do you think was the biggest challenge at that time? Are there any unknown stories?

Hsiao-Wei:

Because we already have a lot of things on the chain, a lot of people are involved in this project. There are many clients, and I think coordinating human resources is really the biggest challenge.

There is a small easter egg, and Deposit Contract has many 0s in front of it, because it is a person that everyone will use for several years in the next, remember this address. So the person in charge of Deploy spent some time calculating and generating this unique address to reduce the risk of phishing scams. We also prevent other Scammers from using Deposit to cheat money in many places. So I have spent some time to generate this contract address and make the contract address have many 0s in front of it.

(Deposit Contract: 0x00000000219ab540356cBB839Cbe05303d7705Fa)

Bruce:

I remember There is a panda meme in The Merge. How did you think of it?

Hsiao-Wei:

This is the Dragon Ball meme. At that time, I happened to give a lecture on The Merge. Then I was thinking about how to let everyone know that we were not knocking out the original chain, but letting the Beacon Chain with the Consensus Layer (consensus layer) merge, and how to use this merge to be concretely defined. A meme picture with a panda merge was found, which was a black bear and a white bear. This is the work of a Thai artist. We used this metaphor, and later became very popular.

The Merge Panda meme

So ethPandaOps was established at that time. They were the very powerful DevOps team behind The Merge, responsible for Ethereum network operation and maintenance. Later, they named it ethPandaOps.

Bruce:

In fact, in recent years, we can also see that the entire industry has had some relatively large fluctuations, and there are often some so-called Ethereum killers. Have you ever emoed it in this process, or have you questioned whether what we are doing is valuable? How do you persist if you feel depressed?

Hsiao-Wei:

Some people cannot do things well with blockchain technology , which may give the public a very negative impression, which leads to the general public talking about Crypto, which is a bit speculative. In this industry, we hope to make technological progress, and this phenomenon is a sad thing for people with better vision.

Fortunately, the atmosphere of my colleagues around me is very similar, and of course education is also very important, but we may not be able to change everyone's negative impressions on the chain in an instant. But there is something good about blockchain or Ethereum. We hope to carry forward this, which is what we can do.

Bruce:

I actually feel that the environment is still very important when choosing to be with the builder. However, if you are in a low mood, you can join us to keep warm together, and then do some research and try together, and it may be better slowly.

Hsiao-Wei:

But I think I would like to emphasize another part because sometimes I need to leave the ivory tower and listen to some negative opinions. Because I've been working hard recently.

02. Ethereum technology route and future development

Bruce:

We can often see that Vitalik updates every year and publishes a very complex roadmap full of various terms. Can you introduce how the roadmap is designed, how it is decided, and how it is promoted? What is the approximate process?

Vitalik's Ethereum Roadmap in 2023

Hsiao-Wei:

Vitalik has posted this picture more than three years ago, and we also urged him to post it last year, but he later chose to write 6 articles: " Possible futures of the Ethereum protocol" .

His technology Roadmap is a guide to a High Level. He pointed out that we want to do this direction, but there are actually three plans within, A, B, and C. Then which one is easier to succeed is something that developers and researchers need to think about this year. He gave a High Level idea, and it was also a channel for community communication. However, the direction of development progress was actually decided by our community Core Devs. When he drew this picture, he was actually very simple, and then the researcher's idea went into it. There are different options for how to practice this roadmap later.

There are many EIPs that may have existed for 3 or 5 years before being placed on the chain. There was a proposal first, and the proposal was adopted very long. Maybe it was put in a few weeks ago, and EIP-7702 may have been adopted in a relatively late stage.

There is an EIP Repository on GitHub on Ethereum. Anyone can send an EIP proposal here and use Template to write a proposal. The content is a specific change of Protocol. Then when this proposal receives more attention and more reviews, you will have the opportunity to discuss it at ACD (All Core Devs Weekly Meeting) for all client developers and researchers to discuss it.

Usually, people who think that they will especially support this EIP will attend a meeting to give a demonstration, and others will give some feedback and signals. If this EIP has a large volume of voice, it is more likely to be adopted. Propose to the discussion on the ACD and then to the final EIP Inclusion meeting. Last month, because Pectra was about to hard fork in early May, everyone was already planning the content of the next hard fork.

When this EIP is very likely to be adopted, we will give it a tag called CFI (Consider for Inclusion), which will send a bigger signal and let people in the industry pay attention.

To summarize briefly, Vitalik will roughly set the route, but it will not involve particularly specific content. Researchers will make some progress in these directions. At the same time, anyone can tell the community that they want to make changes by submitting EIP, then hold meetings through ACD, and then improve through community feedback. Finally, the final EIP is released. After that, each client team starts to develop changes and then go online at the specified time.

Hsiao-Wei:

The main organizers of ACD over the years have been EF people, and EF is also thinking about how much we need to lead. Each hard fork is different. Like the Core Dev upgraded by Pectra, they all have things that users want to be adopted, so the final scope is actually quite large, but the consensus of everyone like Fusaka is to give us the need for PeerDAS, and everyone has a relatively concentrated consensus. This process is much simplified, and the coordination is different every time.

Bruce:

This process is very interesting. It does not operate like a company, but is participated by the entire community to promote an upgrade with a very wide impact. What actual changes do you expect the Pectra upgrade to be launched in May? Which of these EIPs do you most like?

Hsiao-Wei:

EIP has its own uses, but the biggest impact on developers and applications is EIP-7702. It allows you to set a code for your original EOA address. If the original code unit is empty, you can change its value. It just provides the functionality, but if it is the code, it is a very broad design. We hope this change can unlock some abstract designs in the account and pave a wide road. Then there are many options for how to design this AA contract on Layer 1 and how to design Layer 2.

The Ethereum Foundation is also very active in negotiating a standard that can be used in the industry. Of course this is also very interesting, we hope there will be more design and more innovation. But at the same time, I hope everyone uses safe contracts.

Bruce:

I've also been looking at EIP-7702 recently. I think the imagination space is indeed very large. In the past, we had to click on various pop-up windows to merge them into one. Including Gas Fee and Sponsorship payment, but at the same time, I also think that if it is particularly flexible, it will also bring some safety risks. What do you think, how can we better protect security?

Hsiao-Wei:

The first is the AA contract, which must be fully audited. The foundation also provides implementation cases to enhance everyone's trust in using contracts through the foundation. In terms of wallet standards, many of our teams integrate this function in wallets.

Bruce:

In fact, expansion of Ethereum is a very long-term topic. We can also often see words or concepts such as shards and ZK. From your perspective, you can briefly introduce to you what ZK rollup and sharding concepts are, what other important tasks are there, and where are the main challenges?

Hsiao-Wei:

The concept of sharding actually comes from the design of the database. We designed it earlier, and there would be an open main chain, and there were some Shard Chain below. But now we also have a Rollup-centric roadmap, not down, but up, and upward, so we can see that Sharding + ZK rollup upper and lower layers expand the development of Layer 1 at the same time. In the near future, it is mainly how do we increase the number of blobs? Blob is the data layer of Ethereum (Data Layer). Once enhanced, Layer 2 can be regularly passed into the space where the Hash value is to Layer 1, and the entire frequency is also expected to be increased.

So if we expand Layer 1, it will actually help Layer 2 at the same time. Multiplying the two is the output of the entire Ethereum.

Bruce:

What are the main challenges? Is there any way to accelerate this development progress?

Hsiao-Wei:

In the near future, the goal is mainly to test, and we have many clients. In the research part, it is almost the same to design cryptography algorithms, but for the network layer, this is an engineering problem. More testing and parameter tuning is required. Also, maybe an internal test of a client is OK, but there may be some problems when interoperating. So the main goal of regular testing is testing. So sometimes when you have time, you can go to the test network to brush more.

03. Development of Ethereum Ecosystem, Applications and Community

Bruce:

The Ethereum ecosystem not only includes the protocol layer, but also applications, communities, etc. What applications do you think have potential for explosion? What observations or ideas do you have?

Hsiao-Wei:

I personally find interesting aspects to be Identity or SocialFi design. What I find interesting recently is the mini program on Farcaster. Because when you see what your friends are using and what games they are playing, you can share them with the social platform immediately. This kind of mini program is quite easy to penetrate into the lives of ordinary users, but it will take some time to explode. If you innovate here, you may find some user groups to use immediately.

For larger projects, I may not know if there are some interesting designs in the financial design in the next one or two years. Part of it is DeFi, so I hope to see more innovative application cases. The other part is RWA, which has been popular recently, should also be classified into some application categories.

Bruce:

Many of the Ethereum communities are spontaneously established by local Ethereum enthusiasts and volunteers. But usually manpower or funds are not particularly stable sometimes. From your perspective, do you think the community has a more robust way to develop sustainably? Have you ever seen a case of doing a better job in the community?

Hsiao-Wei:

I am actually the co-sponsor of Taipei Seminar and ETHTaipei at the same time. Many communities in Taiwan are open source communities, and some may be members of Python PyCon, or they have the spirit of open source software in other communities before. So many people want to use the spirit of open source to do Ethereum.

March 19 - 21, 2018 Ethereum Sharding Workshop in Taipei

What’s more interesting about Taiwan is that everyone has no problem doing public interest. We work during the day and take everyone together to dig, make up for and do things at night.

However, this behavioral pattern requires bringing new people in. How do you pass on this spirit? I think it is very important for the onboard newcomers to come in continuously.

Because it is an open source community, individuals do not have much Ownership in this community, so everyone does something. If no one is there, then this is your job. Without the background of open source, it may indeed be difficult to implement this model elsewhere.

There are many interesting designs in the Chinese area, each with a different style. Maybe because Taiwan is relatively small, it seems that the people who do things are the same group of people. Diversity is a little lower than elsewhere. In other big places, they will burst into spring after a rain, and I think this is also very good.

Bruce:

Talk about this diverse community. You have been advancing some of the relevant Ethereum communities, including ETHTaipei, for 18 years. What are the advantages or challenges of the Asian developer community? What role do we play in the global Ethereum system?

Hsiao-Wei:

I think there are actually many amazing people in Asian developers. Asia’s strength is to make products, and the user experience is quite powerful. I feel that Europe and the United States may have a longer history in studying Ethereum. So there are sometimes some cultural differences between the two sides. I think on the one hand, it is actually quite important to maintain the characteristics, and it is better if you can communicate better. If we want to be a world computer in Ethereum, we must face global users and global developers. Therefore, I hope to understand each other through communication.

Bruce:

I feel the same way because there are a lot of people in the entire Asia-Pacific region, and everyone's cultures also have certain similarities. So we will still have more experience in user experience and application level. Let’s look at it from a overall perspective, what are the work related to the community now that you think is lacking in promotion or support, or in other words, what are the undeveloped or relatively blank parts that everyone can promote, which can make the entire Ethereum ecosystem better?

Hsiao-Wei:

In recent years, because AI has been too convenient, reading English information does not seem to be a big problem. Thanks to ETHPanda, I will provide a translation of the Chinese key summary on Twitter, and the response is very fast. However, I think the demand for translation may decline in recent years, which is the benefit of everyone enjoying AI. We need to be able to promote the introduction of more new blood. I have been a real old man after 7 years of joining the community. So how do we go to Onboard and more newcomers come in? The newcomer mainly hopes to promote it in the student community.

04. Work content of the Ethereum Foundation

Bruce:

Now that you are a co-executive director at the Ethereum Foundation, have you changed your daily work since your position as a researcher to your executive director today? What new challenges have you encountered?

Hsiao-Wei:

The speed of change must be accepted. My previous main work, my main activities were mainly at the Consensus Specs level. I also wanted to say that I can come back to Review PR in the future. But the core of the past month has been shifted to management. At the same time, we need to closely discover the latest developments in research. The challenge is really coming from all directions.

I feel very honored and grateful to my work partner Tomasz as a co-executive director. He is very active in collecting feedback in the community and converting feedback into a relatively broad route for EF. On this difficult road, I don’t feel lonely.

Bruce:

I also have a lot of experience. Tomasz will post some of this appeal on Twitter so that everyone can contact him. I actually posted one, and then he would immediately pull a group to connect with EF colleagues the next day. I think it is a good positive change.

In the past quarter, or in recent months, EF has frequently adjusted its organizational structure and personnel, including non-EF such as Etherealize or the establishment of new external organizations, which has become more diverse. Can you introduce the background and goals of these changes?

Hsiao-Wei:

I can first introduce the general architecture of EF. First of all, we have a board of directors, and then Management Team, which has three business clusters, not strictly defined departments. The first is the Operation department, including Finance, HR, Legal, which are required for daily operations of a company or a foundation. The second is the Development department. After some of the relatively large Spin-offs recently, they are now mainly R&D in Protocol, and Research Team is also in this development department. The third is the Eco Dev department, which is related to ecological development. This part may include departments such as ESP and Next Billion Fellowship that distribute Grants.

Bruce:

Can you briefly introduce some external organizations of EF, such as Etherealize.

Hsiao-Wei:

If you remember correctly, Etherealize was actually established last year. The Foundation and Vitalik had a little support for them in the early days of their establishment, and their activities in the United States were mainly Wall Street. It also reflects the world political situation’s transformation of Crypto’s route. Their establishment can go to activities on Wall Street and do something that I think is very helpful to us, doing things that EF may not be directly executed. Their BD part can better face American users directly, as well as the current traditional finance or traditional large companies in the United States. I think it is very good to promote this.

Bruce:

I just heard it, that is, EF does not have a Marketing team, right?

Hsiao-Wei:

Yes, we can only do Communication. Because like Josh Stark said, Ethereum doesn 't have BD team, Ethereum has one hundred BD teams. In other applications, whether it is Layer 2 or some Dapps, their BD teams are also like our BD teams.

We do not regard Ethereum as our own brand. For example, like Twitter, we have recently converted some accounts on Twitter. Since the beginning of this year, there is now an Ethereum account and an Ethereum Foundation account.

I think it's good to separate, because in the past, we used to use the Ethereum account to post something, and it seems that everyone would think that this is what the foundation means, which is very limited. Now I will use this account to do BD-like things and do some publicity work to help the community understand what major events are happening now. Anyway, I think it is good to separate this, and both accounts on both sides can be used to each other.

Bruce:

This also brings a lot of convenience to our work. Because this official account of Ethereum is a good source of our translation and introduction, we can obtain some latest changes. It can give the community better publicity.

I also mentioned ESP just now. As a very important part of this EF, it has always played a role in promoting the development of the entire ecosystem. After this new architecture, EF's budget allocation design, the areas that ESP will focus more on. Are there any changes?

Hsiao-Wei:

I just mentioned that we have different departments such as Eco Dev and Development. Team Lead, a developer and researcher in these departments, has the ability to manage larger Grants. ESP and other Eco Dev Teams are the other parts. For several major areas, one may be AGR, which is not internal to ESP, but it is considered a kind of binding with ESP. This is the part of academic research, and there is a Grant once a year. The application this year should be over and is currently under review.

In other fields, I think ESP is actually our storefront who charges Inbound Requests, so I think their choice is quite broad. I don’t even say that we must set a budget for the event, and it may not be so strict.

Sometimes what the Ethereum Foundation wants to support is not necessarily Grants support, not necessarily the money part, but the foundation's Shout Out (propaganda spread).

When it comes to judging whether to give Grants to activities, sometimes the foundation does not necessarily directly consider how many direct users the activities can bring to us, but rather what kind of Grants distribution can have greater influence, which activities or projects are supported by the foundation, and it is useful and can bring some public goods that can help everyone.

Bruce:

To sum up, there is such an activity or project. The foundation may be the only organization that is willing to support, and the things themselves are necessary.

I have actually seen EF introduce more external organizations to participate in influencing decision-making, such as the recent The EF Silviculture Society?

Hsiao-Wei:

They are a bit like a council, we chose some Advisers who are very public interest in different fields, and we are very grateful to them, so I think they mainly represent the spirit of Cypherpunk, and then there is security and privacy.

The EF Silviculture Society

If we treat Ethereum as a Business, if we have a Business Adviser, we can actually easily hear a lot of opinions. How can we better listen to the voice of the community? This is what this Council is about.

In other aspects, we are also listening to the opinions of some DeFi experts recently. Then recently EF has also done a lot of Twitter Space to have positive communication with both Layer 2 Interop and some projects that are more successful on Dapps. At the same time, the external project team leader will also come to do Seminar for EF internally. We listen to expert opinions and community feedback in this way.

Bruce:

In fact, some people have always suggested that the Ethereum Foundation obtains profits through DeFi, rather than continue to sell coins publicly. What do you think of EF’s funding operation model? What potential input channels can ensure the long-term sustainability of this foundation?

Hsiao-Wei:

This year, the foundation has begun to actively participate in DeFi. There was a wave of deployment in early February, and we put some to try ETH DeFi Lending, and the second phase was also planned. We are evaluating whether to increase Lending investment or explore more creative ways to use ETH assets; the second larger area is staking. We are also exploring different staking Options, while thinking about whether EF's participation in staking can bring positive benefits; the third point is still in the exploration stage, which is Tokenization, such as participating in some RWAs. Our participation mainly involves some relatively conservative funds, or funds that are better for L1.

Bruce:

It still looks like there are a lot of new ideas and attempts in this direction. In fact, the community also has some feedback, including selling 100 ETH from time to time. Although it will not cause much selling pressure, it may have some impact on everyone's emotions. What is the opinion within the foundation?

Hsiao-Wei:

No matter how we talk about it, we have to sell it, because we now have two or three hundred people in the foundation, and about 75% of the expenditure is required for fiat currency expenditure, and 25% is Crypto. So the first point is that the foundation needs to operate, so it needs to rebalance assets.

The second is that our community may not be very clear about our needs, and we may strengthen our communication. Another point I want to say first is that we do not mean selling at the high point. People often say that we do selling at the high point, but in fact, we do selling at the low point many times. When it was low, everyone didn't magnify it, and we didn't have much design here.

Bruce:

In fact, there are also voices from the community saying that it can be done through OTC or some more hidden ways. What do you think?

Hsiao-Wei:

Our main Treasury is actually very open and transparent, so maybe this can be done in the short term, but everyone can see the changes in the main Treasury.

Bruce:

Regarding the work of the Ethereum Foundation, some people speculate that EF may slowly fade out or disband after completing a certain mission or stage, allowing the community to drive Ethereum to operate. What do you think of this direction? If that day really comes, how will your ideal Ethereum community run?

Hsiao-Wei:

First of all, for the foundation, this year is a particularly important year. We have invested a lot of budgets in the transformation of the entire organization. Perhaps next year, the foundation will find that other entities in the community who can replace the role of the foundation will increase, we can operate in a conservative and contraction state. What’s more interesting is that we need to change our strategies every year, and the topics the foundation pays attention to may be different every year. Perhaps the foundation will have a stronger presence when it comes to Protocol.

So maybe the focus in the future is like the application layer or on the Wallet, maybe we don’t need such a big sense of existence, so this sense of existence changes every year. I personally hope that the Foundation can always think about how we want to increase others can do what we do today. What things can only be done in the future, and maybe we will continue to do them. For example, the Coordination part relies heavily on changes in various factors in the future and some support from the community. If the community can do a good job, the foundation can turn to more complex, or less attention.

Bruce:

We are almost at the end of this interview, and we have talked a lot about it before, including personal experience, the roadmap community of technology, and the work of the foundation. We can use some more relaxed topics to end. Because our audience includes students and relatively young developers, as an "old man" in Ethereum, what suggestions do you have for these friends who have just entered the industry or want to enter the industry?

Hsiao-Wei:

I think many people say that choosing is more important than working hard. I think you can add one, and you have to choose where you can have more choices. Ethereum has a lot of, very large communities, and very dynamic developers have paved some way ahead. I hope that new friends can all develop in this field. Whether you are a developer, educator, product maker, or user, you can find some people like mentors in the community, so that you can have more choices.

Bruce:

It is recommended to build Web3 thinking, or books or materials that are more helpful for personal growth.

Hsiao-Wei:

The most common view is Vitalik's Blog Post. Because if the thinking level is two levels, then you may have to see what the thinking level is four levels think, that is, a person with thinking level on a square.

Recently, I have also read business management books. There is a book called "Principles" , which describes some general directions and principles. I think the important gain of this book is that you need to establish your own principles. His principles may not be used in this way, but the important thing is that you need to establish principles. If the principles are established, if you can follow them, then what you will do in the future may be much simpler.

Bruce:

Do you have some sports or other leisure methods that you prefer after work?

Hsiao-Wei:

I am very homesick, mainly watching TV series and playing chess, which are all static activities. But now the leisure time has been greatly reduced recently, and there is a lot of work to be done.

Bruce:

Thank you for this sharing today by Hsiao-Wei. Thank you very much for bringing you some interesting and in-depth thinking. Thank you for watching or listening to this issue of ETHPanda Talk. Special thanks to Hashkey for providing us with a free venue. If you like our content, please follow and share and support. See you next time!