18th Jun 2024 Gemini 1.5 Pro
Aya Miyaguchi's path from high school teacher in Japan to Executive Director of the Ethereum Foundation is an unusual one. As a teacher, Miyaguchi felt her world was too small to adequately educate young minds, leading her to encourage her students to seek experiences beyond Japan. Realizing she needed to follow her own advice, she moved to the US, eventually finding herself drawn to the nascent world of cryptocurrency.
Intrigued by the potential of blockchain technology to create positive social impact, she joined Kraken, a cryptocurrency exchange, where she witnessed the birth of Ethereum and met a young Vitalik Buterin. Driven by her desire to "restore the balances that society lost," Miyaguchi left Kraken to explore ways to support blockchain applications with positive real-world impacts. This led to conversations with members of the Ethereum Foundation, who recognized her potential and asked her to step into the Executive Director role in late 2017.
Miyaguchi describes her leadership style as intuitive, drawing on her upbringing in Japan where she learned to "read the air" and be considerate of others' perspectives. She emphasizes the importance of "subtraction" – saying no to opportunities that don't align with Ethereum's long-term vision and allowing the community to organically drive development.
This approach extends to the Ethereum Foundation's grant-making process, which prioritizes projects aligned with the principles of stewardship, long-term thinking, and subtraction.
We try not to share too much about this is how much you have done. We try to stay as a coordinator of things. And so like I always say that the work that our people do is like ninja work.
The Ethereum Foundation, Miyaguchi explains, operates differently from traditional organizations. Instead of wielding power through legal control or large token holdings, the foundation focuses on building and sharing legitimacy. By supporting projects aligned with Ethereum's values, the foundation aims to cultivate a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
This approach was evident in the foundation's decision to reduce its ETH holdings to less than 1%. This commitment to decentralization, Miyaguchi argues, is crucial for the long-term health of the ecosystem.
Miyaguchi stresses the importance of building redundancy into the Ethereum ecosystem, highlighting the role of client diversity in ensuring the network's resilience. She points to the successful completion of the Merge – Ethereum's transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism – as an example of how decentralized governance can achieve complex technological upgrades.
She acknowledges criticisms about the potential for scams and abuses in a decentralized system but maintains that Ethereum's approach is an experiment in building a more transparent and accountable system.
Miyaguchi uses the metaphor of an "infinite garden" to describe her vision for Ethereum: a diverse and evolving ecosystem where different players contribute to the overall health and growth of the network. She sees the Ethereum Foundation as a gardener, nurturing the ecosystem and empowering others to participate in its development.
Looking ahead, Miyaguchi believes the most important work for the Ethereum Foundation is to continue cultivating this infinite garden, fostering a culture of collaboration, and supporting projects that align with Ethereum's core values. She emphasizes the need for long-term thinking and patience, recognizing that building a truly decentralized and sustainable ecosystem is a marathon, not a sprint.
Just like nature, the Ethereum ecosystem wasn't designed. It has evolved.
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