Following our initial exploration of blockchain foundations and their crucial role in driving the progress of the Web3 space, today, we’ll dive deeper into the concrete mechanisms they employ. Our objective is to examine the different approaches nonprofits adopt for advancing the shared goals of decentralization, open-source and public goods development, and protocol security.
To that end, this sequel will zoom into the operational core of three key players: the Ethereum Foundation, the Solana Foundation, and the Interchain Foundation (ICF), and will compare and contrast their unique focal points. It will also highlight how the DCF goes about its broader mission of supporting the Agoric ecosystem and fostering decentralized cooperation.
Ethereum Foundation: A Relentless Backer of Open-Source Innovation
The Ethereum Foundation (EF), arguably the most mature and well-resourced among blockchain foundations, assists via:
- Grants and Fellowship Programs: Supporting core protocol development, layer-2 scalability, zero-knowledge research, and public goods.
- Ecosystem Support Program (ESP): A formal avenue for technical and non-technical contributors to apply for funding, mentorship, and feedback.
- Direct Funding of Research Teams: From the Protocol Support team to cryptography-focused units like the research and development lab Privacy and Scaling Explorations.
In Q1 of 2025 alone, EF spent over $32.6 million on community and educational grants, zero-knowledge and cryptography research, developer experience and tools, and overall ecosystem growth and support.
Focus: Driving Decentralization and Security
In April, the Ethereum Foundation undertook a major strategic shift, putting user experience (UX), layer-1 scalability, and security at the forefront of its agenda. The pivot toward UX optimization aligns with Ethereum‘s ethos of reducing reliance on centralized intermediaries and boosting decentralization, both technically and socially and structurally. The EF also announced the “Trillion Dollar Security” initiative: an ecosystem-wide effort to upgrade Ethereum’s security to help bring the world on-chain.
Solana Foundation: Infrastructure-First Strategy for High-Performance Blockchain
The Solana Foundation champions a high-performance blockchain through strategic investment in infrastructure, validator diversity, and ecosystem growth. Rooted in a mission to support a censorship-resistant and open-source network, the Foundation facilitates adoption and innovation through the following core mechanisms:
- Validator Support and Delegation Program: Providing stake delegation to promote a robust and decentralized validator network.
- Grants and Funding: Investing in developers, startups, and community projects that enhance the Solana ecosystem.
- Open Source Contributions: Funding the maintenance and development of essential tooling, libraries, and client infrastructure.
- Global Education and Events: Hosting hackathons, accelerator programs, and educational partnerships to onboard the next generation of builders.
Focus: Unique Emphasis on Performance and Resilience
The Solana Foundation has also announced a shift recently, and it concerns its validator strategy. It aims to enhance geographic and jurisdictional decentralization, promote validators’ self-sufficiency, reduce reliance on any single infrastructure provider, and ensure long-term network security. Thus, Solana prioritizes network performance and throughput, increasing resilience and censorship-resistance, and balancing decentralization with real-world usability.
Interchain Foundation: Interoperability-Driven Development for Cosmos Ecosystem
The Interchain Foundation (ICF), being the steward of numerous sovereign chains within the Cosmos network of blockchains, focuses on interoperability and modular blockchain architectures. Unlike the other two nonprofits cited above, the ICF advances the adoption and overall value of the Interchain through direct strategic investments in teams and projects.
Its support mechanisms include:
- Core Research & Development Funding: Supporting the maintenance and development of core open-source software, tools, and frameworks, including the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol), Cosmos SDK, and Tendermint Core.
- Investment in Ecosystem Transparency, Security, and Real-World Applications: Providing non-dilutive and equity-based funding to ecosystem-aligned startups, research collectives, infrastructure teams, and DAOs. So far, the ICF has backed several Cosmos projects, including Celestia, Anoma, Penumbra, and Agoric.
- Community Grants Program: Encouraging experimentation and decentralized governance.
Focus: Protocol Sovereignty and Interoperability
ICF encourages permissionless innovation by enabling sovereign chains that interoperate through the Cosmos architecture. Its investments are targeted at projects that reinforce Cosmos’s interoperability vision, ranging from infrastructure providers like wallet and node operators to higher-layer application ecosystems. With a long-term view, the Foundation acts as a strategic investor, allocating resources to ensure robust, secure, and independently governed networks flourish throughout the Interchain ecosystem.
Comparing Foundation Strategies
| Foundation | Main Focus | Decentralization Strategy | Security Measures | Key Mechanism |
| Ethereum Foundation | Public goods, R&D | Open grants, OSS funding | ZK research, client diversity | ESP, Research Units |
| Solana Foundation | Performance, Infrastructure | Decentralized Validator Programs | Infrastructure Resilience, Jurisdictional Diversity | Validator Incentives, Infrastructure Grants |
| Interchain Foundation | Interoperability | Sovereign Chains Support, IBC | Modular Security Models | Core Tech Investments, Community Grants |
How is the DCF Different?
The Decentralization Cooperation Foundation (DCF) is not your typical blockchain foundation. It was set up to advance the Agoric ecosystem and carry out the much broader mission of reinforcing the long-term neutrality, integrity, and sustainability of decentralized systems. Accordingly, the DCF offers a larger arsenal of support mechanisms.
Similarly to the Ethereum Foundation, the Solana Foundation, and the Interchain Foundation, the DCF provides:
- Validator Support and Delegation: To encourage healthy decentralization and resilience in the BLD ecosystem, the DCF delegates a share of its tokens to validators who operate nodes on the Agoric network.
- Strategic Grants and Bounty Programs: The DCF offers funding to innovations seeking to accelerate the Agoric or the Cosmos-IBC ecosystems. It prioritizes projects that promote decentralization, cross-border empowerment, cooperation and community building, and pushing technological barriers. Its grant recipients include Range and Tribbles.
- Legal and Regulatory Assistance: Ensuring that protocols operate within global compliance frameworks is crucial for helping decentralized projects navigate uncertainties and maintain resilience against jurisdictional pressures.
In addition, the DCF offers:
- Protocol Stewardship: The DCF has been shepherding Inter Protocol, assuming responsibility for covering expenses, maintaining and funding its Economic Committee, organizing associated Agoric governance votes, and providing marketing and business development services.
- Capital Markets, Market Making, and Treasury Management: The DCF is able to aid crypto projects with capital markets strategizing and development, market making partnerships, treasury management and accounting. Over the last year, the DCF has been solely responsible for making the BLD token available and known to a wider public.
- Marketing and Community Management Services: The DCF provides marketing support with the aim of streamlining brand recognition, widespread adoption, and community building. They involve advertising, educational, trading, community outreach campaigns, and other growth and public awareness tactics.
- Research and Advocacy: The foundation funds legal, economic, and political research that protects the operational freedom of decentralized networks.
Though their tactics differ, each foundation sustains and expands the crypto ecosystem through intentional funding, strategic decentralization, and continuous innovation. Together, these blockchain foundations don’t just fund projects—they shape the trajectory of permissionless, decentralized technology.
While the Ethereum, Solana, and Interchain Foundations often center around technical R&D and infrastructure scaling, DCF uniquely acts as a guardian of the broader Web3 ethos, ensuring decentralized systems can thrive not just technically, but politically and socially as well.
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