The Ethereum Foundation has begun putting a meaningful slice of its treasury to work — staking roughly 70,000 ETH to help fund its long-term operations and support the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Staking began with an initial 2,016 ETH deposit and is being run on open‑source validator tooling from infrastructure provider Attestant. The Foundation is using Dirk, a distributed signer that coordinates signing across jurisdictions to reduce single points of failure, alongside Vouch, which performs the validator duties. This move follows the Foundation’s treasury policy published last year, which commits to managing crypto and fiat holdings in ways that preserve long‑term sustainability while reflecting Ethereum values like decentralization, open‑source access and user privacy. Rather than letting ETH sit idle, the Foundation will now earn staking rewards and funnel those returns back into protocol research, ecosystem development and community grants. Market context: the CoinDesk Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) currently sits around 2.808%, offering a steady yield on staked ETH. Arkham Intelligence data indicates the Foundation still has about 172,650 ETH available to deploy, plus 10,000 WETH. Operationally, the Foundation’s staking setup blends hosted infrastructure with self‑managed hardware, uses minority validator clients, and is geographically spread across several countries — a deliberate design to limit centralization risks and single points of failure. By turning treasury ETH into active stake, the Foundation aims to generate a recurring funding stream for Ethereum‑aligned work while keeping its operational footprint resilient and aligned with the network’s decentralization goals. Read more AI-generated news on: undefined/news