Original text from Ethereum Foundation's Global Policy Strategy Team

Compiled by Odaily Planet Daily, Qin Xiaofeng (@QinXiaofeng 888 )

Editor's Note: On July 1, the Ethereum Foundation's Global Policy Strategy team released a policy guide for governments and institutions, positioning Ethereum as critical public infrastructure.

The report states that Ethereum has operated without interruption since its launch in 2015. As of March 2026, it is secured by approximately $76 billion in staked ETH, boasts a geographically diverse validator network, multiple independent client implementations, and a vast developer ecosystem. The Foundation notes that many current digital services rely on centralized intermediaries, creating risks such as single points of failure, cyberattacks, or political pressure. Ethereum's decentralized architecture is better suited for applications like digital identity, public records, and asset tokenization. The report highlights real-world examples, including decentralized identity initiatives in Bhutan and Buenos Aires, and a land registry project based on Ethereum in India, demonstrating that governments have already begun exploring this technology.

Below is the original blog post from the Foundation, compiled by Odaily Planet Daily. Enjoy~

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Current global changes clearly indicate an urgent need for shared, neutral digital public infrastructure that is not controlled by any single centralized entity. Designed as a public programmable network independent of any single party, Ethereum was built to meet these needs.

Today, the Ethereum Foundation's Global Policy Strategy (GPS) team officially releases "Ethereum for Governments and Institutions"—a guide for public sector and institutional leaders facing policy and deployment decisions. This report is a non-technical primer covering how Ethereum works, its governance, how it compares to alternatives, and existing real-world deployments. This article introduces the report and answers the core question that prompted it: Why must digital infrastructure be neutral, and why Ethereum is suited for this role.

Why We Need Neutral Digital Infrastructure

The digital systems underpinning the modern economy—including payments, identity verification, registries, and institutional record-keeping—are fragmented, proprietary, and controlled by a handful of intermediaries.

Using these systems creates single points of failure, concentrating operational risk. A cyberattack, regional service outage, or natural disaster affecting a centralized operator can instantly paralyze an entire system.

Using these systems also means trusting these intermediaries and accepting their rules. Whether voluntarily or under external pressure, these intermediaries have the ability to unilaterally remove participants or change previously agreed-upon rules. What happens when an operator is no longer trustworthy? What happens when counterparties conflict over whose rules apply?

As more value moves online, these risks multiply, and the cracks in our digital foundation are widening. In recent years, we have witnessed increasing cloud service outages paralyzing government services, financial systems being weaponized across borders, and large identity service providers being hacked, leading to privacy violations and severe damage to corporate confidence. This is not a series of isolated anomalies but the normal reality facing infrastructure tied to centralized control.

Patching the existing fragile foundation with better rules cannot fundamentally fix the problem. The only true answer is trustworthy neutral infrastructure—where the protocol itself enforces the rules, free from human discretion or external pressure—and this is what Ethereum was built to achieve.

This report is a comprehensive primer on Ethereum and the broader blockchain ecosystem. It is tailored for governments and institutions evaluating digital infrastructure, providing the objective and rigorous analysis needed for high-stakes decisions.

Evaluating Blockchains Based on Objective Metrics

Blockchains exist on a broad spectrum, with fundamental differences in their technical architecture and governance structures. At one end of the spectrum are truly decentralized protocols. They are open, ownerless, and operate similarly to other public infrastructure everyone uses but no one controls, like the internet. At the other end are essentially enterprise products, controlled by a single company or a small group of insiders who set the rules. These products can fail like a company, and insiders should be held accountable if problems arise. This distinction has profound implications for policymakers and regulators. A blockchain's structure will determine whether it can serve as trustworthy neutral public infrastructure for decades to come or must be treated as an enterprise product with inherent liabilities and systemic risks.

One key goal of this report is to equip governments and institutions with the critical factors to consider before making policy decisions or deploying products on a blockchain. A recent OpenZeppelin report identified key differences between Layer 1 blockchains. Here are some points regarding Ethereum (unless otherwise noted, data as of March 2026):

• Uptime and Resilience: Ethereum has never experienced downtime since its launch in 2015 and has undergone extensive real-world stress testing. All other blockchains covered in the report have experienced between 1 and 7 downtime events, including a 19-hour pause on one major blockchain in 2023. Downtime events for centralized internet services also persist, making Ethereum's zero-downtime record unique.
• Economic Security: At the time of the OpenZeppelin report, Ethereum was secured by approximately $76 billion in staked ETH. The cost to execute a fraudulent transaction was approximately $50.7 billion, in addition to automatic on-chain slashing penalties. The corresponding costs for other blockchains are significantly lower, with many lacking automatic on-chain slashing as a deterrent.
• Validator Decentralization by Design: Ethereum's validators are distributed across continents and jurisdictions, with no single country holding a dominant share. This broad distribution is partly due to the accessibility of participation requirements. Anyone with a consumer-grade computer and 32 ETH can become a validator, a requirement significantly lower than for all other blockchains evaluated in the report. In contrast, many other Layer 1s require enterprise-grade infrastructure, deep Linux administration expertise, and nearly perfect uptime, leading to validation concentrated among well-capitalized operators. Consequently, Ethereum's validator set is more diverse, decentralized, and resistant to capture than any other blockchain in the report.
• Software and Infrastructure Diversity: Ethereum's nodes and validators run on multiple cloud providers and physical servers, with no single provider holding a dominant share. The community maintains over five independent software client implementations, developed by different teams using different programming languages, significantly reducing the risk of a single bug or fault disabling the network. No other Layer 1 blockchain in the report has comparable diversity. Most run on a single client software, creating significant network failure risk.
• Counterparty Risk: Because Ethereum has no operator, building applications on it does not introduce new counterparties. No single party can change the rules, restrict access, reorder the network for commercial gain, or shut it down. The system's integrity does not depend on the continued solvency, goodwill, or strategic interests of any single entity. Most other Layer 1 blockchains do not meet this standard. For example, the foundation behind one blockchain mentioned in the OpenZeppelin report directly shapes its validator ecosystem. Other blockchains have corporate entities exerting substantial influence over the chain. The OpenZeppelin report notes that in one case, the company behind a major blockchain controlled approximately 42% of the token supply, extending this control to validator selection and node lists. These are precisely the types of counterparty risk exposures that institutions typically need to disclose, justify, and manage.
• Ecosystem Maturity, Developer Scale, and Future Roadmap: The standards established by Ethereum have become the technical foundation upon which other blockchain ecosystems are built. For governments and institutions, this means building applications on common standards, enjoying unparalleled interoperability, and having greater flexibility to migrate between networks if needed. It also means access to a mature ecosystem of tools, auditing firms, and compliance service providers. The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) technology stack boasts over 11,000 developers, far exceeding the other chains covered in the report. This depth is reflected in the ongoing work of the Ethereum community, including a post-quantum security roadmap built into the core protocol (rather than as an add-on), supported by dedicated research teams and a public cryptography prize fund.

What This Means for Governments and Institutions

Public discourse often simplifies Ethereum to just a financial tool. This framework overlooks Ethereum's capability as an open, neutral, programmable infrastructure—suitable for any system requiring multiple parties to coordinate without a trusted intermediary. This includes transaction settlement, asset issuance, identity verification, registries, proofs, public records, supply chain traceability, and tokenized markets.

Many of these use cases are already materializing. For instance, Bhutan and Buenos Aires anchor their decentralized digital identity systems on Ethereum, enabling users to own their identity and choose what data to share. Ethereum-based rails are also being used to manage land records, combat fraud, and ensure the immutability of public records in India.

For many other government and institutional stakeholders, two urgent priorities exist: (1) selecting neutral infrastructure that allows coordination with other parties while maintaining their own sovereignty; and (2) determining how to govern such infrastructure that doesn't fit neatly into existing regulatory models. These two decisions are interdependent. A truly neutral network—one without a control point subject to capture or coercion—enables a unique type of public sector deployment and also requires a regulatory approach distinct from networks carrying such risks.

"Ethereum Basics for Governments and Institutions" is our effort to help stakeholders understand the Ethereum blockchain and how it differs from other infrastructure (including existing intermediated systems and other blockchains), aiming to inform these decisions.

The report is now available. Please click here to access it.