Ethereum Foundation Drops Trillion-Dollar Security Bomb—Wall Street Still Doesn’t Get It

In a move that redefines crypto’s security paradigm, the Ethereum Foundation unveils a trillion-dollar initiative—while traditional finance scrambles to keep up.

No more ’wait-and-see’: ETH’s backers are building the Fort Knox of smart contracts, complete with formal verification and decentralized red teams. Meanwhile, your bank still uses SMS 2FA.

Closing thought: If this doesn’t trigger a fresh wave of institutional FOMO, maybe those hedge fund MBAs really are just overpaid spreadsheet jockeys.

Ethereum Foundation gathers data on security threats

The initiative will be led by Fredrik Svantes and Josh Stark, the initial co-chairs of the project. They will also have a three-person ecosystem stewards team, who will communicate with projects and provide input and advice.

The new team will map the Ethereum landscape for security threats and potential attack vectors across the entire EVM technology stack. The Ethereum Foundation has already set up a FORM for suggestions and reporting general security concerns. The findings will be presented in the form of a special report to identify focus areas. 

The mapping stage will investigate multiple Ethereum aspects, including blind signing, frontend security, wallet security, smart contracts, cloud infrastructure, consensus and protocol security, as well as Internet-level attacks, such as DNS-level censorship.

The team assigned by the Ethereum Foundation will identify and communicate pressing issues. Currently, on-chain security is still performed on a case-by-case basis, with special entities reviewing smart contracts. Yet even vetted, secure projects face exploits, suggesting the need for a common standard for identifying potential threats. 

Ethereum remains the top hacked chain

Estimated on-chain hacks have taken up to $5.3B in value, depending on the current asset price. 

Ethereum makes up between 40% and 50% of all hacks happening directly on the L1 chain. Multiple hacks also affected L2 chains, for the ease of switching back to Ethereum. 

Despite the threats, the Ethereum Foundation explained its rationale behind the initiative as trying to bring the world on-chain. 

0. Announcing the Trillion Dollar Security (1TS) initiative: an ecosystem-wide effort to upgrade Ethereum’s security to help bring the world onchain.

— Ethereum Foundation (@ethereumfndn) May 14, 2025

Ethereum’s L1 is once again trying to be scalable and become a venue for direct activity after allowing multiple L2 chains to siphon away traffic. However, the extra staking and security did not prevent hacks and, in fact, increased the amount stolen. Bridges between L1 and L2 were among the most attacked smart contracts due to the significant value locked and flaws in the smart contract logic.

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