$57M Sky Deposit is Not From Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum Devs Say

The Ethereum Foundation (EF), the non-profit organization that supports the development of the Ethereum blockchain, did not make the nearly 30,100 ETH deposit into the major decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Sky, formerly MakerDAO .

On 10 March, somebody deposited 30,098 ETH into Sky, according to the data by crypto intelligence platform Arkham. Per the current prices, this amount is currently worth a whopping $57,614,795.

Source: Arkham

What’s immediately noticeable is that the sender’s wallet is marked as ‘Ethereum Foundation?’. Many in the cryptosphere presumed that the Ethereum Foundation moved these funds to Sky. This includes journalist and blockchain blogger Colin Wu, known as Wu Blockchain.

However, his now-deleted Twitter post was one to which the Ethereum community members responded – denying that this is the Foundation’s address.

Source: sassal0x, Twitter

Anthony Sassano, Ethereum educator and founder of The Daily Gwei, posted that the address in question is not the Ethereum Foundation.

Minutes later, Ethereum developer Eric Conner, who’s also the co-author of EIP-1559, called the reports that the wallet belongs to the address ‘completely fake.’

The two criticized Crypto Twitter for speculating.

Source: sassal0x, Twitter

Wu Offers Another Explanation

Wu soon posted a correction, stating that the on-chain data shows that the address is not Foundation’s. Instead, he claimed it was likely an early Ethereum investor.

The wallet got 4 million DAI from the Ethereum Foundation ETH Sale in May 2022, while the transaction behavior traces back to the wallet ‘jonny.eth.’

The owner proceeded to deposit 30,098 ETH into the MakerDAO vault on 11 March. It also has an outstanding debt position of 78 million DAI, the data shows.

Source: Wu Blockchain, Twitter

Meanwhile, this discussion came at an important point, at the time of an even larger debate: sell or borrow.

The Ethereum Foundation often sells ETH to fund itself, but members of the Ethereum community aren’t happy with this.

Conner, for example, said in late January 2025 that the EF’s number one use case of the second-largest chain is to “dump ETH.”

Sassano called for the Foundation to stake the coins instead of swapping them for stablecoins.

Source: sassal0x, Twitter

However, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin argued that there are two major concerns related to staking: regulatory worries and the possibility of being forced into taking a position on any contentious hard forks in the future.

Still, he said, there are ways to minimize these, which the EF has been exploring.

Subsequently, in February 2025, the Ethereum Foundation allocated 45,000 ETH to decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. This includes Compound , Stark , and Aave . “More to come, including exploring staking,” the team said at the time.