Ethereum Foundation's Mandate Draws Hoskinson's Fire

The Ethereum Foundation published its long-anticipated EF Mandate on March 13, 2026. The document, described as part constitution and part manifesto, was originally drafted for EF members but has since been made public. It sets out what the Foundation must protect and what it must never trade away.

Ethereum governance sits at the center of this release. The Mandate draws a firm line around four non-negotiables, what EF calls CROPS: censorship resistance, open source, private, and secure. According to the Foundation’s official blog post, these conditions are what make Ethereum worth using, building, and defending.

Hoskinson Wastes No Time Responding

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, was quick to weigh in. Writing on X, he compared the EF Mandate to what he called a “Constitution, if you will.” He then offered to connect the Ethereum Foundation with the University of Buenos Aires should they want to hold a convention.

That reference was deliberate. Cardano ran its own Constitutional Convention in 2024 as part of its Voltaire governance phase. Hoskinson was pointing to that directly. His message, according to CryptosR_Us on X, read as a challenge: if Ethereum is formalizing its governance identity, it should stop treating itself as apolitical infrastructure.

The EF Mandate now lives on-chain. The Foundation stored it on Ethereum itself, making it free for anyone to read, reinterpret, or remix. No obligation placed on anyone outside EF, but the symbolic weight of that decision is hard to ignore.

What the Mandate Actually Says

The Foundation’s board wrote that EF is not Ethereum’s parent, ruler, or final authority. Its role is stewardship only. The document states that Ethereum’s self-sovereign use must remain extraction-resistant and offer seamless UX. Without those conditions, the Foundation wrote, “we have nothing.”

As the Ethereum Foundation posted on X, the Mandate protects what they call user self-sovereignty above all else. That framing is deliberate, tying Ethereum’s technical design directly to a philosophical position about human freedom and digital autonomy.

Hoskinson’s governance model for Cardano follows a different path. Cardano codified its governance through on-chain voting and a written constitution, ratified at a community-run convention. Ethereum has historically resisted that kind of formal structure. The EF Mandate does not introduce on-chain governance voting, it clarifies the Foundation’s own internal principles.

The Broader Governance Split

The contrast between the two networks now has a document at the center of it. One side has a ratified constitution backed by community delegates. The other has a stewardship mandate from a foundation that insists it holds no final authority.

Whether the EF Mandate changes anything practically inside Ethereum remains an open question. What it does is give critics and supporters alike a written text to point to. Hoskinson pointed to it immediately. That alone tells you something about how charged this space has become around Ethereum governance and who gets to define it.

The EF Mandate, stored permanently on the World Computer, is free to read. Whether it becomes a reference point or a flashpoint depends entirely on what comes next.