Ethereum’s New Plan To Boost Security and Interest

The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has announced a new initiative, which it claims will help the Ethereum network achieve its goal of becoming “civilization-scale infrastructure that securely underpins the internet and global economy”. 

Announced May 14, the plan is known as the ‘Trillion Dollar Security’ initiative — not because it’ll cost a trillion dollars, but because it’ll prepare the network to secure trillions of dollars of capital. EF described the plan as “an ecosystem-wide effort to upgrade Ethereum’s security to help bring the world onchain.” 

According to the Foundation, achieving this goal will mean:

• Billions of individual users are each comfortable storing more than US$1,000 (AU$1,551) on-chain, collectively storing trillions on the network; and 
• Enterprises and governments will feel safe storing over US$1 trillion (AU$1.55 trillion) of value “inside a single contract or application”.

Related: 11 Mainnet Improvements Made in Ethereum’s Biggest Upgrade Since the Merge

Plan: Fix Issues and Spread the Word About Ethereum’s Security Advantages

The initiative will have three components: mapping, executing and communicating.

1. Mapping will involve a thorough audit of “every layer and domain of the network” to identify security strengths and weaknesses — data from this mapping will be compiled into a security overview report to identify which areas are the higher set priority.
2. The executing component is where security fixes are applied to the network. High priority areas identified in the mapping will be fixed first and investments will be made to address longer-term, lower priority areas.
3. Communication relates to an increased emphasis on communicating to users the security benefits offered by Ethereum relative to other competing systems.

Initially the project will be led by co-chairs Fredrik Svantes, Ethereum’s Protocol Security Lead and Josh Stark, a member of the Ethereum Foundation’s management team. This leadership team will be supported by three “ecosystem stewards” — samczsun, the founder of the Security Alliance (SEAL), Mehdi Zerouali, the co-founder of blockchain research firm Sigma Prime and Zach Obront, the co-founder of Etherealize.

Ethereum Looking to Turn Around Weak Price Performance

Ethereum’s price action over the past few years has been fairly underwhelming as attention and capital inflows have drifted to competitors, particularly Solana (SOL). 

According to data from CoinGecko, since the depths of the crypto winter in December 2022, SOL has soared from a low of US$8.18 (AU$12.69) to an all-time high in January 2025 of just over US$293 (AU$454.77) — an increase of almost 36x. Over a similar timeframe Ethereum went from a low of US$1,158 (AU$1,797) in December 2022 to a recent high of US$4,089 (AU$6,347) in December 2024, an increase of just 3.5x — around 10x smaller than what Solana has seen. 

Against Bitcoin, ETH has also been weak, falling from about 0.085 BTC in late 2022 to around 0.025 BTC today. Recently, though, Ethereum has seen a solid rally off the back of its latest upgrade, Pectra. In the days following Pectra’s launch last week the price of ETH jumped from US$1,792 (AU$2,781) to a high US$2,702 (AU$4,195) — an increase of around 50%.

Related: Matt Hougan: Ethereum’s 53% Surge Fuels Push for Crypto Diversification

And there’s reason to be hopeful — despite its relatively weak price action, Ethereum is still the second largest cryptocurrency by market cap and still dominates the DeFi market. 

Data from DeFi Llama shows that Ethereum still has over 50% of the total value locked (TVL) across all crypto networks, valued at almost US$62 billion (AU$96 billion). Second-placed Solana holds just 8% of TVL — valued at just under US$10 billion (AU$15.5 billion).