The Ethereum Foundation wants governments to stop thinking of Ethereum as “crypto stuff” and start seeing it as public infrastructure. On July 1, the foundation’s Global Policy Strategy team published a non-technical guide titled “Ethereum Basics for Governments and Institutions,” designed to walk policymakers, central bankers, and institutional leaders through how the network actually works.
What the guide actually says
The primer’s core argument is straightforward: Ethereum is an ownerless, always-on piece of digital infrastructure that no single entity controls. Ethereum has experienced zero network outages since its launch in 2015. The guide contrasts this with other blockchains like Solana and TRON, which have seen between one and seven outages.
Citing an OpenZeppelin Technical Risk Assessment from March 2026, the primer notes that roughly $76 billion in ETH is currently staked on the network. The estimated cost to finalize fraudulent transactions sits at approximately $50.7 billion, plus penalties on top of that.
The guide highlights that Ethereum supports over five independent client implementations. The ecosystem also claims around 11,000 EVM developers actively building on it. As of March 2026, Ethereum holds approximately $159 billion in stablecoin value and roughly $15.2 billion in tokenized real-world assets.
