Kleros Founder Proposes Redirecting Up to 10% of Ethereum Validator Rewards to Fund Core Infrastructure
A new proposal posted to Ethereum's research forum would have validators voluntarily divert a portion of their staking income to public goods funding. If a majority of validators agree, the redirect becomes mandatory for everyone on the network. Some outlets have labeled the mechanism an "Ethereum tax," but that framing is disputed: the initial participation is voluntary, and the mandatory trigger is a design feature activated only by a demonstrated majority preference, not an externally imposed levy.
Clément Lesaege, founder of decentralized arbitration platform Kleros and identity protocol Proof of Humanity, posted a proposal to Ethereum Research (ethresear.ch) on June 21, 2026, outlining a mechanism called "Validator Redirected Revenue." The idea arrives as Ethereum's core development ecosystem faces a documented funding shortfall that former Ethereum Foundation coordinator Trent Van Epps publicly estimated at roughly $30 million per year.
How the Mechanism Works
Under the proposal, each validator would signal a preferred redirect rate between 0% and 10% of their staking rewards. If a majority of validators choose a nonzero rate, the redirect applies to the entire validator set, including those who initially opted out. Validators also select which organizations or addresses receive the funds; a "splitter" smart contract then aggregates those preferences and distributes payments automatically. Lesaege designed it to be largely hands-off: validators set their preferences once and the contract handles ongoing distributions.
Ethereum validators currently earn roughly 700,000 ETH per year in aggregate rewards. A redirect in the 5% to 10% range would send between 50,000 and 70,000 ETH annually into ecosystem funding, equivalent to approximately $120 million at prices prevailing at the time of publication.
For context, Gitcoin Grants 24, held in October 2025, distributed around $1.8 million across multiple funding mechanisms. Protocol Guild, an independent on-chain system that pays Ethereum core contributors directly, has accumulated over $100 million in cumulative donations since 2022, operates independently of Ethereum Foundation funding cycles, and currently supports 188 active contributors through four-year vesting schedules.
The Funding Gap Driving the Debate
Ethereum's core infrastructure has historically depended on a combination of Ethereum Foundation grants, protocol fees, and goodwill from teams who build and maintain critical shared tooling.
That arrangement is showing strain in 2026. The EF's Client Incentive Program, which funded major client teams, expired in April 2026 with no replacement in place. Within the five months before Lesaege's post, approximately eight senior EF staff departed, including both co-executive directors: Tomasz Stańczak, who left in February 2026, and Hsiao-Wei Wang, who departed on June 18, 2026.
To cover operational costs, the EF staked around 70,000 ETH in February 2026 and sold at least 15,000 ETH to BitMine for roughly $33 million.
Van Epps, writing publicly on June 18, warned that client teams, researchers, and coordination groups face a "slow-burning funding crisis within three to nine months." He estimated that current staking revenue flowing to core development covers only $3.9 million to $5.4 million per year, or between 13% and 18% of what is actually needed. Lesaege's proposal is framed as a starting point rather than a finished answer, and no formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal or governance vote has been scheduled.
The Governance Tension
A central contested element of the mechanism is its majority-vote trigger.
Paul Dylan-Ennis, a lecturer at University College Dublin and author of "Absolute Essentials of Ethereum," noted that the debate ultimately concerns Ethereum's governance and monetary policy rather than just its technical design. The line between a coordinated funding system and centralized control becomes harder to draw once a majority vote removes individual validators' ability to opt out. Joshua Tan, a DAO infrastructure researcher, has raised a related concern: that prolonged uncertainty around Ethereum's governance structures is causing academic talent to disengage from the ecosystem's governance research community, compounding the coordination problems the proposal is trying to solve.
That tension is especially relevant outside the United States and Europe. Roughly 27% of all ETH is currently staked, and the majority of that stake sits with large Western operators: Lido, Coinbase, Kraken, and similar institutional platforms. Validators in Nigeria, India, Kenya, and Ethiopia represent a growing but still minority share of the total. Under a majority-vote system, those operators could effectively set the redirect rate and direct where the funds go, while retail holders in South Asia and Africa who stake through liquid staking protocols (the standard route, given that solo validation requires 32 ETH, currently worth more than $85,000 at prices prevailing at the time of publication) would absorb the yield reduction without any direct say in allocation decisions. It is worth noting that the proposal's design does not prescribe which recipients receive funds: validators are free to direct payments to any address. The allocation risk described here arises from the concentration of majority stake in Western institutional hands, not from the mechanism itself.
What It Means for the Regions Growing Fastest
India ranks first and Nigeria ranks second in the 2026 Global Crypto Adoption Index. Sub-Saharan Africa recorded stablecoin volume growth above 180% year-over-year, largely driven by remittances and savings in high-inflation economies. The region's rapid expansion in decentralized finance has also been powered by Layer 2 adoption, which lowered transaction costs enough to bring retail users into the ecosystem. Those Layer 2 networks run on the same shared Ethereum infrastructure that a sustained funding shortfall would put at risk, making the stakes in this debate directly relevant to the communities driving the most growth.
Developers in these markets are disproportionately reliant on free public goods: open-source tooling, client software, and public RPC endpoints (the free access points that applications use to read blockchain data). A sustained funding shortfall puts those resources at risk in ways that hit resource-constrained regional teams hardest.
Conversely, a well-governed implementation of the mechanism could create the first protocol-embedded, recurring funding stream accessible to teams outside traditional Western grant committees. Bruce Xu of LXDAO, a contributor cited in a companion ethresear.ch roadmap post by Sejal Rekhan and Devansh Mehta, cautioned that without clear value loops for contributors the proposal may not deliver lasting resilience, and pointed to Linux and Apache Foundation governance as more durable models. Lesaege himself is listed as a key contributor to that same roadmap post, a connection that frames his forum proposal as part of a coordinated research effort rather than a standalone intervention.
Lesaege has offered no timeline for moving the proposal forward. The immediate next milestone is the community deliberation already underway on ethresear.ch; a formal Ethereum Improvement Proposal, which would bring the mechanism into the protocol's official governance process, would follow only if that discussion reaches sufficient consensus.