The Ethereum Foundation appointed Pascal Caversaccio, known as pcaversaccio, to its board on July 29 for an initial one-year voluntary term.
Summary
- One-year voluntary appointment places Pascal Caversaccio on the Ethereum Foundation’s four-member governing board alongside Buterin.
- SEAL 911 provides round-the-clock incident response and reports protecting more than $180 million in assets.
- Privacy and security now guide protocol work spanning layer-one privacy, post-quantum protection, and safer transactions.
The move expands the governing body to four members as the organization places greater weight on privacy, security and censorship resistance.
Caversaccio joins Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Foundation President Aya Miyaguchi and Swiss counsel Patrick Storchenegger. The official board update described him as a longtime Ethereum contributor, a co-founder and lead of SEAL 911, and a member of the Foundation’s Silviculture Society.
Ethereum Foundation adds a security specialist
The Ethereum Foundation said its board sets the organization’s vision and checks whether management’s strategies remain aligned with its values. It also described the body as a “security council” that protects the Foundation’s mission and ensures compliance as a Swiss foundation. That wording reflects the Foundation’s governance model rather than a separate regulatory status.
Caversaccio’s background combines technical security work and privacy advocacy. He wrote The Ethereum Cypherpunk Manifesto in 2024 and Ethereum Privacy: The Road to Self-Sovereignty in 2025. The Foundation also credited him with advancing security practices through technical contributions and community work.
Privacy and security shape the new structure
The appointment follows the Ethereum Foundation’s June reorganization, which reduced its workforce by 54 people, or roughly 20%. The new structure divided work across protocol, access, user, community and institutional layers, alongside operations and management teams.
Within that structure, the protocol cluster treats privacy and security as “non-negotiable protocol guarantees.” Its stated work includes layer-1 privacy, post-quantum security, safer protocol upgrades, reduced technical complexity and defences against harmful maximum extractable value practices.
However, the Foundation’s formal mandate places privacy and censorship resistance at the centre of its work. The mandate does not give the Foundation control over Ethereum. Instead, it describes the organization as one steward among many across the network.
SEAL 911 adds incident-response experience
SEAL 911 is a free, around-the-clock emergency service for active or imminent crypto security incidents. Security Alliance says the initiative has handled more than 3,300 tickets, coordinated over 125 war rooms and helped rescue more than $180 million in assets.
That operational background gives Caversaccio experience with exploits, compromised wallets, protocol failures and fund-recovery efforts. However, the Foundation did not announce any new security programme, budget or incident-response authority tied directly to his appointment.
The two organizations already have a working relationship. The Ethereum Foundation sponsored a SEAL security engineer in February to track and counter crypto drainers targeting Ethereum users.
In related coverage, the Foundation explained how its protocol security team uses coordinated artificial-intelligence agents to identify and verify software flaws. The team reported finding a remotely triggered libp2p flaw that was fixed and disclosed as CVE-2026-34219.
What happens during the one-year term
The board update did not specify committee assignments, voting powers beyond normal board duties or measurable targets for Caversaccio’s first year. It also did not announce compensation, stating only that the role is voluntary and begins with an initial one-year term.
His main formal responsibility will therefore remain board-level oversight. Management will continue to handle execution, while the board reviews whether major strategies and decisions fit the Foundation’s mandate and Swiss legal obligations.
The appointment may place more security and privacy expertise inside those reviews, but the Foundation did not promise specific protocol changes. Work on layer-1 privacy, post-quantum protection and safer transactions will still move through researchers, developers and Ethereum’s broader governance process.
The Foundation has not announced an exact end date for the term or whether Caversaccio may be reappointed. Any continuation beyond the initial year would require a later board decision or public update.
