# Mission

Our journey began as a next-gen liquid staking protocol, but that is not where our ultimate ambition ends. We believe decentralized, non-custodial staking is an essential and foundational good for Ethereum. There is a need for a variety of solutions that serve many types of users and purposes.

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Our long term goal is to help onboard the next billion users onto crypto. We want to make DeFi easy, safe and transparent for normal people.

To support this, ether.fi will operate as a decentralized system under DAO governance. This represents a major shift in the development of financial services, and shifts in the power dynamic away from rent-seeing institutions in favor of users.

The ether.fi Foundation exists to oversee and carry out the decisions of the ETHFI token holders, and to steward the treasury and protocol. Key Foundation decisions will be made with token holder input. The Foundation will be accountable, and will provide regular transparency reports, to the token holders. The Ether.fi Foundation will be governed by its constitutional documents, which will be shared in a subsequent post.&#x20;



The governance token ETHFI gives community members a direct mechanism to contribute to the protocol and influence the growth of the ether.fi ecosystem. ETHFI token holders will have the opportunity to meaningfully participate in key decisions, such as:\


* The ether.fi Grants Program, which will launch to support the long term growth of the ecosystem.&#x20;
* Protocol longevity, vision, and key economic parameters, such as protocol fees, controller, contract and various other protocol upgrades.
* Software developer contributor permissions and green-lighting of node operators that run ETH nodes on behalf of the protocol.
* Token staking, to earn additional incentives by providing permissionless staking services (such as running an Ethereum node).
* Treasury diversification activities.
