Vaulta's Four-Year Decline: Inside the Foundation's Fund Management Crisis and Community Trust Collapse

When the EOS Network Foundation rebranded to Vaulta Foundation and pivoted toward Web3 banking, it inherited not just a new mission but also significant community expectations. However, recent developments have exposed deep structural issues within the organization’s governance and financial management—raising urgent questions about how the foundation managed tens of millions in ecosystem development funds over the past four years.

The Abrupt Leadership Transition and Lingering Control Questions

On November 12, 2025, Yves La Rose announced his resignation as CEO of the Vaulta Foundation, claiming he had notified the network’s 21 block producers on October 29 of his voluntary departure and that successor selection would follow on-chain governance protocols. The announcement was graceful, emphasizing “gratitude” and “vision.”

Yet a month later, the community discovered something troubling: the foundation’s core multi-signature accounts remained under Yves La Rose’s control, with no actual power transfer occurring. Shortly after stepping down, Yves La Rose privately advocated for Greymass founder Aaron Cox to assume the position—a move that many viewed as orchestrating leadership continuity rather than enabling genuine governance transition.

The first major act under the new leadership was a proposal to allocate 10 million $A (EOS tokens) for continued core development funding. Community members questioned whether this represented authentic governance reform or merely a reshuffling of control while continuing to spend remaining ecosystem funds.

Marketing Expenditures and the Missing Results Problem

Between 2022 and 2023, the Vaulta Foundation launched an “ecosystem revitalization” campaign with expanded marketing budgets. According to nine disclosed quarterly reports, spending on public relations and marketing included $1.7 million in Q4 2022 alone, followed by an additional $1.1 million in Q1 2023—nearly $2.8 million in just six months.

The visible outcomes presented to the community were primarily metrics: conference attendance records, social media follower growth, network uptime statistics, and performance test results. However, deeper ecosystem indicators remained absent: developer adoption numbers were not disclosed, daily on-chain activity levels were invisible, and total value locked (TVL) remained negligible.

This disconnect between spending scale and measurable ecosystem impact sparked community concern. When quarterly reports emphasized only “highlights” without substantive “results,” financial transparency inevitably transformed into operational opacity.

The Greymass Grant Controversy: $5 Million in Funds Without Clear Deliverables

In June 2024, the Vaulta Foundation established a “middleware special fund” worth 15 million $A (EOS), allocating 5 million immediately to the Greymass development team. On-chain data analysis revealed a complex fund flow pattern: transfers moved from the foundation account to newly created Greymass wallets, followed by monthly distributions labeled with “Operation + USD/CAD price” notations resembling salary structures.

What followed raised additional scrutiny: recipient accounts subsequently transferred funds to external platforms, suggesting rapid conversion to fiat currency rather than reinvestment in ecosystem development.

The middleware infrastructure that Greymass was funded to develop—tools designed to simplify account creation and blockchain interaction—initially showed development progress. However, after the initial updates, technical output became sparse. Critical compatibility and stability issues persisted, with the tools remaining largely unimplemented by mainstream developers.

The community identified several unresolved questions: whether the $5 million allocation coincided suspiciously with Aaron Cox’s appointment; whether spending oversight mechanisms existed; and why a major grant yielded minimal documented technical progress over an extended period.

Transparency Collapse: From Weekly Updates to Complete Silence

The Vaulta Foundation initially built its reputation on financial transparency. The timeline reveals a stark deterioration:

• 2021: Weekly progress reports (Everything EOS Weekly Report) provided real-time updates to community members
• 2022: Monthly yield reports maintained regular communication, though with occasional gaps
• 2023: Quarterly reports (ENF Quarterly Report) represented the first reduction in reporting frequency
• 2024-2025: No financial reports released whatsoever

Peak expenditure occurred in Q4 2022, reaching $7.9 million quarterly. Subsequent quarters showed gradual spending reduction, yet the reports that did exist typically disclosed only aggregate figures without detailed categorical breakdowns, making fund flow tracking nearly impossible for external observers.

The foundation’s quarterly reports repeatedly mentioned “Grant Framework” and “Pomelo” funding initiatives, which were suspended in 2023. Whitepaper commitments regarding dedicated fund management for specific projects were never publicly reconciled or settled. The destination of funds transferred to external accounts and platforms remained unexplained.

Most significantly, since Q1 2024, the foundation released no financial reports, no audit results, no budget distributions, no project recipient lists, and no outstanding grant documentation. Operations transitioned from “high-frequency disclosure” to what community members characterized as “complete opacity.”

The Grant Distribution Mystery: Funds Allocated but Outcomes Unknown

In its early phase, the Vaulta Foundation distributed ecosystem funds through multiple channels: the Grant Framework (milestone-based grants for technical projects), Recognition Grants (project rewards), and public funding pools via partnerships like Pomelo.

In Q4 2021—the only quarter with comprehensive disclosure—the foundation allocated:

• $3.5 million in Recognition Grants (averaging $100,000 per project)
• $1.3 million to support five technical working groups
• $1.265 million to community-autonomous organization initiatives
• $500,000 as the initial matching pool

However, this complete transparency never repeated. From Q4 2021 through Q4 2023, while grants remained the largest quarterly spending category (often 40-60% of total expenditure), subsequent reports systematically eliminated essential information:

• No disclosure of specific grant recipients
• No reporting of individual project funding amounts
• No documentation of project completion status
• No tracking of fund utilization
• No assessment of milestone achievement

Only the first quarterly report provided project-level fund flow details. In the eight subsequent reports, grants represented the single largest budget item, yet their destination and outcomes remained completely undisclosed. Community members observed that matching pools exceeded $10 million, yet most funded projects provided minimal updates, and some disappeared after receiving disbursements.

This pattern raised a critical question: did the foundation use ecosystem funding as its stated purpose, or did “ecosystem grants” serve as a mechanism to distribute inflationary reserves while avoiding accountability?

Token Performance and the Foundation’s Abdication of Responsibility

$A (EOS) declined sharply throughout the year, hitting lows of $0.21—a crisis indicator for any blockchain ecosystem. When community members repeatedly asked the foundation about response strategies, the consistent answer was: “Token price falls outside the foundation’s mandate.”

While technically defensible, this response overlooked a deeper concern: when ecosystem indicators universally deteriorated and community confidence collapsed, the foundation articulated no stabilization expectations, no support mechanisms, and no contingency planning.

Instead, the foundation announced its impending “dissolution” without providing detailed transition roadmaps or handover protocols. The community’s concern extended beyond accountability—it reflected anxiety about whether the foundation’s withdrawal during crisis reflected inability, indifference, or unwillingness to address systemic issues.

Patterns and Implications

The narrative of the Vaulta Foundation reflects a broader pattern: years of expanding budgets that produced declining tangible results, marketing expenses without corresponding ecosystem growth, grants distributed without tracked outcomes, and governance structures that promised decentralization but concentrated power.

From Yves La Rose’s departure without power transfer, to the $5 million middleware allocation showing minimal deliverables, to quarterly marketing spend exceeding $2.8 million with unclear impact, to ecosystem grants exceeding $10 million with vanished documentation—the trajectory suggests systematic dysfunction in fund management and community accountability.

Whether interpreted as administrative failure or deliberate obfuscation, the outcome remains consistent: community trust in the Vaulta Foundation eroded substantially, and the mechanisms that once positioned transparency as a core organizational value transformed into mechanisms for opacity.

The Vaulta ecosystem’s decline serves as a cautionary case study in how even well-capitalized blockchain initiatives can collapse when governance promises diverge from operational reality, when financial stewardship becomes inseparable from power concentration, and when community accountability mechanisms fail to function as intended.