Does the Ethereum foundation really not develop a post-Merge client?

The groups writing client software are at least writing open source software, generally under liberal or GPL licensing. So there's that. They aren't selling the software, although they do tend to establish commercial relationships with some entities. Many of those groups work in companies that do something more commercial with other blockchains than Ethereum, though.

Some of the funding for the various implementations comes from Ethereum Foundation (EF) itself. It's not just Geth which is supported by EF funds, but Geth has a special place because of its history.

The Ethereum Foundation takes the view that "client diversity" of proof-of-stake validator implementations is a security requirement: https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/nodes-and-clients/cl...

Shipping an endorsed EF implementation would undermine that requirement.

So instead, they publish and regularly update a spec, the major clients are all open source, to some extent the EF has sponsored the development of multiple clients, there is continuous interop testing between all the major clients going on, and the client teams meet at weekly EF meetings.

The next such meeting is today (the All Core Devs meeting), and it's conducted in public, you can listen in real time or afterwards on Youtube. You wouldn't see that if they were ordinary commercial companies.

Ideally they would like to see client diversity in the execution layer as well (Geth et al), and consider single-client (Geth) dominance to be a weak part of the system.

(I am writing an execution layer client that isn't in the list at the moment. Stealth mode, if you like. It's feature is extremely compact storage using a novel database structure, fast storage and network sync, and zk-EVM proofs will probably be coming. The organisation writing it (me) certainly isn't profit seeking with regard to this project (nor paid for that matter; it's a personal side project). Being able to fork and build on other groups' work, as well as test against them, is very useful!)

Notice: I get that they advertise this as diversity.

But from the perspective of someone who just wants to use the software it would be a lot easier if I don't have to sieve through 5 commercial websites.

Also: For the $ 1 billion they hold in assets [0] I'd expect them to provide at least one full set of usable software from it, not just specifications on how to write the software - which is what they seem to only be producing now?

They already cancelled their GUI wallet some years ago (https://github.com/ethereum/mist) which was kind of weird already considering that people did have money in it already.

But you could at least resort to using geth as a terminal UI client.

Now it seems ETH holders won't be able to access their funds using fully official software at all, which is kinda "meh", no matter if you're pro-crypto or against.

[0] Calculated with today's Ether price, based on: https://www.coindesk.com/business/2022/04/19/ethereum-founda...

They're aiming to be the equivalent of the W3C. They write the specifications and private companies build the clients, just like web browsers for the internet.

Ethereum's aim is to be a neutral platform for exchange of value, as big and important as the internet. Having one company make the official client would undermine that.