How Ethereum changes
No board approves Ethereum upgrades. This atlas shows how an idea becomes network rules: who participates, what each group can and cannot decide, and when your organization should pay attention.
Roles here have different responsibilities, not ranks in a hierarchy. Select one to see what it decides, what it cannot decide, and how someone takes part. Where a process is informal, it says so instead of inventing a rule.
A change moves through these stages in public. Each card states what the stage is, how it works, and what it means for an institution watching from outside.
Multiple independent teams implement the same protocol — once on the execution layer, once on consensus — and none of them needed a central license to exist. There is no single Ethereum software license; each client carries its own.
Ethereum groups changes into named upgrades. Scheduling is not a commitment: a proposal on a list can still be pulled, and scope moves until activation.
Every route below is public, and none of them requires a corporate appointment. Each states the basis on which someone takes part — and says so plainly where that basis is informal rather than written down.