https://news.bitcoin.com/vitalik-buterin-ethereums-price-rise-increases-our-sovereigntyVitalik Buterin: Ethereum’s Price Rise Increases Our Sovereignty
There are many businesses that are looking for an easy road into Ethereum with hand-holding and if BlockApps+BaaS provides that then great. That said, there are also other platforms that are trying to do the same thing and I am looking forward to seeing all of them roll out.
Ethereum Foundation can be self-sufficient for 4.5 years given the current upward momentum in Ether price.
When will the issuance of Ether taper off?
We are planning a proof of stake switch early next year, which will greatly reduce issuance, likely to 0-2m per year.
We have a rather detailed roadmap specced out, and I’d prefer not to copy it down here as I’ll be writing a blog post about it soon after Serenity PoC2 is released, but suffice it to say there’s a lot of interesting stuff that will be coming out. Casper and integration of advanced crypto are likely to be the two key focuses on the research side, on the dev side I would say light clients and Mist.