They are talking about crypto, though. What do you think the Ethereum foundation does? Wax poetry about Merkle trees?
https://esp.ethereum.foundation/about
“ ESP focuses on strengthening Ethereum's foundations and enabling future builders: improving infrastructure, expanding the range of tools available to those building on Ethereum, deepening our understanding of cryptographic primitives, and growing the builder ecosystem through education and community development. The work we support is open source, non-commercial and built for positive sum outcomes.”
It seems more likely to me that they were looking into "growing the [grifter] ecosystem through [...] community development" instead.