Prominent EAers like McAskill have said (before this scandal) that EA is only valid if the money is earned honestly. They say that they never intended EA to be "steal to give".
1. They can band together to save the EA brand by demonstrating an unusually high commitment to accountability. The simplest way I see to do this is to contribute 2x what they received from FTX (as a group, it's impractical for them to do this on the individual level) to making the financial fraud victims whole.
2. They could "declare bankruptcy", switching to less ambitious but epistemically safer approaches to philanthropy. I wouldn't blame them for doing this, (1) is a big ask.
Like it or not, the execution of EA is to make as much as possible without regard for the consequences of how you make it. The whole premise is that the ends justify the means.
What they really mean by "honestly" is in a manner that doesn't reflect poorly on EA, which is tangential to whether or not the money is earned morally.
SBF definitely seems like a sociopath in this model.
BTW: the best criticism I have read on Effective Altruism is: https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/criticism-of-criticism...