Another leader but an order of magnitude less known is Andre Cronje from Fantom. It worths a read (so much transparency in a crypto company is unusual): https://andrecronje.medium.com/fantom-an-inside-financial-pe...
Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation are a dangerous point of centralization that at least expose it to risk of harsher regulation in the near future for years operating as an unregistered security. The SEC has already hinted at this, while the CFTC has indicated that only bitcoin is likely to be regulated as a commodity.
Beyond the governmental risk of Ethereum having a clear head with a throat to choke, there's the simple "hit by a bus" risk. Vitalik is just a single human, and his unexpected death could lead to a massive collapse of confidence from both investors and developers who have other options. It wouldn't completely die with him, but it would be a major setback, because the cult of Vitalik is a not insignificant part of Ethereum.
Also, the CFTC chair actually indicated that both BTC and ETH are commodities: https://cryptopotato.com/cftc-chair-reiterates-bitcoin-and-e...
That spec is drafted online in the open and discussed in weekly calls. The Ethereum Foundation is similar to the W3C in that they help co-ordinate the development of it.
I think any token that gains enough prominence in the market is going to eventually fall under government purview. Why? Because when financial crime happens, victims want the government to go after the criminals and recover their lost funds. Crypto fans can't have it both ways: if their goal is to create a financial system that lives entirely outside of government control, then they shouldn't reasonably rely on the government to go after the criminals bringing the entire crypto space down.
The reason that the government winds up stepping in is because the chaos and instability created by this completely unregulated side-chain financial system winds up threatening the Federally backed system as well. Market contagion is real and collapses in one sector or market often reverberate across the entire system.
We're seeing it happen in banking right now: a bunch of banks made small business loans to miners that are now underwater because the price of crypto tanked and the GPU market cooled, so their revenue and equipment value has tanked at the same time.