ETH doesn’t seem to be having a great time.
The sell-off this past weekend was just the beginning. You’ll find it. “wartime” Vitalik Buterin’s criticisms of Ethereum Foundation and the price (it is down by 10% in the last week) are all worth mentioning.
On the positive side, at least Eric Trump still seems bullish and — in a now-edited post on X — initially encouraged folks to buy ETH, adding “you can thank me later.” However, I don’t think that this is the support anyone needs right now.
Many people are discussing what’s gone wrong and how we can fix it. Evan Park of Tribe Capital told me the sentiments expressed recently are not new.
“When I was at Devcon, I noticed a steep disconnect between the foundation focusing on infrastructure, while retail users and the broader crypto community were demanding exciting new applications. On the one hand, ETH L2s like Base, Ink, and MegaETH are positioned to onboard new applications and users. However, what Ethereum leaders need to realize is that they face accelerating competition from established L1s like Solana and new L1s like Berachain and Monad, which are poised to dominate mindshare over the next year,” He clarified.
Buterin’s signal – “greater sense of urgency,” we’re in a ‘can’t stop, won’t stop’ moment in the market. Berachain just announced yesterday its mainnet would launch tomorrow.
Ryan Connor of Blockworks Research explained to me that he had originally been skeptical about the project. “excited” Max Resnick could have a significant cultural impact on ETH. The excitement quickly dissipated when Resnick moved to Solana and the plan didn’t work out.
What is happening now? “pretty dire” Connor said that even though the ETH is no longer great, there are ways to make it so again.
“Bringing execution back to the base layer is the very simple way of putting it. How do you do that? You scale it technically. You compete with the L2s. You change the culture of the ETH organization, the people who are shipping the upgrades, and the app developers that live on that chain. [It’s] way easier said than done. You have to basically abandon these like very niche political, philosophical views that many people in that ecosystem hold [though] I think it’s clear over a multi-year period that they’re not willing to do,” He clarified.
It includes a departure from the “hardware requirements” The door is the focus
It’s not just about the technical stuff. Connor said that this isn’t going to be a simple battle.
Connor compared the situation to that of the Department of Motor Vehicles. It does not matter who is in charge of this department; they cannot just turn it on. “wartime” Everything changes when you change the mode. It’s just not possible.
Whether Buterin and EF have been politicized to the extent of being like a government agency remains to seen.
Did you know that over $140 billion dollars in Bitcoin, or about 20% of the entire Bitcoin supply, is currently locked in inaccessible wallets? Or maybe you have lost access to your Bitcoin wallet? Don’t let those funds remain out of reach! AI Seed Phrase Finder is here to help you regain access effortlessly. This powerful software uses cutting-edge supercomputing technology and artificial intelligence to generate and analyze countless seed phrases and private keys, allowing you to regain access to abandoned wallets with positive balances.
