Following this discussion, I would like to add my thoughts on Vitalik's current dilemma with Ethereum as follows:
1) "Ivory tower" thinking pattern constrains innovation: The Ethereum Foundation (EF) has developed an elite culture detached from the market between 2020-2024, continuously stacking technical concepts while ignoring users' real needs.
Facing widespread criticism and directional guidance, the EF management chose to "ignore" this, causing them to miss the critical time window for fixing issues, allowing high-performance chain competitors like Solana and Sui to break free from Ethereum's oligopolecosystem and grow wildly;
2) Excessive technical narrative leads to market fatigue: From DeFi, Non-Fungible Tokens to various Layer 2 expansion solutions, the Ethereum ecosystem is like a narrative production factory, continuously launching new technical narratives without forming effective value capture.
This gradually causes user fatigue towards a purely technical development path that doesn't reflect ecosystem and token price changes. Ethereum has always hoped to stimulate market build enthusiasm by raising technical barriers, but in fact, relying solely on technical narratives can hardly support sustained market prosperity;
3) Layer 2 strategy causes ecosystem fragmentation and liquidity dispersion: Layer 2 projects like Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base have technically solved certain expansion issues, such as reducing gas fees to an imperceptible level and significantly increasing TTPS, but have caused user experience complexity and excessive liquidity dispersion.
Compatibility issues of cross-chain standards between OP Stack, ZK Zand ethereum different camps, and interoperability barriers have temporarily made these market darlings blood-sucking vampires for token issuance, not only failing to nourish the Ethereum ecosystem effectively but causing continuous ecosystem stagnation;
<>4) $ETH value capture model fails: After implementing EIP-1559 burning mechanism, ETH's value capture effect has not continuously played its expected utility. ETH lacks a direct value accumulation mechanism linked to network usage, and Layer 2 market prosperity's transaction fees have not fully transmitted to the mainnet. The modular architecture concept advocating separation of infrastructure and application layers has made ETH become a basic infrastructure settlement layer rather rather than a necessary "value hub"p>
Therefore, when competitors like Solana achieve multiple times growth in ETH remains unable to effectively break through historical highighs;
5) Geek community culture culture deviates from market mainstream:'sekker-dominated community has long embraced technical puanism a with current market mainstream players. refusing to embrace "eme culture of" and other seemingly "low-level" innovation forms has led to a cognitive generation gap with new groups.
In contrast, the Solana ecosystem successfully attractede fresh blood and attention and market by embracing diverse innovation, forming a positive circular development effect.
The>, many friends who love Ethereum and hateEtdeeply, even seeing Ethereum's problems clearly, they still believe its current predicament is not irreversible. It cannot be denied that its ecosystem's active developer community and DFi infrastructure remain the strongest.
the>technical narrativeives and long-termism set the main tone, Ethereum will occupy the core position. market. For most Ethereum enthusiasts and holders,, crypto universe's second place" high expectations and viewing ETH from a pure decentralized network network asset perspective might lead to more correct choices.
