Coin World Report:
Author: Haotian
Disagreeing with the notion of “the big company theory” and “narrative virtual” about Ethereum, the following are some perspectives to consider:
1) Ethereum is an experimental product of decentralized governance in the crypto industry, not controlled by centralized companies or organizations. Developers, researchers, node operators, ETH holders, and others from around the world participate and contribute to its development. The collaborative nature of open-source code, community-driven decision-making processes, and transparent governance mechanisms are expected to surpass any centralized organizational structure in the long run, despite being slower in efficiency. Ethereum solves the problem of “centralized corporate disease” and it is impossible for it to suffer from the disease of big companies before achieving its mission. If Ethereum is really not working, the choice of a decentralized architecture would be to embrace “forking” and let it die, as there will always be a more powerful new “Ethereum” emerging. The fact that Ethereum is still the center of the entire crypto world is enough to prove its significance.
2) In terms of public chain technology, Ethereum has smoothly transitioned from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) over the past few years. From sharding strategies to the eventual adoption of a rollup-centric core strategy, and the subsequent implementation of the roadmap, the security, stability, and engineering quality throughout this process have met expectations. However, there has been a disconnect between the pace of infrastructure development, application implementation, and the market’s ability to generate profits. Layer 2 solutions are indeed affected by the mainnet gas fees and bandwidth performance, but even with the successful London upgrade, it did not bring about the expected prosperity of Layer 2. Ideally, with Layer 2, there would be exponential breakthroughs in user ecology, and Ethereum could achieve deflationary pressure through “taxation” and “Gas Burn”. However, the reality is that although the barrier to entry for launching chains has been lowered and the narrative of RaaS has fermented, the ideal mass adoption is still far from being realized. Frankly speaking, this has already gone beyond the scope of Ethereum’s technical framework.
3) “Narratives” are the result of the evolution of development trends and are derivatives of commercial thinking overlaid on technology. For example, the narrative of Restaking emerged with the introduction of the @eigenlayer protocol, the modular narrative emerged with the @CelestiaOrgDA chain, and the narrative of ZK-Rollup emerged with the introduction of @Starknet. In the future market, the @ParticleNtwrk chain’s breakthroughs might bring the “chain abstraction” narrative to the forefront, and the unified liquidity trust ecosystem that underlying protocols like @ProjectZKM aim to build could eliminate the boundaries of blockchain. There are too many topics and points of discussion related to “narratives”. Objectively speaking, “narratives” are the result of an excess of developer power and FOMO from hot money. Narratives allow for imagination in technology, although an excessive focus on narratives can give a sense of being detached from reality. However, the excessive focus on narratives is a result of natural market evolution. Like blowing bubbles, narratives will be replaced, but they will always exist.
In other words, a narrative that does not create FOMO would lose its attractiveness to attract all the “resources, talent, and funds” involved, and it would be better to stay within the confines of Web 2 without the burden of being labeled as fraudulent. Of course, memes are also a form of narrative, but if the market were to bearish everything that has a building process and underlying business logic supporting other narratives, memes would lose any fundamental basis.
