Is Ethereum facing market skepticism due to the narrative of big company syndrome and narrative detachment

Report: “Excessive Narrative” is the natural outcome of the market, and narratives will change but will always exist.
Author: Haotian
I disagree with the notion of Ethereum as a “big company” and the dismissal of narratives. Here are some perspectives to consider:
1) Ethereum is an experimental product of decentralized governance in the crypto space. It is not controlled by centralized companies or organizations, but rather involves the participation and contributions of developers, researchers, node operators, ETH holders, and more from around the world.
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 slower efficiency. Ethereum aims to solve the “centralized company syndrome,” so it is unlikely to suffer from the “big company syndrome” before achieving its mission.
If Ethereum fails, the choice for 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 the center of the entire crypto world is evidence enough.
2) From a public chain technology perspective, Ethereum has smoothly transitioned from Proof of Work (PoW) to Proof of Stake (PoS) over the past few years. It has progressed from sharding strategies to the eventual implementation of a Rollup-Centric core strategy, with further steps outlined in the roadmap. The security and stability, as well as the engineering quality, have met expectations. The shift from sharding to Rollup is also a result of market trends.
The problem lies in the fact that the technological iteration of public chains does not always synchronize with market cycles. There is a disconnect between infrastructure development, application deployment, and the pace of market profitability. While Layer 2 solutions are affected by mainnet gas fees and bandwidth performance, even the successful London upgrade did not bring about the expected prosperity of Layer 2. Ideally, Layer 2 would have seen exponential growth with numerous chains and breakthroughs in user ecosystems. Ethereum could have achieved deflationary effects through “taxation” and “gas burn.”
However, the reality is that the barrier to launching chains has lowered, and the narrative of RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service) has fermented, but the ideal Mass Adoption is still far off. Frankly speaking, this has exceeded the constraints of Ethereum’s technical framework.
The NFT FOMO wave in 2021 brought dividends to Ethereum, objectively speaking. It was a market effect that emerged from the decentralized architecture rather than being directly driven by Ethereum’s “core” developers.
3) “Narratives” are the result of evolving development trends, a derivative of commercial thinking overlaid on technology.
For example, the narrative of Restaking emerged with the introduction of the @eigenlayer protocol, and the modular narrative emerged with the existence of the @CelestiaOrg DA chain. The narrative of ZK-Rollup emerged with the introduction of @Starknet. In the future market, the charge of @ParticleNtwrk chain may bring the “chain abstraction” narrative to the forefront, and the unified liquidity trust ecosystem that bottom-layer protocols like @ProjectZKM want to build may eliminate the boundaries of blockchain. There are too many narrative topics.
Objectively speaking, “narratives” are the result of an excess of developer forces and FOMO from hot money. Narratives allow for imaginative possibilities in technology, although “excessive narratives” may feel speculative. However, “excessive narratives” themselves are the natural outcome of the market. Like blowing bubbles, narratives will change but will always exist.
In other words, narratives that do not generate FOMO will lose their appeal to be involved in all the “resources, talent, and funding.” In that case, it might be better to stay within the confines of Web 2 and avoid the burden of being associated with scams and fraud. Of course, memes are also a form of narrative, but if the market is bearish on all narratives that have a building process and underlying business logic, memes would lose their fundamental basis.