Author: Zuo Ye Web3
ETH and its betrayal
In 2023, Wanxiang, an early Ethereum investor, sold its ETH multiple times at an average price of $2,047. In May 2026, Bankless founder Hoffman liquidated his ETH holdings at an average price of around $2,000.
Bankless can be considered the ETH propaganda department, amplifying the top meme concept of "ETH is Money." During the 2021 bull market, the fervor for ETH was equivalent to a firm bullish view on the future of blockchain.
Perhaps due to its important position, or perhaps due to the departure of eight people from the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum founder and spiritual leader Vitalik Buterin wrote a long statement, frankly stating that the Ethereum Foundation (EF) only controls 0.16% of the ETH supply and should not have a position that surpasses other ecosystem nodes. He also stated that he will gradually withdraw from operations and give Ethereum freedom.
Ethereum has no killer app.
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ETH is Money?
Believe it or not, I believe it.
But how did all of this disappear? I'm referring to market confidence in the price of $ETH, holders' trust in the Ethereum Foundation and Vitalik, and fundamental activity—it's currently at the peak of Ethereum's dominance. So why is there so much discontent? Is it just because of the price?
If $BTC drops sharply, it's a good opportunity to buy the dip. If $SOL drops sharply, the extreme rebound of FTX has already proven its value. If $HYPE drops sharply, you can follow Arthur Hayes to trade in waves.
Categorizing it as Vitalik's personal name is a valid reason, but there are many abstract concepts surrounding public blockchain founders and foundations. Solana founder Anatoly actively sought to piggyback on the Perp DEX concept in the Hyperliquid community, and several Ripple founders engaged in a massive sell-off of $XRP. Not to mention the rampant L2 era, where founders were mostly TGE masters with overflowing egos, as seen in the Movement group.
Upon closer comparison, Vitalik may be abstract, and EF may be "inefficient," but it's hard to say that they created ETH's current predicament. If they themselves are not the problem, then the problem lies with the broader environment.
Image caption: Is ETH Money?
Image source: @zuoyeweb3
The most typical example is Chinese concept stocks, which have created a wealth-generating myth over the past 20 years through offshore structure, dollar funds, and US IPOs . Leaving aside trial products like Brilliance Auto and China.com, the first truly significant Chinese concept stock was Sina.com in 2000, which officially started the wave of Chinese concept stocks.
The “ American concept + Chinese implementation ” division of labor model that we see today is a remnant of this system. Even Ethereum itself is a kind of final remnant of a system that was implemented in China and then went global.
In 2014/15, Vitalik first became Shen Bo's patron, and then received a $500,000 investment from Wanxiang, led by Xiao Feng. Unlike the mining model of $BTC, Ethereum's IXO fundraising, PoW mining and then PoS staking carried three waves of passengers on one vehicle .
In other words, ETH has been a highly institutionalized system from the beginning. I don't mean to say that ETH is a coin controlled by powerful players, or that Vitalik does hope that EF will only be a regular node. However, there is absolutely no equal status among nodes in the Ethereum ecosystem. It wasn't like that before, it isn't like that now, and it won't be like that in the future.
In this situation, the founders and foundations of public chains actually have to assume more responsibilities. This has nothing to do with the price of the coin. Precisely because Ethereum is fragmented, someone has to step forward and use relatively strong appeal to curb the disorderly increase of entropy in the system.
However, Vitalik chose to make EF bloated first. From the Infinite Garden to the Ladder theory, the excessive abstraction has left token holders at a loss. In particular, in the rsETH incident, Aave founder Stani actually became like Duke Huan of Qi, who respected the king and expelled the barbarians.
Even when the Solana Foundation set aside past grievances and actively supported DeFi United, EF continued selling its tokens as usual, and Vitalik himself remained silent.
Doing too much is a form of centralization, but doing nothing, excessive restraint, is also a form of abusing dominance and deliberately suppressing the self, provided that "one believes oneself to be important."
Therefore, Vitalik's decision to make EF smaller was a mistake. The right thing to do was for Vitalik to become a reclusive young man, hand over the foundation to a strong organization, and be more pragmatic in considering the future of Ethereum.
Apart from Bitcoin, the remaining public blockchains all need to face the realistic requirements of ecosystem development and adoption rates. In this regard, the Ethereum Foundation does not have a special status. The enthusiasm of everyone for DeFi and ETH is precisely a memory of the past, rather than a pure wealth effect.
In terms of ecosystem prosperity and real-world adoption, Ethereum's killer apps have never succeeded. Solana may be anxious about Hyperliquid, but Ethereum will not, just as BTC will not be anxious about Ethereum.
But this preferential treatment is fading. The crisis doesn't come from the outside, but from within. The real difference lies in who is responsible for the price of ETH and who is responsible for the direction of Ethereum .
Vitalik is now going all in on privacy, but he shouldn't "prevent" others from being responsible for the price of the coin.
New narratives await a bidder.
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Commodity or Productive money?
Following the approval of $rsETH and the staking ETF, DAT providers like BitMine are rapidly building their own staking services, while LST players like Lido are focusing more on the productive ETH narrative; for example, Spark only recognizes Lido's $wstETH product.
Everything is being reassessed. Lido is not as composed as he claims. With the price of ETH hovering around 2000 for an extended period, the marginal effect of continuing to expand the scale is diminishing, while the pressure to maintain the APR rate of return continues to increase, casting a shadow over the productive narrative.
This highlights the importance of price, or rather, who is responsible for the price of ETH. Currently, EF is not responsible, and Lido cannot be responsible, leaving the entire Ethereum PoS system operating in this awkward environment.
Continuing the comparison with Chinese concept stocks, after US stocks became practically unusable as an exit channel, Changxin Memory followed the AI concept, DeepSeek became state-owned, and aerospace and robotics concepts oscillated between A-shares and H-shares. Whether you like it or not, this is the new narrative structure.
Image caption: Return to Mainnet.
Image source: @tokenterminal
After Ethereum switched to L1, there was a surge in activity on the Ethereum mainnet, but you couldn't feel that the ETH ecosystem was really improving, let alone the price of the coin going up. There must be a problem, but people couldn't define it.
So what is the current Ethereum technology narrative?
Privacy: Everything can be ZK, which is also the last vestige of the decentralized concept;
AI: The dAI team is moving the centralized architecture onto the blockchain, focusing on small-scale model deployment on the edge and agent invocation;
L1: Completely abandon L2 as the core, and return all speed and revenue to the L1 competition.
Compared to the combination of "world computer" and smart contract technology, Ethereum is now trying to connect more with reality. In addition to the above three, there are many other narratives such as stablecoins and RWA, but these are not the world as seen by Ethereum, but rather Ethereum in the world.
The subject and object are reversed, or rather, there is a lack of clarity about one's place in the new world. Everything can be put on the chain, and the ambition of blockchain to conquer the future is gone. However, there is always a feeling that blockchain can do more. This contradiction, entanglement, and repetition constitute the three waves of current market sentiment. People hope to see a better Ethereum, but seeing a good Ethereum is unlikely.
After more than a decade of struggle, Ethereum has not become the world computer, but it is indeed an open computer on which any activity and idea can be experimented and run. While Bankless was promoting ETH as Money, Vitalik insisted that ETH is Commodity, a digital product that carries specific functions.
On this point, no one can accuse Vitalik of lying. When Vitalik sold 8,800 coins in February 2026, he did so slowly through CowSwap, unlike the founder of Curve who staked $CRV for stablecoins, or Sun who manipulated $USDD to fleece retail investors.
But just like in the Chiang Mai dialogue in January 2026, if time were to rewind ten years, would everyone choose blockchain or AI? Vitalik did not give a firm answer, but the fact is that more and more cryptocurrency projects are turning to AI and skillfully operating the GTM methodology.
Hermes Agent has gained mainstream attention from AI developers; its founding team comes from Nous Research.
xBubble is developed by DappOS and combines AI with an intent execution framework;
Alex Atallah, the founder of OpenRouter, comes from OpenSea.
You'll find that cryptocurrency project teams' market operation capabilities are not limited to on-chain operations. Even in the globally watched AI trend, they can keep up with the pace time and time again. Even the transit station model is intertwined with stablecoins, traffic distribution, and operation.
However, all of this has little to do with Ethereum. Although dAI and virtuals jointly proposed ERC-8183 to try to define the framework for autonomous economic activities of agents, it cannot be said that the team is not doing anything, but it is more like an active adaptation rather than a leading stance.
If we consider this moment as a narrative opportunity to buy at the bottom, then the core question is: what value does a public blockchain actually have in the AI era?
Claude has repeatedly struck at SaaS, security, and external agent frameworks. We can imagine an absurd scenario: what would happen to Ethereum if Claude created its own blockchain?
Under the PoS mechanism, the cost of asset migration is low enough, but in terms of compliance costs, Claude will still be subject to human legal restrictions. The unrestricted free financial testing ground may be the most unique value of Ethereum.
Just as Mythos's sharp decline in Palantir stock led to Qi An Xin's stock price rising against the trend, because the opponent it targeted sparked an arms race with its counterparts across the ocean, creating an endless cycle.
Or, to put it another way, in today's world of increasing antagonism, the need for global connectivity will persist for a long time. Canton belongs to Wall Street, but Ethereum belongs to all of humanity. Just like the people of the Sahara who have no shoes, pessimists withdraw, while optimists rejoice.
However, the golden age of ETH will never return. Wanxiang, EF, and other institutions will still sell, but ETH at 2000 is at least 10 times that at 200. We are standing at a new starting point; we just need a direction.
Conclusion
Like fate, ETH really does share a similar destiny with Chinese concept stocks: both are assets of country A, invested in by capital of country B, and exited in the secondary market of country B, while country A only bears the market and channel value.
This is the best of times. New markets will emerge from the division. Referring to the dynamics of country B, similar assets in country A will experience a similar cycle. Under the division, A and B also need new points of connection, and Ethereum is still the best choice.
