One of the most important challenges Ethereum faces is defining its core value proposition—the one that justifies why, in such a Darwinian environment, the protocol should prevail due to its competitive advantages. Too often, we overestimate the power of narratives compared to the economic realities that ultimately shape our behavior. We tend to believe that narratives can override rational decision-making, but in practice, economic actors usually respond to the incentives that the environment presents.

The project has been led primarily with a technological vision, which is well captured by the idea of becoming the “World Computer.” This framing has fundamentally steered the project toward competing on infrastructure—aiming to offer the best execution environment, which has become the central focus of its efforts.

Scaling has become an obsession within the Ethereum ecosystem—so much so that it has overshadowed the rest of the conversation. Even decentralization, which should be the cornerstone of Ethereum’s value proposition, is increasingly compromised in higher layers in the name of scalability. Of course, decentralization is a property that applies to infrastructure; without a base infrastructure to which this property can be meaningfully attached, there is nothing to defend.

Ethereum’s greatest strategic weakness lies in its underdeveloped economic design and the toxic environment surrounding discussions of finance or price. You’ll rarely find any mention of the asset’s role or importance in the Foundation’s core communications. At its core, this isn’t a priority for the project’s leadership—many of whom hold significant personal wealth, making these conversations feel mundane or even inappropriate. In a way, they operate from the very top of Maslow’s pyramid, detached from the more foundational economic realities of the ecosystem.

It’s hard to see how the Ethereum ecosystem can remain competitive unless it begins to engage seriously with economics and finance. In fact, it was the sharp decline in the price of ETH that triggered a kind of collective catharsis across the ecosystem—one that even led to changes in personnel within the Foundation. However, the reality is that these changes have been mostly cosmetic, as the underlying strategy remains fundamentally the same.

Ethereum is a digital economy, and unless we fully understand and embrace that value proposition, we risk competing in a low-margin business—one that pushes us toward offering computational services in the most efficient way possible.

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It’s hard to see how the Ethereum ecosystem can remain competitive unless it begins to engage seriously with economics and finance.

It’s crucial to start by recognizing the importance of respecting our monetary asset. A digital economy cannot be built on top of a currency that is systematically marginalized in the Foundation’s discourse. The native currency of a digital economy should be the primary vehicle through which value creation is captured and redistributed among its citizens. Expecting Ethereum to function as a digital economy while its asset is disrespected—and treated merely as a tool in the race to provide the most competitive global computation—leads us down the same path as many failed monetary experiments in traditional economies. We don’t have to look far to see how difficult it is to build sustainable economies on top of broken monetary systems.

At this point in the article, some readers may be tempted to dismiss these arguments as coming from the perspective of the “evil speculator”—a label often invoked in Foundation circles whenever the topic of price is raised. But the truth is that respecting the native asset is a necessary first step toward building an economy that properly incentivizes value creation and can sustainably fund the public infrastructure that serves everyone.

One of Ethereum’s core challenges is finding ways to capture a share of the economic activity it enables, in order to continue funding the public goods that empower this digital economy. One of the Foundation’s biggest strategic mistakes is the concept of Subtraction—a philosophy that, in practice, amounts to a full delegation of responsibility, justified under the banner of decentralization. At its core, it’s a utopian idea, likely rooted in strong ethical convictions, but in reality, it leaves the ecosystem exposed in a landscape defined by fierce competition.

While it's true that no single group should control a project of this scale, abandoning the responsibility of sustaining and evolving public infrastructure due to ideological purity risks undermining Ethereum’s viability as an economy. Without adequate resources and coordination, this economy is at risk of stagnation—or even disappearance.

We need to find an alternative that allows us to continue funding the public infrastructure that underpins our digital economy. This requires a deeper exploration of new governance mechanisms—ones capable of defining a new kind of democracy that can reshape the dynamics of current systems.

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The decisions made over the past year were, in many ways, predictably leading us to the current situation. During Dencun, there was not a single meaningful reflection on the consequences of removing fee demand from the protocol—in other words, we effectively reduced our economic "taxes" to zero. Similarly, the Foundation’s stance on staking—discussing reductions or even the possibility of negative yields—once again demonstrates a lack of respect for the native asset.

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What we've witnessed is, in essence, a successful scalability upgrade—but achieved at the cost of undermining Ethereum’s monetary asset.

The Foundation is on a path toward irrelevance, with increasingly scarce resources. Everything points toward an eventual disengagement, and with it, a loss of competiveness for the project. Subtraction, despite being rooted in a noble vision o decentralization, ultimately leads us not to empowerment—but to abandonment.

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