A Decade of Ethereum's Value Perspective: Why Stability Is the Widest Moat

Over the past period, if you have been paying close attention to the Ethereum ecosystem, you might have sensed a profound sense of dilemma. On one side are intense discussions about scaling solutions, Rollup architectures, interoperability protocols, zero-knowledge proofs, and other technical topics; on the other side are emotional debates surrounding questions like “Is the Foundation arrogant?”, “Why isn’t it more aggressive?”, and “Why is the token price performance disappointing?”. Through these surface disagreements, we can see a deeper issue: What does Ethereum truly aim to become?

In fact, many controversies do not stem from technical correctness but from differing understandings of Ethereum’s “value premises.” Only by returning to these premises can we understand why it has made choices that many perceive as “not aggressive enough.”

Beyond appearances: why “degradation” is actually a rational choice

Recently, the Ethereum community has faced a sharp question: Is it degrading?

This skepticism is understandable. While other public chains continuously break TPS records, refresh TVL data, launch popular narratives, and optimize user experience, Ethereum keeps revisiting topics like architecture splitting, execution outsourcing, cross-chain interoperability—topics that seem convoluted, neither intuitive nor clever.

But if we look deeper, we find a critical overlooked fact: In nearly ten years of operation, Ethereum has never experienced a network-wide shutdown or rollback, maintaining uninterrupted 24/7/365 operation.

This is not luck but a design philosophy. Many newer high-performance chains have taken a more direct route: reducing node counts, raising hardware requirements, centralizing ordering and execution, to achieve extreme performance and user experience. Ethereum, from the beginning, has asked a harder question: When the network scales up, with more participants and a less friendly environment, can this system still operate?

The so-called “ten-year bottleneck” is not Ethereum degrading; it is actively enduring short-term doubts and discomforts for long-term survival.

Value alignment: not a loyalty test, but ecosystem symbiosis

The first step to understanding Ethereum is accepting a somewhat unappealing but crucial fact: Ethereum is not a system with “maximized efficiency” as its sole goal. Its core objective is not to run the fastest but to remain “trustworthy under worst-case scenarios.”

This means many seemingly technical issues are fundamentally value choices: Should decentralization be sacrificed for speed? Should powerful nodes be introduced for higher throughput? Should security assumptions be handed over to a few for better user experience?

Ethereum’s answers are often no.

Because of this, “alignment” has become a highly debated concept recently. Some worry it might turn into moral coercion or a tool for power rent-seeking. But Vitalik Buterin explicitly states in “Making Ethereum alignment legible”:

If “alignment” means whether you have the right friends, then the concept itself has already failed.

His proposed solution is not to abandon alignment but to make it thorough, decomposable, and discussable—breaking down alignment into specific attributes that can be scrutinized:

• Technical alignment: Are we using Ethereum’s security consensus? Do we support open-source and open standards?
• Economic alignment: Do we promote long-term ETH value capture rather than one-way extraction?
• Ideological alignment: Are we pursuing public interest rather than predatory growth?

From this perspective, alignment is not a loyalty test but a mutualistic social contract. The Ethereum ecosystem allows chaos, competition, and even fierce internal competition among Layer 2s; but ultimately, these activities should feed back into the core that provides security, consensus, and settlement.

The two pillars of system resilience: decentralization and censorship resistance

If “alignment” defines the boundary of values, then what truly sustains this boundary are two long-standing pillars of Ethereum.

First is decentralization. In the Ethereum context, this does not mean more nodes are always better, nor does it mean everyone must run a node. It means the system can operate normally without trusting any single participant.

This implies that the protocol should not rely on a single proposer, coordinator, or company; at the same time, the cost of running a node should not be so high that only professional institutions can participate, ensuring ordinary users can verify the system’s operation. Therefore, Ethereum maintains restraint on hardware requirements, bandwidth, and state bloat—even if this slows down short-term performance metrics.

A system that is fast but cannot be verified by ordinary users essentially loses the meaning of “permissionless.”

Second is censorship resistance. Ethereum does not assume the world is friendly. From its inception, it presumes participants may seek profit, power may concentrate, and external pressures will emerge. Therefore, censorship resistance is not about ensuring “no one ever censors,” but about ensuring that even if someone attempts to censor, the system does not fail.

This is why Ethereum emphasizes mechanisms like proposer/builder separation, decentralized construction, and economic game design—not because they are elegant, but because they enable continued operation under worst-case scenarios.

Some may ask: “Do such extreme situations really happen in reality?” The answer is simple: If a system is only safe in an ideal world, then it is not trustworthy in the real world.

Seeing the most scarce value of Web3 through ten years of perseverance

Some critics say Ethereum is always “discussing philosophy after others have already started.”

But from another perspective, these seemingly lengthy discussions have helped Ethereum avoid repeated rebuilds from scratch. Whether it’s the roadmap centered on Rollups, the gradual introduction of ZK proofs, or solutions like interoperability, fast finality, and slot shortening, they all unfold under one premise: All performance improvements must be compatible with existing safety and value assumptions.

This explains why Ethereum’s evolution often appears “conservative but steady.” Ultimately, it is not that Ethereum does not pursue efficiency, but that it refuses to trade current short-term advantages for future systemic risks.

The last data point illustrates this well: currently, the Ethereum PoS withdrawal queue has been emptied, while the staking queue continues to grow. Despite controversies and doubts, many ETH are still being locked long-term into this system.

Perhaps this speaks louder than any declaration: In an era obsessed with “efficiency/TVL,” the persistence represented by Ethereum is precisely what makes Web3 most scarce and most worth protecting.