Can Ethereum Rise Again? Interpreting the Core Values of Ethereum

During this time, whether it's the comments at the end of our articles or discussions on Twitter, concerns about the future of Ethereum are a highly focused topic for many holders.

As for whether Ethereum's future is promising, my judgment criteria remain the same:

• Whether it is striving for decentralization to the greatest extent in operation (note that it is "in operation" rather than "in development and leadership")

• Whether there is a strong and trustworthy team

• Whether there is a robust community and ecosystem

So, using these criteria to evaluate Ethereum now, has it been weakened?

There is a great article on Twitter (@sdcrypto123) that essentially represents my viewpoint. In addition, this article mentions some issues I had never noticed before.

The link to this article is at the end.

Today, I would like to share some viewpoints and details from this article.

"I don't feel that the Ethereum community has done anything absolutely wrong so far. Ethereum has focused a lot of development effort/community support on decentralization, anti-censorship, and privacy, which may seem unimportant in the short term, but once other chains experience security issues or a certain group is not neutral enough due to control by a consortium, people will look back and realize the importance of decentralization and anti-censorship."

This viewpoint is one that I 100% agree with and have firmly believed for many years.

If we believe that the predecessors of the crypto ecosystem have put in countless efforts, even sacrificing their lives, to create a world for future generations where centralized institutions' malfeasance, censorship, and interference are minimized, then since Satoshi created Bitcoin, only Ethereum has continued to move in this direction.

In the latest Ethereum roadmap, Vitalik proposed lowering the threshold for validation nodes, further decentralizing validation—Ethereum never compromises on decentralization, which is my greatest comfort and core concern.

Decentralization and anti-censorship must not waver in the main chain (L1); only in this way can the platform ensure enough neutrality and impartiality—whether good or bad actors can use this platform equally and indiscriminately.

Layer 2 (L2), Layer 3 (L3), or even multi-layer scaling can be centralized and may even have censorship functions (of course, it would be better if they could also be decentralized). They can do this because the main chain they rely on has achieved sufficient decentralization.

"Trust is not about believing that it won't make mistakes or fall behind; trust is about believing that it has a strong ability to correct mistakes and that it has a very strong core value system that can guide it to move forward patiently, long-term, and resiliently. Values are somewhat abstract, but without values, it is very easy to abandon principles and continuous development at critical moments. Making money is hard to become a core element for a project to continue to progress and move forward because there will always be better ways to make money."

This viewpoint summarizes the importance of values very well.

Every person, every project, and every company will inevitably encounter a moment of darkness in their development. At that moment, with no experience to draw on, no external forces to turn to, and no resources to utilize, the choice of which path to take and which direction to go relies on values.

Values can provide a sixth sense in dark moments, allowing us to penetrate the fog, see the light through the darkness, withstand pressure, resist temptation, and move in the right direction.

Vitalik has never wavered in his values. Throughout past developments, regardless of external disturbances, doubts, or temptations, he has always adhered to decentralization and anti-censorship. Because of this, I believe in him and in the future of Ethereum.

I hope that Vitalik and the future Ethereum team can continue to uphold this value and maintain this original intention.

"Uniswap and Jupiter's approaches are completely opposite. In 2021, when meme coins were prevalent, Uniswap hid/blocked various memecoins in the token search list, while Jupiter actively guided and even created the first multi-participant memecoin in the Solana ecosystem, called Wen."

"You can also see the difference in wallets. Phantom actively adds popular memecoins to the list or arranges them in its built-in swap, while MetaMask hides them and requires users to add them themselves. It also does not prominently indicate the most popular tokens on the current network."

Seeing this detail, I was quite surprised.

Previously, I was unaware that Uniswap and MetaMask deliberately hid and suppressed meme coins in their apps.

Although I am not particularly obsessed with meme coins, I do not oppose them. I have participated in several meme coins because I can feel the joy and pleasure in the process.

So, I hold an open attitude towards meme coins.

In this market cycle, I often have a question in my mind:

Why are so many meme coins launched on Solana rather than the Ethereum ecosystem?

If the high fees on Ethereum make it unsuitable for meme coins, then many Ethereum L2 fees are now low enough; why are there no slightly famous meme coins in that ecosystem?

If the details described above are true, then as the main battlefield for meme coins, DEXs and wallets have deliberately obstructed and suppressed them, and their actions have already undermined the characteristic of "anti-censorship."

In my view, the core of decentralization and anti-censorship is:

The tools themselves are neutral, and both good and bad actors can use them. The bad actors who use the tools for malfeasance should be punished, not those who are subjectively judged as good or bad beforehand to decide whether to provide them with tools.

Uniswap and MetaMask's deliberate suppression of meme coins is as unreasonable and absurd as the U.S. Department of Commerce arbitrarily blacklisting addresses related to Tornado Cash.

Fortunately, the U.S. judicial system has curbed such arbitrary actions by the U.S. government.

If a centralized world can achieve this, I believe a decentralized world is even more capable of doing so.

These details also illustrate how important it is for us to insist on decentralization.

If an ecosystem has apps that engage in censorship, there must also be apps that resist censorship; we cannot allow the apps that engage in censorship to monopolize the development of the ecosystem, and users must have the freedom to choose.

Only when users have choices can the development of the ecosystem have vitality and creativity.

If an ecosystem only allows one choice, such an ecosystem will ultimately become rigid.

From another perspective, in the crypto ecosystem, it is precisely because of the competition among multiple blockchains, the "decentralization" of this ecosystem, and Solana's popularity in meme coins that we see that even core projects in the Ethereum ecosystem have such censorship and suppression.

These are some of the main viewpoints from this article.

In addition to this article, there are also some controversial tweets from Vitalik and discussions about the Ethereum Foundation circulating online.

I believe that Vitalik and his team can solve these problems.

After all, compared to the DAO incident in 2016, the issues presented by Ethereum's current stagnation are much easier to resolve.

Returning to the three criteria I listed above, I believe that Ethereum's decentralization is currently not an issue; the team and ecosystem are experiencing some impacts, but there is still an opportunity for recovery.

I still believe that this young founder can lead his team and Ethereum out of the current predicament and solve the problems encountered in development.

I believe he can "Make Ethereum Great Again."

Reference link:

++https://x.com/sdcrypto123/status/1882048078938869803++