In the face of pressure, does Ethereum compromise or persist?

After the Spring Festival, during a gathering with friends, I expressed my concerns about Ethereum to them:

I am particularly worried that Vitalik might yield to the influence of certain opinions from the community, succumbing to the current price trends and unable to withstand some pressure, and take measures to "pull" Ethereum's price up in the short term, abandoning the ideals and pursuits of decentralization.

The reasons for my concerns mainly stem from the following two points:

First, the pressure from the community is immense right now. Some OG holders have completely switched their Ethereum holdings to other smart contract chain tokens due to the price. In response, the community has proposed numerous reform suggestions for Ethereum. Some of these I find valuable, but others, in my opinion, would lead Ethereum toward centralization, which is unacceptable.

Second, the Ethereum Foundation has recently changed some of its practices, which has clearly made me feel uneasy.

Let's first look at the first point.

A passage from a new book published by Taiwan's Tianxia Publishing House titled "Buying Unicorns" left a deep impression on me.

The essence of this passage is:

A disruptive innovation project belongs to the future; it belongs to future society and future humanity. Therefore, its business model and business scenarios must differ greatly from the current general environment and people's habitual thinking.

Most people today are not accustomed to, reject, or even refuse this difference.

As a result, a founder of a disruptive innovation project often encounters the following situation when facing investors:

These investors may find it very uncomfortable and incomprehensible to some of the seemingly "absurd" alternative practices in the project, and then unconsciously propose some opinions that lead the founder to compromise, to be pulled back to the present, back to the familiar living environment and scenarios.

Because these investors cannot see the future through the eyes of the entrepreneur, cannot understand the vision in the entrepreneur's mind, they naturally cannot comprehend these "absurd" alternative practices.

This is very normal; most people are like this.

However, the more this happens, the more courage the founder should have to reject such investors.

This is very difficult.

However, for an entrepreneur who aspires to disrupt the status quo, this courage is essential. Otherwise, if he modifies his product according to these investors' suggestions, he may cater to more people's views in the short term, even achieve some immediately visible progress, but in the long run, his product will lose its greatness and become just another new competitor among many mediocre products in the market.

This passage perfectly describes the pressure Vitalik is currently facing and the obviously centralizing suggestions within the community.

In fact, compared to founders of traditional internet projects, founders of crypto projects face even more and greater pressures.

Because in the traditional internet industry, project founders face only a very limited number of venture capitalists. With a limited number of investors, founders can patiently explain and calmly handle the situation.

But in the crypto community, project founders face a vast number of retail investors/holders, and among these retail investors/holders, speculators make up the vast majority.

In such an environment, the louder and more clamorous voices often come from the short-term, shortsighted opinions of speculators. This brings even greater and more challenging pressure to the founders.

Does Vitalik have the courage to reject such suggestions and the investors who leave because they support centralization?

Now let's look at the second point.

Recently, a frequent action by the Ethereum Foundation has triggered significant dissatisfaction within the community: repeatedly selling a considerable amount of Ethereum.

This dissatisfaction is evident:

In such a sluggish market, why sell? Why so frequently? Doesn't this exacerbate the pressure on the price? What is the intention behind this?

Why not stake or lend the Ethereum held by the foundation in DeFi? The interest alone would be enough to cover the foundation's expenses. Why not do this?

When I first saw this DeFi suggestion, I thought it made sense and was puzzled by the foundation's actions. However, what I was more concerned about was not whether to sell the coins, but whether the funds used by the Ethereum Foundation were efficient. Was there unnecessary waste? Should redundant personnel be streamlined?

In response, Vitalik explained that:

The reason the Ethereum Foundation can only rely on selling Ethereum to solve its funding issues, rather than putting them into DeFi protocols for collateral, is to avoid conflicts of interest.

Once the foundation's funds are placed in a certain DeFi protocol, it would inevitably lead to considerations favoring those DeFi protocols when Ethereum contemplates upgrades in the future, consciously or unconsciously due to its financial interests.

This explanation was something I had never considered before. I had never thought about the issue of conflicts of interest in this regard.

In the country and environment we live in, such trivial matters are hardly worth mentioning.

But Vitalik thought of this.

For several days after seeing this explanation, I closely followed his related tweets and replies. Unfortunately, such an explanation was completely drowned out in a sea of comments, and hardly anyone paid attention.

Neither the community nor Vitalik himself has mentioned it again.

I find this very regrettable.

What worries me even more is what happened next:

A few days later, the Ethereum Foundation deposited Ethereum into protocols like AAVE and Compound.

In fact, whether the Ethereum Foundation sells ETH or deposits ETH into DeFi, I can understand. Because this is a dilemma; no matter what is done, it will compromise certain values and interests. It's just like the THE DAO incident back in the day—there is simply no perfect solution.

So in my view, how it is done is not important; I can understand either way. However, a significant question arose in my mind:

Is this change by the Ethereum Foundation a compromise in values due to community pressure, or is it a temporary compromise forced by financial pressure?

If it is the latter, I think the problem is not significant, and there will still be opportunities for remedy in the future; but if it is the former, then it is very dangerous.

Therefore, I look forward to Vitalik providing a positive response to these questions.

After reading a recent interview with Vitalik published by Block Rhythm (link attached at the end), my worries finally dissipated.