Counting Ethereum's "Seven Deadly Sins": Who Can Play the "Redemption Song"?

Although Ethereum's price performance has been pretty rough lately, Ethereum's "soul leader" Vitalik has leveled up to a whole new stage.

On September 11, during a discussion with former ENS core contributor Brantly.eth about the value of ENS, Vitalik once again showed his "rebellious side." In a fairly sarcastic tone, he tweeted, "Look, Mr. Buterin. These are the people who think only PoW is decentralized. These are the people who don't appreciate your support for synthetic uteruses. These are the people who don't like vaccines. What happens when they all try to cancel you together?" (Note: The accompanying image is a satirical scene from The Simpsons, Season 11, Episode 12, depicting a doctor's diagnosis.) After users on X responded with criticism like "What A Dck," the "Brave Little V" fired back without hesitation: "No, it's a duck." This was paired with an image of a large golden duck holding a sign reading "PoS is more decentralized than PoW."

It has to be said that following milestone events like Ethereum's "10th anniversary" and the approval of its spot ETF, Ethereum — as a blockchain network ecosystem valued at nearly $284 billion — inevitably faces its own "coming-of-age crisis." Can its ecosystem continue to grow? What problems exist right now? And how do we solve them?

Odaily Planet Daily will take a deep dive into Ethereum's "road ahead" through the lens of its "seven deadly sins," to provide a reference for readers. (Note: This article is the first in a series.)

Ethereum's Own "Seven Deadly Sins": When Price Performance Struggles, Everything Seems to Go Wrong

It all starts with price.

Ethereum has faced criticism from all sides in recent months, and even its most loyal supporters have gone quieter — largely due to its weak price performance. On January 1 of this year, it was priced at around $2,280. After Bitcoin hit new all-time highs in March, Ethereum climbed to nearly $4,000 on March 13. Then it became known for its downward trend, with the price dropping to around $2,223 on September 7, and currently hovering around $2,360 — marking a year-to-date gain of just 3.5%.

The current situation can be attributed to several factors (Note: The following "charges" are meant humorously and should not be taken as personal attacks):

Deadly Sin #1: Greed — The Ethereum Foundation Keeps Dumping on the Market

As the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, the pioneer of the ICO boom era, and one of the most successful crypto projects in history, Ethereum has grown into a towering figure in the crypto industry. Along with that growth came a large stash of ETH tokens held by the Ethereum Foundation as the "official organization," giving its words considerable "clout." However, the Ethereum Foundation has not exercised the same caution as traditional public companies do about stock sales. Instead, its market-dumping behavior during both bull and bear cycles has become quite conspicuous — almost like a mandatory move it can't skip.

According to LookonChain data from late August of this year, the Ethereum Foundation has sold 239,000 ETH since January 1, 2021, worth approximately $654 million. Furthermore, Spot On Chain monitoring shows that ETH experienced two significant drops (totaling a 23.5% decline) over the past month. Notably, the Ethereum Foundation alone sold 35,400 ETH (approximately $9.5 million) during that period, while still holding 275,000 ETH (approximately $677 million).

The market dumping continues, with the most recent activity occurring on September 9 when the Ethereum Foundation sold another 450 ETH (worth approximately $1.03 million). Over the past eight months, this address alone has offloaded 3,066 ETH (totaling approximately $8.68 million), at an average selling price of $2,830.

There's no denying it — despite justifications like "supporting ecosystem development," this pattern of excessive selling raises a painful question: just how greedy has the Ethereum Foundation become?

Deadly Sin #2: Pride — A Top-Down Development Roadmap That Ignores Grassroots Growth

Ethereum's evolution has been somewhat constrained by the pride displayed by its "official forces" — including co-founder Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation — evoking an unavoidable feeling reminiscent of "success often separates people from their failures."

This shows up not only in the "L2 development roadmap" dictated by Vitalik and Ethereum's core developers, but also in statements from the just-concluded 12th Ethereum Foundation AMA. When asked at the AMA, "Should the target be lowered to ensure price discovery if blobs don't hit the average target?", Ethereum core researcher Dankrad Feist replied, "Ethereum is currently creating a new market for rollups — the data availability (DA) market. Many alternatives want to take market share from Ethereum — Celestia, EigenLayer, Avail, etc. But they can't compete on security, so they hope to compete on price."

For the already-dominant Ethereum ecosystem, there always seems to be a state of being "blind to other chains."

On top of that, Vitalik's lack of enthusiasm for the DeFi path is another key reason. He has previously expressed concerns about "crypto DeFi use cases," suggesting they could lead to excessive financial speculation. In response, DeFiance Capital founder and CEO Arthur Cheong declared, "The worst take is that the founder of the largest L1 public chain doesn't actually understand the use cases and industries that drive ETH's price and gave it a $330 billion market cap. ETH price could drop to $0.03."

Indeed, pride may very well be the root sin of progress.

Deadly Sin #3: Envy — Ethereum Foundation Researchers "Restake" Themselves

In the still-young world of crypto, holding a senior position doesn't always mean being well-paid. People need to eat and drink; making money is nothing to be ashamed of.

This may be one reason why some Ethereum Foundation researchers choose to "restake" themselves into specific projects — after all, compared to the more academically focused environment of the Ethereum Foundation, projects that offer competitive salaries and immediate token rewards can be a more attractive option.

In May of this year, Ethereum Foundation researcher Dankrad Feist, following Justin Drake, became an advisor to EigenLayer — Ethereum's restaking project — emphasizing that he was "participating in a personal capacity, not representing the Ethereum Foundation, with a primary focus on risks and decentralization." He also stated, "I have indeed received a significant amount of tokens from EigenLayer, but I don't believe this will change or influence my views on core protocol development. If EigenLayer is executed by highly reputable individuals, it will bring significant benefits to Ethereum. I trust the current leadership intends to do this and plan to help hold them accountable. If I come to believe that is no longer true, I won't hesitate to speak out publicly and resign."

Look at how he lays out his principles! He even has a contingency plan, wrapped in the framing of, "I believe the project benefits Ethereum; if not, I'll resign immediately!"

Deadly Sin #4: Wrath — The Ethereum Foundation's Transparency Is Constantly Called Into Question

There has always been a lack of effective channels for disclosing internal governance, personnel changes, and spending at the Ethereum Foundation.

As far back as 2019, EthHub founder Eric Conner raised concerns about "community transparency at the Ethereum Foundation." At the time, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake responded that "the foundation employs around 100 people, with annual spending of approximately $20 million." Vitalik remarked that "governance questions about Ethereum haven't slowed down Ethereum 2.0 development" — which now looks like a clever sleight of hand with concepts, redirecting attention away from the core issues.

More recently, two new employees were added to the Ethereum Foundation's protocol support team, responsible for providing financial support for the work — marking the first hires for this team, and the information was only disclosed through a personal tweet by Ethereum core developer Tim Beiko.

In August, regarding the Ethereum Foundation's address sending 35,000 ETH to Kraken, CEO Aya Miyaguchi stated, "For a long period this year, they were advised not to engage in any financial activity due to regulatory complexity, which prevented them from sharing plans in advance. Furthermore, this transaction is not equivalent to a sale. Going forward, they will gradually sell in a systematic manner."

Beyond that, in such an unpredictable market, members of the Ethereum Foundation have struggled to keep their composure — Geth lead developer Péter Szilágyi previously tweeted, "Do you often wonder whether you chose the wrong industry?" He expressed his belief that the crypto industry is nothing but a "casino set up for fools," contributing nothing to humanity. Everyone wants to be the next Vitalik but nobody wants to build anything useful; all anyone thinks about is how to extract value. Only Bitcoin has tried (though failed) to be a hedge asset, while everyone else is just selling shovels — with no sign of an actual gold rush.

To some extent, it seems he harbors deep frustration and anger toward the Ethereum ecosystem, including those emotions,