Leviathan eroded by capital barnacles: Deconstructing the dilemma of decentralization of Ethereum

Author: Revc, Bitchain Vision

1. The Dusk of Idealism: How to VC barnacles empty and decentralize the foundation

1.1 L2Colonization: The alienated expansion revolution

• Data erosion: The current market value of L2 tokens is US$15.2 billion, and the scale of ununlocked tokens reaches US$30 billion. From a liquidity perspective, it is equivalent to forming a 4% hidden inflation pressure on the Ethereum ecosystem.Moreover, the average decline of the high points of the related tokens is nearly 50%, and the actual impact may be higher.These L2s generally have nearly 60% of the tokens to be unlocked, that is, there is at least $30 billion in funds that need to be taken over by Ethereum eco-investors.

• Power transfer trap: The VC institutions account for 67% of the Optimism Governance Committee, and the veto rate of Arbitrum’s early proposals exceeded 80%, revealing that the decentralized governance is in name only.

• Liquid siphon effect: The locked position of EigenLayer re-pled agreement exceeded US$18 billion, but 90% of the profit generated went to institutional pledgers.

1.2Repending Prisoner Dilemma

• Economic model distortion: Lido, EigenLayer and other protocols solidify ETH annualized returns at 3-5%, forcing the project party to design an inflation token model to maintain incentives.

• Death spiral evidence: The circulation of a certain head L2 token has increased by 300% in the past six months and the price has fallen by 72%, forming a vicious cycle of “additional issuance-depreciation-renewal issuance”.

• Pledge oligopolisization: The top 10 giant whale addresses control EigenLayer     43% of the voting rights, while the top 10 Bitcoin addresses only account for 5% of the circulation.

2. Anatomical capital parasitism: From technical utopia to financial alchemy

2.1 VCColonial trilogy

• Cognitive colonization: Targeted cultivation of projects that are in line with capital narrative through developer funding programs,83% of a top VC’s investment in the past three years has flowed to the infrastructure level.

• Governance of colonization: “Golden Power Politics” in DAO governance, the positive correlation between the Aave community proposal approval rate and the proposed currency holding volume reached 0.91.

• Economic colonization: Establish a “protocol tax” system, with an actual annualized rate of return of a certain DEX agreement of 15%, of which 11% flows to VC-related liquidity providers.

2.2The alienation of the developer class

• Technical feudal system: 62% of Ethereum core developers serve VC-funded projects full-time.

• Innovative power attenuation: In 2023, the number of new independent protocols added to the Ethereum ecosystem fell by 37% year-on-year, while the Solana ecosystem grew by 209%.

• The value split: Gitcoin donation data reveals that only 23% of Ethereum developers agree with the development concept of “application first”.

3. Ecological Darwinism: Solana’s counterattack apocalypse

3.1Evolutionary Advantages of Commercial Genes

• Demand-oriented mutation: The average life cycle of Solana Eco-MEME coins is 3.2 times that of similar projects in Ethereum.

• Organizational model innovation: Jupiter adopts the “developer is user” model and allocates 50% of tokens to community test participants.

• Regulatory adaptability: By cooperating with traditional institutions such as Visa to establish compliance channels, the proportion of illegal transactions handled is only 0.3%.

3.2Cultural gene comparison

• Developer portrait: Economics/cryptography backgrounds account for 68% among Ethereum developers, and product managers/game designers account for 55% among Solana developers.

• Differences in user behavior: The average daily transactions for Solana users are 17 times, while the average daily transactions for Ethereum users are only 2.3 times.

• Capital efficiency ratio: Under the same market value scale, the handling fee income generated by the Solana ecosystem is 4.7 times that of the Ethereum L2 system.

4. Rebirth equation: From technical giant whales to ecological oceans

4.1Surgical Procedure

• L2Debugging Plan: Native Rollups or L1 are actually the process of Ethereum’s collection of rights. Since the industry still recognizes that Ethereum is the largest decentralized platform, it cannot allow VCs to use their political correctness to continue to build infrastructure unlimitedly, and they canTry to build a boundary for Ethereum that is supported by the developer community, and then evolve with one boundary, because decentralization also requires an entity to implement its will and enable commercial interests to feed back to the ecosystem.

• Supports Base and hyperliquid:Base has actually become the largest “fairy king” in the Ethereum ecosystem, and is often compared with Solana in terms of AI innovation and capital inflows during the bull market.Although it has not yet been “military grouped” (i.e. issuing tokens), this shift may occur at any time, but in the Mass Adoption process, Base is expected to attract more users and developers for Ethereum.Base is indeed more capable than other L2s.

• Pledge system reform: Introduce dynamic pledge weight based on contribution degree to reduce the voting efficiency coefficient of VC addresses to 1/10 of ordinary users.

• Economic Firewall: It is required that L2 use at least 30% of its revenue to repurchase and destroy ETH to establish a symbiotic economic model.

4.2Genetic modification engineering

• Developer Revival Plan: Establish an application layer innovation fund, and at least 50% of the funds flow to independent developers without VC background.

• Governance of genetically modified: Adopt AI-powered governance oracle to automatically identify and filter governance proposals with VC characteristics.

• Ecological re-wildness: Establish a “Dark Forest” arena on the testnet, allowing only fully decentralized protocols to participate in the liquidity competition.

5. From concept to reality: Rethinking the significance of Ethereum decentralization

• The breaker of class leap:Social classes are solidified and capital barriers hinder fair competition.Decentralization lowers the threshold, DeFi and DAO allow ordinary people to participate in the market fairly, breaking the traditional rules of wealth flow.

• Competitors of capital monopoly:Financial capital monopolizes market rules, decentralization replaces intermediaries with smart contracts, improves transparency, protects individual assets control, and maintains economic vitality.

• The Terminator of Internet Oligarchy:Technology giants monopolize data, decentralized technology allows users to master data sovereignty, and Web3 guarantees the free flow of information and weakens corporate exploitation of data.

• An accelerator of innovation and transparency:Centralized systems curb innovation, decentralization improves transparency, and open agreements stimulate innovation.

Conclusion: Leviathan’s Awakening Moment

As Ethereum’s block time continues to flow forward, this crypto blue whale is facing a key choice for species evolution: should it continue to slowly sink as the ideal host of VC barnacles, or should it be reborn through painful genetic mutations?

Historical experience shows that a truly revolutionary agreement must be completed fromTechnical standardsarriveEcological civilizationleap.Perhaps just as humpback whales in the ocean will actively impact the hull and throw barnacles, what Ethereum needs is not a gradual reform, but a complete leap in economic model.This includes increasing constraints on L2, strengthening boundaries and evolving in a more business-oriented way.

When the L2 parasitic token is abandoned by the market, it may witness the rise of Ethereum, which adheres to the decentralization concept.