Ethereum marked its 11th anniversary on July 30, the date of the Frontier genesis block in 2015, entering its second decade facing acute challenges around ETH value capture, rollup cohesion, governance decentralization, and scaling while preserving security.
The network now hosts $148.8 billion in stablecoins and $15.5 billion in tokenized real-world assets. Yet base-chain daily revenue has collapsed to $330,000, down from higher levels when transaction fees anchored the “ultrasound money” thesis for ETH.
Median Ethereum mainnet transaction fees fell from more than $2 in 2024 to less than $0.02 in early 2026. Median layer-2 fees declined by more than 95% over the same period, a compression that has gutted the fee-burn mechanism that once supported ETH’s deflationary narrative.
The ETH Value Problem
The fee collapse has forced a reckoning on how ETH accrues value in a layer-2-dominant future. Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, proposed four channels for ETH value capture: ETH as primary collateral and monetary asset, rollups returning economics to ETH, support for based rollups, and blob space demand. Buterin stated that ETH “continues to accrue value even in an L2-heavy world,” signaling confidence in alternative mechanisms.
Joseph Lubin, also an Ethereum co-founder, argued a different path. Lubin contended that Ethereum should keep base-layer fees low to drive adoption, with ETH accruing value through monetary premium, staking demand, and locked ETH. The two visions diverge on whether rollup fees should flow back to the base layer or whether low base-layer costs serve as the primary growth lever.
Vivek Raman of Etherealize characterized ETH as “productive money,” a store-of-value asset earning yield and serving as collateral. That framing sidesteps the fee-revenue debate and positions ETH as a collateral layer independent of transaction throughput.
Centralization and Block Building
Ethereum’s block production has become increasingly centralized. Centralized block-building services constructed approximately 91% of Ethereum blocks, concentrating proposer power. At most 1.55% of proposers could plausibly be considered altruistic, according to the data reviewed.
The Ethereum Foundation reorganized in June around five layers: protocol, access, user, community, and institutional. The reorganization cut 54 positions but reflected a shift toward decentralized execution. BitMine, SharpLink, and Joseph Lubin back both Ethlabs and Ethereum Institutional, two independent nonprofits launched this year. Ethlabs was formed by former Foundation contributors to handle research; Ethereum Institutional serves as a front door for institutional finance.
Scaling and Quantum Risk
Ethereum’s gas limit has expanded from 30 million to 60 million, with work underway toward 100 million and beyond. The network continues to pursue native account abstraction and post-quantum account migration as long-term priorities.
Google Quantum AI published research in March 2026 that lowered the estimated cost of breaking 256-bit elliptic-curve cryptography to roughly 1,200 logical qubits, approximately 20 times fewer than earlier estimates. The finding accelerated Ethereum’s timeline for cryptographic resilience, though no imminent threat to active keys exists.
Buterin stated that the original rollup vision “no longer makes sense” in its old form, a tacit acknowledgment that Ethereum’s scaling strategy has fractured into competing layer-2 ecosystems with limited coordination. The second decade will test whether Ethereum can maintain coherence as a protocol while layer-2s operate as quasi-independent networks.
