After the Spring Festival, in a chat with friends at a gathering, when I talked about Ethereum, I once told my friends:

I am now particularly worried that Vitalik may succumb to the influence of some of the community's concepts, give in to the current trend of coin prices, and be unable to withstand a certain kind of pressure, and take some measures to abandon the ideal and pursuit of decentralization in order to "pull up" the price of Ethereum in the short term.

The main reasons for my concern are as follows:

First, the pressure from the community is now very great. There are also some OG holders who have completely replaced Ethereum with other smart contract chain tokens due to the price of coins. The community has put forward a lot of reform proposals for Ethereum. Some of which I think have value, but others, in my opinion, will lead Ethereum towards centralization, which is unacceptable;

Second, the Ethereum Foundation has recently changed some of its practices, which has clearly caused me a sense of unease.

Let's look at the first point.

A passage repeatedly emphasized in a new book "Investing in Unicorns" published by Tianxia Publishing House in Taiwan has left a deep impression on me.

The gist of this passage is:

A disruptive innovation project belongs to the future, it belongs to the future society and future humanity. Therefore, its business model and business scenario must be vastly different from the current general environment and people's habitual thinking.

For this difference, the vast majority of people now are not used to, reject, or even refuse it.

Therefore, as the founder of a disruptive innovation project, when facing investors, they often encounter such a situation:

These investors will be very unfamiliar with and unable to understand some of the "unconventional" alternative practices in the project, and then consciously or unconsciously put forward some opinions to make the founder compromise, reconcile, and pull the founder back to the present, back to the familiar living environment and scenario of the people.

Because these investors cannot see the future in the eyes of the entrepreneur, cannot understand the vision in the entrepreneur's mind, of course they cannot understand these "unconventional" alternative practices of the entrepreneur.

This is very normal, the vast majority of people are like this.

But the more at this time, the founder should have the courage to reject such investors.

This is very difficult.

However, for an entrepreneur who aspires to disrupt the status quo, this courage is a must-have. Otherwise, when he modifies his product according to the suggestions of these investors, perhaps in the short term he can cater to more people's views, or even immediately achieve some visible progress, but in the long run his product will lose its greatness and become just another mediocre product in this market.

Using this passage to describe the pressure Vitalik is now facing and the obviously centralized suggestions in the community is too appropriate.

In fact, compared to traditional Internet project founders, the founders of crypto projects will face more and greater pressure of this kind.

Because in the traditional Internet industry, the project founders face only a very limited number of venture capitalists as investors, and they can patiently explain and calmly deal with the limited number of investors.

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

In such an environment, the voices that are louder and more clamorous are often the short-term, short-sighted opinions of speculators. This will bring greater and more challenging pressure to the founders.

Does Vitalik have the courage to reject such suggestions, to reject those investors who have left because they support centralized suggestions?

Let's look at the second point.

During this period, an action frequently taken by the Ethereum Foundation has caused great dissatisfaction in the community: repeatedly selling a not-so-small amount of Ethereum.

This dissatisfaction is obvious:

In such a depressed market, still selling? So frequently? Isn't this exacerbating the pressure on the coin price? What is this for?

Why not put the Ethereum held by the Foundation into DeFi for staking or lending, the interest alone would be enough to cover the Foundation's expenses. Why not do this?

When I first saw this DeFi suggestion, I also thought it made sense, and I was also not very understanding of the Foundation's actions. But what I am more concerned about is not whether they should sell the coins or not, but whether the Ethereum Foundation is using these funds efficiently, whether there is unnecessary waste, and whether they should streamline redundant personnel.

On this, Vitalik provided an explanation, the gist of which is:

The reason why the Ethereum Foundation can only solve the funding problem by selling Ethereum, and cannot put them into DeFi protocols for collateralization, is to avoid conflicts of interest.

Once the Foundation's funds are placed in a certain DeFi protocol, in the future when Ethereum considers upgrades, it will inevitably and unconsciously make considerations that favor these DeFi protocols due to the interests of its own funds.

This explanation is something I never thought of before. I have never considered the issue of conflicts of interest in this regard.

In the country and environment we live in, such trivial matters are not worth mentioning at all.

But Vitalik thought of this.

After seeing this explanation, I have been closely following his related tweets and responses for several days. But unfortunately, this kind of explanation has been completely drowned out by countless verbal attacks, and almost no one cares.

Neither the community nor Vitalik himself has mentioned it again.

I feel very regretful about this.

What worries me even more is the following events:

A few days later, the Ethereum Foundation deposited Ethereum into protocols such as Aave and Compound.

In fact, whether the Ethereum Foundation sells ETH or puts ETH into DeFi, I can understand it. Because this is a dilemma, no matter how it is done, it will damage some values and some interests. Just like the THE DAO incident in the past, there is no perfect solution.

So in my view, how it is done is not important, I can understand any way it is done, but I have a big question in my mind:

Is the Ethereum Foundation's change ultimately a compromise on its values under the pressure of the community, or a temporary compromise due to financial pressure?

If it's the latter, I don't think the problem is big, and there is still a chance to remedy it in the future; but if it's the former, then it's very dangerous.

So I am very much looking forward to Vitalik having a positive response to these issues.

When I read the recent interview with Vitalik published by BlockBeats (the link is attached at the end of the text), my concerns were finally dispelled.