Here is the English translation of the text, with the content inside <> retained without translation: After experiencing Consensus HK, this article discusses the current state and challenges of the Ethereum ecosystem, pointing out the prevalence of short-term ism in the crypto industry and its impact. (Background: Ethereum Pectra mainnet upgrade officially delayed! The Foundation has initiated additional testing, and ETH has fallen below the annual low) (Additional background: Community Buzz: Voting to delist ETH goes viral! Binance's new community governance system makes Ethereum a target) Table of Contents - The prevalence of short-term ism: the collapse of industry values - Challenges and transformation of the Ethereum ecosystem - The wonderful synergy of AI and Web3 - Macro tailwinds are gradually released, Crypto keeps up with the times - Restructuring Ethereum governance: towards mainstream and commercialization - There has never been a savior, V needs to encourage more application entrepreneurs I believe everyone has already seen many records of the past two weeks' Consensus HK, so I will not repeat them. The majority can be summarized as disappointment with the industry and a lack of prospects for a breakthrough, and the belief that a bear market has arrived. That week was also a feast for P-Champs and KOL gods. The Hong Kong trip gave me a sense of rationality. Those little champs and gods who work harder than fund managers and entrepreneurs deserve so much, and they are surrealist investors. They can always put a perfect ending to every trade. Many P-Champs' trading principles are 90% or BTC, 10% active SOL positions, always maintaining PVP and sprinting, no matter how much they profit each time, they will execute this position allocation. Because of the meme wave and attention economy, this has become the hottest discussion in HK. Kaito's victory has ushered in the golden age of KOLs, with attention being priced and quickly monetized. In stark contrast, the entire Ethereum ecosystem is lifeless, with the idealized trumpet call going unheeded - a harsh reality. So-called value investors are deeply trapped, and long-term holders are starting to be bearish on Ethereum, turning to Solana instead. Many people don't see the "Hungry" level of Ethereum's entrepreneurs (in contrast, when a dev goes to L2/Ethereum to request a connection, it takes an average of two weeks, while with the Solana Foundation it can usually be done in less than two days). This seems to be a deliberate act by the industry's dominators, not encouraging long-term holders in this bull market cycle, but providing better returns for short-term traders. In my view, this is sounding the alarm for the industry leaders like Ethereum who are not acting or lacking a sense of crisis, and the market is blowing the whistle for them. The prevalence of short-term ism: the collapse of industry values At the same time, when everyone has shed their disguise and wants to make a big haul when the bull market ends, many people start to have no ideals/beliefs and become ruthless arbitrage tools, no one cares about the future of the industry, everyone just wants to make the last buck of this cycle. Exchanges can abandon the listing standards to list some of their own invested projects in order to support the prices of their own project tokens; top-tier projects treat TGE as the final ATM, and market makers also become the undefeated generals of this cycle, relying on BD and brand to get free chips and earn a net income of nearly $40 million in the overall VC token downturn. It seems that everything is moving from long-term ism to short-term bubble and speculation, and the actions of these people are having an even deeper impact on some persistent entrepreneurs. This moment is very similar to 2018/2022, very cold and deserted, with practitioners leaving the industry because they see no hope and recognition. Everyone is trying their best to survive the bear market. For the teams still doing startups and getting things done, this will be very painful, they need unwavering values at all times. Trump has influenced the core values of the entire United States, and after the Trump token, the crypto industry has sparked a huge nihilistic investment ism. When practitioners and speculators all think this is a fast and short-term game, everyone also aims to take as much cash as possible before the money game button is pressed. In summary, the Hong Kong trip was a great collapse of industry values, and also a formal written judgment on Ethereum. As the most successful entrepreneur in the industry, has he not grasped the helm of the industry well, and is he leading the industry towards nihilism? Challenges and transformation of the Ethereum ecosystem TL;DR version: The founder of Denver infra is very bearish, but the founders of applications and AI are bullish.

The trip to Denver still saw many shocking scenes. Those founders and developers who had been steadily building for many years were suddenly told that the great Qing dynasty was about to end. They chose not to believe this, as the Ethereum ecosystem seemed to have a culture of taking care of everything. Their fundraising had been very smooth, and they had seen many less capable projects perform well in the token speculation market. They may never have thought that one day they would not be able to raise money and their own tokens would go to zero like other shitcoins.

It was not until their runway was down to the last 6-9 months that they slowly realized they needed to truly build a product with revenue and a user base. They also began to seriously consider what the problems with Ethereum were. Of course, there is never a time that is too late, it's just that for them, it requires massive layoffs and a complete denial of their past. This is a huge challenge for the founders, as they are betting on an uncertain direction, but have to risk their entire wealth for it.

According to incomplete statistics, the total financing amount of projects built on Ethereum and the EVM ecosystem has exceeded hundreds of billions of dollars, and the total valuation of the primary and secondary markets exceeds trillions of dollars. Therefore, the question facing these projects is whether to stay on Ethereum or leave? Even someone as strong as Lido founder Konstantin, when he tweeted about establishing a second Ethereum Foundation, immediately received DMs from hundreds of Ethereum ecosystem DeFi founders (including Uniswap), which still poses a huge challenge to the consensus.

I also met a group of Ethereum ecosystem entrepreneurs who have always been the technical pillars of the industry. The technical products and solutions they have developed have been widely adopted, whether it's TEE/zkTLS/rollup, they have been dominant. But these people are also tired of providing ever-better solutions for technical protocols without end-users and demand. What now excites them are the inspiring new papers emerging in the field of AI research.

To be honest, this type of founder is not uncommon, and they are among the few in the industry who can truly dig deep and come up with viable solutions. If a large number of such founders choose to leave, I believe it will set back the entire Ethereum infrastructure by 3-5 years at least.

The Wonderful Energy of the Fusion of AI and Web3

At first, everyone was saying that the Denver infra had no hotspots or vitality. But after we talked about 3-4 new AI*Web3 projects on average every day, we saw the Ethereum community's active embrace of emerging technologies like AI, as well as their innovative attempts in areas like DeTraining/Inference/DePIN.

Ethereum is actively adapting to new technological trends and exploring new application scenarios. Capital and entrepreneurs have become the industry's prophets. Paradigm led a $100 million investment in the Web3 LLM company Nous Research, Groq has generated over $100 million in revenue in the past year in Inference, Openmind has partnered with Uisee Technology to create RobotAI, DePAI's open-source products debuted in Denver, Hyperbolic has become one of the web3 developer integration support networks with the highest Inference, and there are also open-source Intelligence platforms like Open Gradient and Pluralis. At Ethereum conferences like Denver, savvy developers and founders have already started comprehensively helping Web3 embrace AI, and everyone is brainstorming how to bring AI agents and more applications into the Web3 scenario. The industry never stops and research and curiosity will always drive those builders further.

Openmind partnered with Uisee Technology to create RobotAI, and DePAI's open-source products debuted in Denver

Macro Tailwinds Gradually Released, Crypto Keeps Pace with the Times

But after dealing with most American institutions, the scene is completely different from Asia, as everyone remains very optimistic about the crypto policy's bullish and loose environment. The US bank's policy on accepting crypto asset custody has been passed, and banks will soon gradually allow BTC/ETH to be used as collateral, and even expand to mining rigs. Here we can see a clear trend that a crypto rate-cutting environment is about to form, with the industry's original 10% borrowing rate adjusting to around 3-4%, or even negative rates in Japan, which will bring new liquidity to the industry.

In addition, we have recently seen a series of crypto-friendly policies in the US, with Uniswap and Coinbase both considering designing tokenized securities models to allow traditional industry investors to better evaluate and purchase tokens. The release of regulatory tailwinds in this cycle will far exceed our expectations, so I am very optimistic about the market environment in the next two years.

Many people say this bull market is already over, but I don't think so. Every bull market not only has the support of the macro market, but also the self-innovation and new applications of the crypto-native market. In this cycle, we haven't seen true innovation yet, and if that continues, it will be a false bull market. In the next two years, we can expect to see more traditional companies, or even national regimes, take up residence on L2 networks and issue their own decentralized networks, which will once again drive the growth and value capture of the Ethereum L1.

Reconstructing Ethereum Governance: Towards Mainstream and Commercialization

On the third day in Denver, I attended the Pragma event hosted by ETHGlobal, where I met several core EF developers. They revealed the upcoming organizational structure adjustments for Ethereum. What's interesting here is @dannyryan, whose reputation and influence in the Ethereum core developer circle is well-known. The newly established @Etherealize will also shoulder the mission of the new era of ConsenSys, helping Ethereum move towards the mainstream world and commercialization. Additionally, the two Co-EDs of the Foundation, Hsiao-Wei @hwwonx, have been deeply involved in Ethereum for many years, following Vitalik since 2016 (the person sitting next to Vitalik in the attached image is Hsiao-Wei, from the 2019 Ethereum hackathon in Beijing). Tomasz @tkstanczak, as the founder of Nethermind, is very familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem projects and, as a third-party dev shop, understands the more sustainable commercial logic, which can help Ethereum find a balance in its infrastructure and commercialization path.

Attached image: Hsiao-Wei @hwwonx sitting next to Vitalik at the 2019 Ethereum hackathon in Beijing

In fact, the problems Vitalik faced are the same as those faced by all entrepreneurs - as the team grows, it becomes difficult to manage. Friends who understand the study of personal characteristics can try to analyze V's journey, from the Milady expression pack's Twitter avatar to his disappointment with the crypto OGs, replacing it with the half-human, half-bird Druid image from World of Warcraft, which also represents his inner reconciliation with the community's call, and the next day he officially announced Ethereum's new team structure.

Ethereum may be the first truly decentralized organization and economy in history, and we should be more tolerant of this man who has just turned thirty. He has not performed particularly brilliantly in organizational structure management and the commercialization of Ethereum applications, but who can lead this organization to create more brilliance and results?

Perhaps Ethereum can also learn from Elon Musk and create a DOGE committee, specifically responsible for dismissing some irresponsible devs and sinecures. How to measure the value of contributions and KPIs is an important issue facing V. In addition, provide core internal developers with clearer value propositions and development needs, and give the management team a more specific roadmap and management time limit requirements, so that Ethereum can better return to community and democratic governance. As the cornerstone of Web3, Ethereum is also actively exploring Layer2 solutions and technical upgrades to meet the growing application needs.

There has never been a savior, V needs to encourage more application entrepreneurs

For Ethereum, is technical R&D currently that important? Perhaps it was important in 2017, 2020, and 2022, but now applications should be more important than technology. The next most important milestone for Ethereum and the greatest confidence for ecosystem builders will be whether Ethereum, as the world's computer, can produce groundbreaking super-application products.

Many people have regarded Vitalik as the savior of Ethereum, and Ethereum as the savior of the industry, but there has never been any savior. Everyone should be a savior. I have called for it in my previous tweet - all organizations that have accumulated generous capital and stable business income in this industry should actually contribute to the future of this industry, either by donating to Ethereum's open-source organizations, or by creating better opportunities for young people in the industry. In addition to Grant support, many entrepreneurs still need financing support. In this wave of Altcoin bloodbath, the already shaky Asian funds have also suffered a heavy blow, with many funds starting to shut down or transform into secondary markets. The Asian entrepreneurial environment is difficult, and if we lose the venture capital investment of Asian institutions, the industry will become even more fragile.

Here I still call for, in the Ethereum ecosystem organizations, the early-stage venture capital support must not be missing. I suggest that all exchanges can allocate 1-2% of their annual revenue to support the development and innovation of the Ethereum open-source ecosystem.

Will Ethereum perish in the next bull-bear cycle? I don't think so. This is the most successful decentralized organization in the Web3 industry, and we should not let it fail. Its failure would mean that the hundreds of billions to trillions of talents and project assets built on the Ethereum business empire would have to start over, and the entire industry would fall into a 5-10 year major setback, meaning that many OGs would leave the field.

Please cherish your Ethereum. If you look back on the events of 2020-2030 in 2030, you may find that the doubts and clamor of 2025 were actually insignificant. How to judge value and innovation on a 10-year dimension is an even more worthy priority to consider.

Optimists are often right. In the most difficult and turbulent stages, we should maintain confidence and optimism.