Have you ever wondered? Why does Ethereum's "not fast enough" become the most solid moat?

Over the past period, if you have been paying close attention to the Ethereum ecosystem, you might have asked yourself a question: Why, in an era where everyone is racing for speed, is Ethereum instead discussing architecture, execution outsourcing, interoperability, and finality? Behind this sense of disconnect lies a deeper confusion—what exactly is Ethereum pursuing?

In fact, many controversies are not rooted in technical disagreements but stem from different understandings of Ethereum’s “value premises.” Only by returning to these premises can we truly unravel the mystery: why has Ethereum made choices that many consider “untimely”?

Is it degeneration, or another form of evolution?

Recently, the Ethereum community has not been peaceful. From reflecting on the Rollup-centric roadmap, to debates over the “Ethereum Alignment” concept, to horizontal comparisons with high-performance public chains, a subtle yet persistent “Ethereum anxiety” is spreading.

But have you ever thought that while other public chains are constantly refreshing TPS, TVL, latency, and user experience metrics, Ethereum is repeatedly discussing decentralization, security assumptions, and worst-case operability? Could there be a completely different logic behind this?

Many emerging high-performance public chains have chosen a more direct path: reducing the number of nodes, raising hardware thresholds, centralizing ordering and execution rights, in exchange for extreme performance and experience. From the Ethereum community’s perspective, such speed often comes at the cost of fragility.

A frequently overlooked but highly illustrative fact is—over nearly a decade of operation, Ethereum has never experienced a network-wide shutdown or rollback event, maintaining uninterrupted 7×24×365 operation. This is not luck, but because from the very beginning, Ethereum prioritized continuous operation under worst-case conditions over performance metrics.

From another perspective, Ethereum today appears “slow” not because it cannot go faster, but because it is always asking a more difficult question—when the network scales up, with more participants and a less friendly environment, can this system still continue to operate?

Viewing the “ten-year itch” from this angle, you will find it is not degeneration but Ethereum actively enduring short-term doubts for the sake of survival over a longer cycle.

Have we misunderstood the concept of ‘alignment’?

The first step to understanding Ethereum is accepting a perhaps unappealing but crucial fact: Ethereum is not a system with “maximized efficiency” as its sole goal. Its core objective is not to run the fastest, but to remain “trustworthy even in the worst-case scenarios.”

Therefore, in the context of Ethereum, many seemingly technical issues are fundamentally value choices—should decentralization be sacrificed for speed? Should powerful nodes be introduced for throughput? Should security assumptions be handed over to a few for better user experience?

Ethereum’s answers are often negative. This also explains why the community maintains an almost instinctive caution towards shortcuts—“can it be done” always yields to “should it be done.”

Because of this, “Alignment” has become one of the most controversial concepts recently. Some worry it might evolve into a form of moral coercion or a tool for rent-seeking power. These concerns are not unfounded.

But have you ever thought about what the essence of alignment really is? In September 2024, Vitalik Buterin explicitly stated in “Making Ethereum alignment legible”: If “alignment” means whether you have the right friends, then the very concept has already failed.

His proposed solution is not to abandon alignment but to make it explainable, decomposable, and discussable. In his view, alignment should not be a vague political stance but broken down into a set of attributes that can be scrutinized:

• Technical alignment: Are you using Ethereum’s security consensus? Do you support open source and open standards?
• Economic alignment: Are you promoting long-term ETH value capture rather than one-way extraction?
• Ideological alignment: Are you pursuing the public interest, not just predatory growth?

From this perspective, alignment is not a loyalty test but a social contract of mutual benefit and coexistence. The Ethereum ecosystem allows chaos, competition, and even fierce internal competition among L2s; but ultimately, these activities should feed back into the core that provides security, consensus, and settlement.

Decentralization and censorship resistance—are they worth the cost?

If “alignment” defines the boundary of values, then what truly sustains this boundary are Ethereum’s two long-standing pillars: decentralization and resistance to censorship.

But do we truly understand the real meaning of these two concepts?

In the Ethereum context, “decentralization” does not mean more nodes are always better, nor does it mean everyone must run a node. Its true meaning is: The system can operate normally without trusting any single participant.

This implies that the protocol should not rely on a single sequencer, coordinator, or company; it also means that node operation costs should not be so high that only professional institutions can run them, ensuring ordinary people can still verify that the system is functioning according to rules.

Therefore, Ethereum maintains long-term restraint on hardware requirements, bandwidth, and state bloat—even if this slows down short-term performance indicators. In Ethereum’s view, a system that is fast but cannot be verified by ordinary users has fundamentally lost the meaning of “permissionless.”

Another often misunderstood value is censorship resistance. Ethereum does not assume the world is friendly; on the contrary, it has been designed from the start with the assumption that participants may seek profit, power may concentrate, and external pressures will inevitably arise.

So what is the true meaning of censorship resistance? It is not demanding that “no one ever censors,” but ensuring that even if someone attempts to censor, the system will not fail because of it.

This is why Ethereum places such importance on mechanisms like proposer/builder separation, decentralized construction, and economic game design—not because they are elegant, but because they can keep the system operational under the worst conditions.

In many discussions, people ask: “Do such extreme scenarios really happen in reality?” But the truth is, if a system is only safe in an ideal world, then it is not worth trusting in the real world.

Data speaks: validator choices

Finally, let’s look at some interesting data. Currently, the withdrawal queue for Ethereum PoS staking has almost been emptied, while the staking queue continues to grow, surpassing 1.57 million ETH.

Despite controversy and skepticism, a large amount of ETH continues to be locked long-term into this system. Perhaps this speaks more than any declaration.

In conclusion: sticking to philosophy or falling behind in conservatism?

Many critics say Ethereum is always “discussing philosophy after others have already started.”

But have you ever thought that these seemingly outdated discussions are precisely what has helped Ethereum avoid repeated rebuilds? Whether it’s the Rollup-centric roadmap, the gradual introduction of ZK, or plans for interoperability, fast finality, and slot shortening—all are fundamentally based on the same premise: all performance improvements must be compatible with existing security and value assumptions.

This also explains why Ethereum’s evolution often appears “conservative yet steady.” Ultimately, it’s not that Ethereum does not pursue efficiency, but that it refuses to exchange current systemic risks for short-term gains.

And this is the underlying spirit that has supported Ethereum’s ecosystem through ten years—also the most scarce and precious thing to protect in an era obsessed with “efficiency/TVL.”