Times have been very confusing for Ethereum and its community members. As the second-largest cryptocurrency was recognized for its persistent growth despite a brief crypto winter. The growth was majorly contributed by DeFi tokens and stablecoins. Gas fees has been a major cause of concern for people transacting on the blockchain. Even though there have been efforts been taken to decongest the blockchain, the fees has not shown signs of retraction.
As there have been various applications being developed on DeFi, the main discussion in the community has been about the capability of Ethereum to carry on with extended platforms. Due to its ability to support multiple services on its platform, Su Zhu believed that Ethereum has become unforkable. CEO of Three Arrows Capital appeared on POV Crypto Podcast and added:
“I do think that Ethereum is unforkable now because of the way that things depend on it to run. It’s not going to be able to do a do-over like it did in 2016. So I think that, because of that, there’s very high stakes stuff now happening on Ethereum that may or may not be ready to handle as a platform.”
While DeFi has been flourishing, the pressure has been on Ethereum to keep up with the demand of the platform. Despite network fundamentals, the most problematic part for Ethereum’s future will be its governance, something that has been brought up multiple times by the Bitcoin community too. According to Zhu, the current structure has remained opaque and this was also visible during the current debate of the circulation supply.
Even though Vitalik Buterin’s, the founder of Ethereum, efforts to maintain decentralization in the space, lack of clarity about the supply had raised concerns. Adding governance issues with the application layer driving gas cost and gas usage pose as a “flash crash risk”, in Su Zhu’s words.
Ethereum has been in a difficult position as it provided an opportunity for developers to build on it, but its concerns with scalability and space need to be fixed for the coin to remain the leader of the alts.