‘Steep disconnect’ between Ethereum Foundation and crypto community

Tribe Capital’s Evan Park and Blockworks Research’s Ryan Connor explain the issues with Ethereum and outline potential fixes

share


This is a segment from the Empire newsletter. To read full editions, subscribe.


ETH’s not having a good time. 

And it didn’t just start with this weekend’s selloff. We’ve got “wartime” Vitalik Buterin, criticisms of the Ethereum Foundation, not to mention price action (it’s down 10% over the past week). 

On the positive side, at least Eric Trump still seems bullish and — in a now-edited post on X — initially encouraged folks to buy ETH, adding “you can thank me later.” But I’m not sure that’s the type of support anybody wants right now. 

Loading Tweet..

There’s a lot of discussion about what went wrong and how to right the ship. The recent sentiment is nothing new, Tribe Capital’s Evan Park told me. 

“When I was at Devcon, I noticed a steep disconnect between the foundation focusing on infrastructure, while retail users and the broader crypto community were demanding exciting new applications. On the one hand, ETH L2s like Base, Ink, and MegaETH are positioned to onboard new applications and users. However, what Ethereum leaders need to realize is that they face accelerating competition from established L1s like Solana and new L1s like Berachain and Monad, which are poised to dominate mindshare over the next year,” he explained. 

Even with Buterin signaling a “greater sense of urgency,” we’re in a ‘can’t stop, won’t stop’ moment in the market. Berachain, just yesterday, announced that its mainnet is launching tomorrow.

Loading Tweet..

In my conversation with Blockworks Research’s Ryan Connor, he explained that he and his team had initially been “excited” about Max Resnick’s potential cultural impact at ETH. But when that didn’t pan out, and Resnick jumped to Solana, the excitement dissipated. 

The situation now is “pretty dire” post-Resnick but Connor told me that there are still ways to, well, make ETH great again.

“Bringing execution back to the base layer is the very simple way of putting it. How do you do that? You scale it technically. You compete with the L2s. You change the culture of the ETH organization, the people who are shipping the upgrades, and the app developers that live on that chain. [It’s] way easier said than done. You have to basically abandon these like very niche political, philosophical views that many people in that ecosystem hold [though] I think it’s clear over a multi-year period that they’re not willing to do,” he explained.

That includes leaving the “hardware requirements” focus at the door. 

While there are technical things that can be done, it’s going to come down to changing the culture. And that, Connor acknowledged, is not going to be an easy battle to win. 

Connor compared it to the Department of Motor Vehicles: It doesn’t matter who’s in charge of the department, they can’t just switch on “wartime” mode and change everything. It just, unfortunately, doesn’t work like that. 

Whether or not Buterin and EF are politicked to the point of being similar to a government department remains to be seen. 


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

recent research

Research Report Templates.jpg

Research

Figure, founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney, has emerged as a leader in onchain RWAs, with ~$17.5B publicly tokenized. The platform’s ecosystem volume is growing ~40% YoY as it expands beyond HELOCs into student loans, DSCR loans, unsecured loans, bankruptcy claims, and more. Operationally, Figure cuts average loan production cost by ~93% and compresses median funding time from ~42 days to ~10, creating a durable speed-and-cost advantage.

article-image

Former White House crypto official Bo Hines is expected to be the CEO of the new project

article-image

In bonds, stablecoins and billionaires, a reminder of what makes crypto special

article-image

21Shares exec says CPI and PPI data supports a Fed rate cut, with market leaning toward a 25bps decrease

article-image

The Ethereum co-founder suggested LINEA holders would be eligible for other airdrops in cryptic tweet

article-image

The layer-2’s biggest release yet brings benefits — but a post-upgrade outage caused a chain reorg

article-image

Crypto is shifting into risk-on mode — pump.fun dominates meme activity, while Lido leans on treasury maneuvers