Critics say ETH is in a death spiral, with plunging fee revenue and extractive L2s. But researchers have a plan to Make Ethereum Great Again.
If you believe Ethereums legion of critics on X, the blockchain is dying. On one side, its being beaten as ultra-sound money by Bitcoin, and on the other, it is outdone by faster and cheaper transactions by Solana.
Fee revenue for the layer 1 has collapsed by 99% in the past six months as extractive L2s steal all the users, transactions and fee revenue while paying virtually nothing to the base layer. Thats made ETH slightly inflationary again, with its price sliding.
The L2s are siloed from one another, and each has a financial incentive to maximize its own revenue at the expense of ETH. Base charged users $2.5 million in fees last month and gave just $11,100 back to the L1. OP mainnet is reportedly raking in $321.31 for every $1 it funnels back to Ethereum.
