Why Did Ethereum’s “Rollup-Centered” Roadmap Fail? From Endless Internal Conflicts, Incentive Misalignments to Core Developer Departures, This Sharp Essay Analyzes How Ethereum Has Repeatedly Backslid in Self-Destruction — Even Paradigm, Its Leading Advocate, Has Moved on to Build L1.
This article is based on Pavel Paramonov’s piece What happened to ethereum?, compiled, translated, and written by Dongqu.
（Background: Vitalik: “L2 as Ethereum’s Main Scaling Solution” Is Outdated! Base, Optimism, Arbitrum Major Teams Respond Collectively）
（Additional context: Ethereum Foundation announced Strawmap Roadmap: Seven Upgrades Targeting 10,000 TPS, Quantum Resistance, Native Privacy Fully Included）
Table of Contents
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- The Rollup-Centered Roadmap — Beautiful Promises, Harsh Reality
- Technical Ideology Overriding User Needs
- The Trap Behind Financial Logic
- Chain Reaction of the Rollup Roadmap
- Ethereum Foundation (EF) — A Directionless Navigator
- Financial Incentives… Once Again Absent
- Zero Tolerance for Adaptability — Excuses Repeatedly Made
- Change — Maybe Too Late, But At Least Started
This article’s inspiration mainly comes from Vitalik’s recent tweets on market conditions and reforms. While the overall market is generally down, it’s hard to pin the blame on any single individual, and I have no intention to do so.
I have worked closely with many Ethereum teams, representing risk funds investing in numerous protocols built on Ethereum. Overall, I was once a fervent supporter of Ethereum and the EVM ecosystem.
Unfortunately, I can no longer say the same, because Ethereum seems to have lost its way — and many others feel the same.
I won’t discuss ETH’s price trends here, but one unavoidable reality is: the second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap is performing extremely unstable. Regardless of global market trends, ETH’s movement resembles a tethered stablecoin drifting off course.
This essay aims to explore what has happened to Ethereum over the past few years and why more and more people are losing confidence. Ethereum didn’t lose to Solana or other competitors — it lost to itself.
The Rollup-Centered Roadmap — Beautiful Promises, Harsh Reality
When Ethereum launched its roadmap centered on Rollups, almost everyone was excited. The blueprint was: Rollups (and Validiums) will handle scaling, with user transactions on Rollups, while Ethereum focuses on the validation layer — becoming a service layer for Rollups, not a user-facing L1.
Developing Rollups is much faster and easier than developing L1s, so the vision of “thousands of Rollups” seemed within reach, with an optimistic outlook.
But what happened? Almost every aspect went wrong.
Endless disputes, ideology trumping practical needs, ongoing community conflicts, identity crises, and the timing of abandoning the “centered on Rollup” vision came too late.
Many in the community once saw Max Resnick as an incompetent troublemaker, only to find he was often right on most issues. During his time at Consensys, Max proposed numerous ideas on Ethereum’s future direction, but faced criticism and little support.
The most absurd peak was when the industry started debating whether a certain L2 counts as “Ethereum”:
Point A: “Base is an extension of Ethereum; we’ve made huge contributions to the Ethereum ecosystem.”
Point B: “Base is not an extension of Ethereum; it’s an independent entity.”
What are we even arguing about?
This isn’t a real debate but an ideological clash between two small circles, each trying to prove who’s right. We don’t need infighting (PvP), but external expansion (PvE). We must understand that this isn’t a contest between each other but a collective effort to face problems and future challenges.
Unfortunately, too many prefer to pursue mental victories rather than consider their own viewpoints might be wrong.
Technical Ideology Overriding User Needs
Based Rollups, Booster Rollups, Native Rollups, Gigagas Rollups, Keystore Rollups… which is better, what’s the future, how do they interconnect? “This type is the future,” “No, that one is.”
All these debates… result in Arbitrum and Base continuing to dominate.
Technical superiority and performance bring advantages, but when comparing “apples and pears” or “oranges and citrus,” the differences vanish. They are too similar, to the point where users don’t notice. Outside the bubble, no one cares. More precompiles or fewer precompiles — you won’t win because of that.
“We are ‘Ethereum-aligned,’ we have an advantage, we are very close to Ethereum, embodying core values, users will choose us.”
But I ask: which values? And which users will buy into this?
@0xFacet became the first Rollup to reach Stage 2, a model of Ethereum alignment. But where are they? Users, developers, supporters loudly claiming to support Ethereum — where are they?
I have no bias against Facet and respect its founders. But where are those who keep saying we need more “Stage 2” Rollups?
Financial incentives are far more powerful than technical ones. I was once a fan of Taiko, especially their research on Based Rollups. This model has many benefits: stronger censorship resistance, neutrality, no sequencer downtime risk, and higher earnings for L1 validators.
The Trap Behind Financial Logic
You can’t force people to give up income for the sake of “alignment.”
Arbitrum promised a decentralized sequencer before, Scroll, Linea, zkSync, Optimism also promised it. But where are those sequencers?
Almost every Rollup team states in their documents: “We currently use centralized sequencers but have a strong desire to decentralize in the future.” Few have actually achieved it. Metis did, but luckily or unluckily, the market doesn’t care about Metis.
Are they overpromising to appease influential ETH purists? Yes. Do they really want decentralized sequencers? Probably — but it’s not commercially feasible.
Coinbase (Base) is legally obliged to maximize value for the company. Other teams are no different — why would they cut their own revenue streams?
Only about 5% of Base’s revenue flows back to Ethereum. Rollups have never been extensions of Ethereum.
Taiko once had days where the fees paid to Ethereum for ordering exceeded what it earned from user transactions. Clearly, the vision of Based Rollups or any “Ethereum-aligned” project can only be realized if teams are willing to sacrifice revenue.
I don’t underestimate decentralization, security, and permissionless features. But when your sole goal is “ideological correctness” rather than “user-centric,” everything becomes meaningless.
Predictably, this weakness and the promise of “Ethereum alignment” attracted many speculators.
Chain Reaction of the Rollup Roadmap
Eclipse, Movement, Blast, Gasp (Mangata), Mantra — these protocols were never built for the long term. It’s easy to hide behind “Ethereum alignment,” making Ethereum better, or bringing SVM into Ethereum.
All are “soft-landing” to varying degrees. All Rollups realize their tokens are almost useless — because fees are paid in ETH, their own tokens have little real utility. Speculators see clearly: you can hype around the narrative of Rollup-centricity and then cash out by selling worthless tokens to retail investors.
Ethereum has never officially recognized Polygon as a true L2, despite its significant role in maintaining ETH’s value. If you believe Rollups are an “extension of Ethereum’s culture,” why not recognize a project that is tightly linked to Ethereum’s security and usage?
Polygon was crucial during the 2021 bull market, contributing significantly to ETH’s asset growth. But no — it’s not an L2, so it doesn’t deserve praise from the Ethereum community. If Polygon were an L1, its valuation would be much higher.
Even top VCs like Paradigm, which arguably contributed most to Ethereum’s ecosystem and even developed their own L2 (Ithaca), have shifted to collaborating with Stripe on L1 (Tempo).
When your top believers start building your competitors, it’s a sign you’ve done something wrong.
Ethereum Foundation (EF) — A Directionless Navigator
Although Ethereum is technically decentralized, culturally it revolves heavily around Vitalik. The core circle of Ethereum indeed exists — as people say, to succeed, you need to attract Vitalik’s close circle and a few influential VCs.
I don’t demand everyone agree with Vitalik’s every word, but his views largely define what’s beneficial or harmful for Ethereum — and it’s hard to oppose him.
First is the “Ultrasound Money” narrative. Post EIP-1559 and the Merge, ETH’s economic model was deflationary for a time, leading some to believe it would be a better store of value than Bitcoin. But by 2024, ETH’s annual inflation turned positive.
So the vision of “Ultrasound Money” lasted only 3 years? That can’t be a store of value. The narrative is dead — and it never truly materialized, because ETH was never designed to be a store of value; that’s Bitcoin’s mission, and you can’t compete with it.
Next, Ethereum can’t decide whether its token is a commodity (due to dynamic supply and staking mechanisms) or more like a tech stock (due to insufficient revenue to support tech-company-level valuations).
Some even argue ETH isn’t money at all. What is going on? We need a clear direction. Ethereum can’t be everything — either it has a unified global purpose, or it falls behind.
Financial Incentives… Once Again Absent
I still can’t imagine how chief engineers like Péter Szilágyi, who contributed so much to Ethereum, only earn about $100,000 a year. This hero who helped Ethereum grow from zero to a $450 billion market cap earns just 0.0001% of that.
The most influential, successful protocol in crypto history (second only to Bitcoin) offers no incentives or equity. Hiding behind the doctrines of decentralization, open source, and permissionless, it’s easy to justify: “We’re not here to make money, but to progress.”
But you must incentivize even your most loyal warriors, or they will leave or secretly take outside jobs.
Péter left, Danny Ryan left, Dankrad Feist went directly to Tempo.
Justin Drake and Dankrad took advisory roles at EigenLayer in 2024 and received token allocations, which led to community hostility.
Those working at EF on “peanuts” (compared to FAANG and AI labs), just because they earn money and help a protocol that aims to improve Ethereum (even if it’s not Ethereum itself), are attacked.
If you’re an honest, diligent person in Ethereum, you’re deprived of earning rights and expected to work like a slave for the “recognition” of the Ethereum circle.
EF has been selling ETH to support operations and research. But maybe… shouldn’t they just pay their researchers enough first?
Zero Tolerance for Adaptability — Repeated Excuses
“Day One. Ethereum will win. The most reliable decentralized blockchain.” We hear this every day, just like every day hearing Ethereum’s excuses.
Yes, Ethereum is expensive and slow — but we have Rollups, so use Rollups, and Rollups are Ethereum!
Yes, ETH price is weak — but Ethereum has the largest developer ecosystem, we have a solid foundation, demand will come naturally!
Ethereum is the most decentralized! Solana is trash, they lack client diversity.
Ethereum is 100% operational! Solana crashes multiple times.
Ethereum’s active network is less than Solana’s — because Solana’s activity is mostly spam and meme gamblers. We are the moral chain!
Everyone is tired of hearing community excuses over and over.
Ethereum feels like a slow-moving, innovation-averse rich lady, handing out money to her parasitic offspring.
Change — Maybe Too Late, But At Least Started
Just hours before finishing this essay, Vitalik tweeted that the Rollup-centered roadmap has failed, and they need to find another path and scale the L1.
Seeing people willing to admit mistakes takes courage, and I’m glad. But it might already be too late. Ethereum has once again found the long-term path it needs to take, though progress remains slow.
Recently, EF has seen some changes: new leadership, transparency in the treasury, restructuring R&D, etc. EF has started hiring young talented developers and community/market relations personnel like Abbas Khan, Binji, Lou3e.
But the pace must accelerate. Ethereum must sprint to prove everyone wrong.
Let’s wait and see whether, after these reforms and EF’s shifts, Ethereum can become an exciting presence again, rather than a symbol of blind faith and repeated disappointment.
