Ethereum seems to be still actively building, and the new upgrade plan includes a lot of innovations (but nothing as exciting as Blink), and Ethereum also has a lot of powerful Layer 2. However, it is true that Ethereum's Gas is already at 1 Gwei.

Ethereum is fine as a whole. It is the most powerful smart contract platform, the most decentralized, and has the most prosperous ecosystem, whether it is EVM applications or second-layer chains. There is no problem with the technical route. The roadmap updated by Vitalik on the last day of 2023 is still valid, guiding the development of Ethereum in the next three to five years. Vitalik also published a lot of articles this year, each of which is very critical.

Is Ethereum’s problem a lack of memes?

I don’t think so. Solana’s celebrity meme craze makes it a bit like Las Vegas. Ethereum has always been like Wall Street, and it’s not a reasonable choice to turn Wall Street’s buildings into Las Vegas. At most, we can build an Atlantic City somewhere close.

The problem with Ethereum is that it has been solving technical problems, but what are these technical problems for? For example, in Vitalik's discussion today, the final settlement speed is of course important. Ethereum is now too much like the famous Xerox Research Institute PARC, where Jobs "stole" a lot of things. The vision should have been to create a usable product, like Apple and Microsoft.

As I have been saying recently, it is a lack of marketing. In my opinion, it is not a lack of marketing, but a lack of basic vision and positioning. There are no answers to the following questions:
Vision: What is Ethereum? What products does Ethereum provide? What is the next product of Ethereum? Ethereum is now similar to Bell Labs.

Do you know what it is called now? —Nokia Bell Labs

Will the rise of ETH and the approval of the ETF solve Ethereum’s problems?

No. Ethereum had a major "speculation" in the last round, which was through a large number of NFTs.

Now it seems a bit ridiculous, why did so many appear at that time? Of course, there were also excellent non-NFT ones, such as Vault 4626 and AA 4337.

Ethereum L2 is currently in a very unhealthy state. We can certainly say that a hundred flowers bloom, but let’s look at it from another perspective. The analogy of Jewish Director Zhao is particularly good (of course only Chinese people understand it): “V God is the Emperor Xian of Web3”

This is the one who used Cao Cao to control the princes by holding the emperor hostage. He is also known as the "Emperor Xiaomin" in history.

Some people say that Ethereum’s gas is low because all transactions are carried out on L2, and the transaction volume of L2 is very large. This actually means that our great Eastern Han Dynasty is still there.

Okay, no more analogies. Even if L2 is right, isn’t the problem of Ethereum as an ecosystem “fragmentation”? The high degree of asset fragmentation was already very serious in the last round when there were not many L2s.

Isn’t the high degree of asset fragmentation the core problem of Ethereum as an ecosystem?

But can this problem be solved by Polygon AggLayer, OP Superchain, cross-chain bridges/various interoperability services? Obviously not, but this issue never seems to be considered carefully by the Ethereum Foundation. Of course, Vitalik did discuss it:

A few days ago, I saw something really funny. The founder of a ZK Rollup said, "Don't be sad Blast, come to our place to do tasks and help us to increase TVL." The subtext is, this time I will definitely not call you "electronic beggars." But, isn't this funny? The TVL of Ethereum L2 is all such a bubble, what's the use? Look at the current usage of ZK Sync cross-chain bridge.