When the L2 parasitic tokens are abandoned by the market, we may witness the resurgence of Ethereum, which upholds the decentralized ideal.

1. The Twilight of Idealism: How VC Barnacles Hollow Out the Decentralized Foundation

1.1 L2 Colonization: The Alienated Scaling Revolution

Data Erosion: Currently, the circulating market value of L2 tokens is $15.2 billion, with an unlocked token supply of $30 billion. From a liquidity perspective, this creates an invisible inflationary pressure of about 4% on the Ethereum ecosystem. Additionally, these related tokens have dropped nearly 50% from their highs, and the actual impact could be even greater. Around 60% of the tokens from these L2 projects are yet to be unlocked, meaning at least $30 billion more in funds will need to be absorbed by Ethereum ecosystem investors.

Ethereum Beast Falls, How VC Barnacles Hollow Out the Decentralized Foundation?

Power Transfer Trap: In the governance committee of Optimism, VC institutions account for 67%, while ArbitrumDAO’s early proposals faced a rejection rate of over 80%, revealing the nominal existence of decentralized governance.

Liquidity Siphoning Effect: EigenLayer’s re-staking protocol has locked over $18 billion, yet 90% of the generated profits flow to institutional stakers.

1.2 The Prisoner’s Dilemma of Re-staking

Economic Model Distortion: Protocols like Lido and EigenLayer have fixed ETH annualized returns at 3-5%, forcing project teams to design inflationary token models to maintain incentives.

Death Spiral Empiricism: The circulating supply of a major L2 token increased by 300% over the past 6 months, but its price dropped by 72%, forming a vicious cycle of “inflation - depreciation - further inflation.”

Staking Oligarchy: The top 10 whale addresses control 43% of the voting power on EigenLayer, while the top 10 addresses on Bitcoin only account for 5% of the circulating supply.

II. Dissecting Capital Parasitism: From Technological Utopia to Financial Alchemy

2.1 The VC Colonial Trilogy

Cognitive Colonization: Capital is used to cultivate projects that align with capital narratives through developer funding programs. A leading VC firm has invested 83% of its funds in the past three years toward infrastructure layers.

Governance Colonization: The “money-politics” in DAO governance, where the proposal pass rate in the Aave community correlates 0.91 with the amount of tokens held by the proposer.

Economic Colonization: The creation of “protocol taxes,” with a DEX protocol generating an actual annualized yield of 15%, 11% of which flows to liquidity providers associated with VCs.

2.2 Alienation of the Developer Class

Technological Feudalism: 62% of Ethereum core developers are full-time employees of VC-funded projects.

Innovation Decay: The number of new independent protocols in the Ethereum ecosystem decreased by 37% in 2023 compared to the previous year, while Solana’s ecosystem grew by 209%.

Value Divide: Gitcoin donation data reveals that only 23% of Ethereum developers agree with the “application-first” development philosophy.

III. Ecological Darwinism: The Reversal of Solana’s Fate

3.1 Evolutionary Advantages of Commercial Genes

Demand-Driven Mutation: The average lifecycle of MEME coins in the Solana ecosystem is 3.2 times longer than that of similar projects on Ethereum.

Organizational Model Innovation: Jupiter adopts the “developer-as-user” model, allocating 50% of its tokens to community testers.

Regulatory Adaptability: By collaborating with traditional institutions like Visa, Solana has created compliant channels, with only 0.3% of transactions being illegal.

3.2 Cultural Gene Comparison

Developer Profile: Among Ethereum developers, 68% have backgrounds in economics or cryptography, while 55% of Solana developers are product managers or game designers.

User Behavior Differences: Solana users perform an average of 17 transactions per day, whereas Ethereum users average only 2.3 transactions.

Capital Efficiency Ratio: With the same market capitalization, Solana generates 4.7 times more transaction fee revenue than Ethereum’s L2 system.

IV. Rebirth Equation: From Technical Giants to Ecological Oceans

4.1 Surgical Plan

L2 Cleansing Plan: Native Rollups or L1 are, in fact, a process of Ethereum’s centralization. Since the industry still recognizes Ethereum as the leading decentralized platform, we cannot allow VCs to continue building infrastructure LEGO sets under the guise of political correctness. We must attempt to construct a boundary for Ethereum that is supported by the developer community, as decentralization also requires an entity to implement its will, and commercial interests need to be reinvested into the ecosystem.

Support for Base and hyperliquid: Base has become the largest “vassal king” in the Ethereum ecosystem, often compared to Solana in terms of AI innovation and capital inflows during bull markets. Although it has not yet “militarized” (i.e., issued tokens), this shift may happen at any time. However, during the Mass Adoption process, Base is expected to attract more users and developers to Ethereum. Base is also more competitive than other L2 solutions.

Staking System Reform: Introduce dynamic staking weights based on contributions, reducing the voting power coefficient of VC addresses to 1/10 of that of ordinary users.

Economic Firewall: Require L2s to allocate at least 30% of their revenue for ETH buybacks and burns to establish a symbiotic economic model.

4.2 Genetic Engineering Project

Developer Revival Plan: Establish an application layer innovation fund, directing at least 50% of funds to independent developers without VC backgrounds.

Governance Gene Editing: Implement AI-driven governance oracles that automatically identify and filter governance proposals with VC characteristics.

Ecological Rewilding: Create a “Dark Forest” arena on the testnet, allowing only fully decentralized protocols to participate in liquidity competition.

V. From Philosophy to Reality: Rethinking the Meaning of Ethereum’s Decentralization

Breakthroughs in Class Transition: Social class solidification and capital barriers hinder fair competition. Decentralization lowers entry barriers, and DeFi and DAOs enable ordinary people to fairly participate in the market, breaking traditional wealth flow rules.

Counterbalance to Capital Monopolies: Financial capital monopolizes market rules. Decentralization replaces intermediaries with smart contracts, increasing transparency, safeguarding individual asset control, and maintaining economic vitality.

End of Internet Oligopolies: Tech giants monopolize data. Decentralization technologies give users data sovereignty, with Web3 ensuring the free flow of information and weakening corporate data exploitation.

Accelerators of Innovation and Transparency: Centralized systems suppress innovation. Decentralization enhances transparency and open protocols incentivize innovation.

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