Ethereum Gave Away Too Much for Too Long. Will Its Pivot Be Enough? - Ep. 829

Unchained

After years of underperformance, Ethereum is trying to change course, from scaling the layer 1 to potentially dumping the EVM. In this episode, Tarun Chitra and Max Resnick break down each of these new changes, analyzing the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Is this a reset that can save Ethereum’s market position and price? Or has the protocol given away too much for too long?

They dive into:

• Whether the gas limit increase changes everything

• What went wrong with Ethereum’s economics and solo staking politics

• Max’s view on “the single most important” change Ethereum needs to make

• How ETH could claw back value from layer 2s

• What Max would do if he ran Ethereum

• Whether this pivot is too little, too late

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• Tarun Chitra, CEO and Co-Founder of Gauntlet

• Max Resnick, Lead economist at Anza

• Unchained:

• Ethereum Ecosystem Shifts Toward User Focus

• Ethereum Developers Vote EOF Out of Fusaka Hard Fork

• Vitalik Buterin Proposes Replacing Ethereum Virtual Machine

• The Block:

• Vitalik and new Ethereum Foundation co-executive directors outline updated board structure, mission

• Vitalik Buterin- and StarkWare-backed Kakarot reveals alternative Ethereum ZK stack, targeting real-time STARK proofs on Layer 1 by end of 2025

• CoinDesk: Ethereum Could Supercharge Transaction Speed to 2,000 TPS Thanks to Bold New Proposal

• Simplifying the L1 by Vitalik Buterin

Timestamps:

• 👋 0:00 Introduction

• 🛠️ 2:05 Why Ethereum had to pivot and what triggered the urgency

• 📈 7:16 Why raising the gas limit could actually be a big deal

• 💻 9:12 Whether Ethereum devs are too idealistic

• ⚡ 19:02 How Solana managed to outperform Ethereum at the base layer

• 👨‍🏫 24:09 Why Max feels Vitalik’s proposals focus on outdated technology

• 🔧 27:57 The growing gap between Ethereum research and its execution clients

• 👍 35:02 The ONE thing Max thinks Ethereum is doing well

• ⚖️ 40:38 Did “credible neutrality” push Ethereum down the wrong path?

• 🌀 48:23 Will the new Ethereum R1 rollup succeed?

• 🔀 52:53 What the new updates mean for layer 2s and their value proposition

• 📉 1:02:58 Whether ETH is finally due for a price reversal

• 🎯 1:09:12 Why Ethereum should take a page from Trump’s strategy playbook

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