ETH's pivot back to L1 scaling is all talk; there are ZERO planned CAPACITY increases! There are only endless debates in ivory towers while SPEED is ignored Competitors like SOL, SUI & NEAR have 100x the CAPACITY & 20x the SPEED of ETH NOW ETH is still wildly uncompetitive! 🧵 We are now expected to wait 5+ years for the Beam upgrade to increase ETH's SPEED 3x... While there are no guarantees of future capacity increases... There is narrative & there is reality, the competitive reality of ETH is incredibly grim! Despite ETH pumping hard after its "pivot" back to L1 scaling, ETH talks the talk, but it does not walk the walk: Talk is Cheap The narrative shift is certainly a positive development. However, it was not accompanied by a shift in the developmental focus; the roadmap remains the same! We must applaud @dankrad's proposal to increase CAPACITY 5x by 2026. That would put ETH back in the competition in terms of CAPACITY, even if not in SPEED. Unfortunately, this proposal is unlikely to succeed based on the pushback it has received. RISC-V, a particularly "expensive" & high-risk upgrade that will take many years to implement, does not directly scale the L1 so much as to justify its developmental cost. The primary motivation for adopting RISC-V is to bring down the cost of zero-knowledge computation. Something that could hypothetically be used for L1 scaling with pie-in-the-sky dreams of a ZkEVM. However, this will far more likely benefit ETH's L2 ecosystem, because of the entrenched interests: Perverse Incentives The "L2 scaling" roadmap has been a catastrophe; refusing to scale the L1 in favour of L2 only pushed users out to competitors. Including all of the major L2's, which can all censor & steal user funds... A parasitical relationship, as the L2's exert lobbying pressure on the L1 to never scale, while taking the majority of the fees for themselves, killing the host & enriching the L2's owners over the short term. If the L1 were to really scale, it would put all of the major L2's out of business overnight. We are talking about billions of dollars in L2 tokens & equity here, held both by VCs & some of ETH's major decision makers... A clear conflict of interest that arises from systemic flaws in governance design, as the same happened to BTC during the historic block size wars. Read "Hijacking Bitcoin" to learn more about that critical chapter in crypto's history. The solution to these problems lies in stakeholder governance, something both ETH & BTC have totally refused, as that would obviously disempower the people who are in charge now... Shifting Responsibility Validators can change the gas limit within certain limits. However, considering this is one of the only examples of on-chain governance in ETH, which has otherwise completely rejected the concept. While very little effort has been put into the coordination mechanisms to even make this viable: Practically, it is not working & serves as a convenient scapegoat, allowing the core developers to shift the blame for not scaling the L1! In reality, enabling any type of on-chain governance mechanism requires serious infrastructure & backing. This has not happened with this particular mechanism, which is what makes it so unreliable. The most significant evidence of this is still @dankrad's proposal, since if it passes, we will get a CAPACITY increase, possibly even overnight! Proofing where the power truly lies & that shifting this responsibility is only an attempt at misdirection. Pectra Actions speak louder than words; the most recent upgrade (May 7th) doubled the blob size for L2s while not increasing L1 capacity at all! If they were at all serious about L1 scaling, they would have shipped the upgrade with more CAPACITY. That clearly did not happen, exposing where their true priorities lie... ETH has been at capacity for years now. That they can so casually wait another 6 months, which is an eternity in crypto, before maybe increasing CAPACITY. Reveals a lot about their anti-competitive attitude. Typical of the culture that is now too prevalent within ETH development culture. We have witnessed a massive narrative shift with no actual substance; even a token increase in gas limit would have sent a far more positive message to people like us who track the fundamentals over the hype. However, that clearly did not happen... Conclusion The cutting edge now involves sub-second finality with capacity exceeding 20K TPS, or even 100K TPS in some cases! ETH is now nowhere near these numbers, not even in their most ambitious multi-year roadmaps. ETH is shifting its narrative to one based on utility, value & cypherpunk values to one based on false narratives alone, much like BTC. A move that comes from a deep insecurity & desperation. To remain relevant in the face of unbeatable market competition. In theory, ETH can upgrade & compete directly with the best blockchains out there. In practice, the political analysis exposes that it will not happen, due to a highly dysfunctional form of governance that is likely already far too captured by L2 interests for any meaningful change. Besides the empty promises of another failed blockchain experiment. We can take solace that the revolution continues, in all of BTC's & ETH's children, who refuse to play pretend & scale. While implementing the governance mechanisms that will prevent this cycle from recurring. Let's be thankful for the progression, as BTC brought us decentralization, ETH brought us decentralized programmability & the next generation allows us to scale all of it, while preserving decentralization! Completing the technological puzzle for mass adoption. So, leave ETH behind & instead support cryptocurrencies that do move us forward towards that bright & beautiful future NOW. 🔥