---
title: "Ethereum’s crisis: How leadership’s mixed messages affect ETH"
description: "Ethereum's leadership has faced criticism over mixed messages regarding the cryptocurrency's value and long-term roadmap. Community members, including Justin Drake, suggest ETH could reach multi-trill"
type: "news"
locale: "en"
url: "https://longbridge.com/en/news/213761696.md"
published_at: "2024-09-08T17:03:15.000Z"
---

# Ethereum’s crisis: How leadership’s mixed messages affect ETH

> Ethereum's leadership has faced criticism over mixed messages regarding the cryptocurrency's value and long-term roadmap. Community members, including Justin Drake, suggest ETH could reach multi-trillion valuations, comparing it to Nvidia and Apple. However, critics like Sam Kazemian argue this perspective limits ETH’s growth potential against Bitcoin. Disparate views, especially regarding the DeFi ecosystem, have contributed to investor confusion and sentiment decline, exacerbated by a drop in ETH's fees since the Dencun upgrade. Consequently, ETH has underperformed against BTC, reflected by a significant reduction in the ETH/BTC ratio over two years.

-   *Ethereum community members had divergent views on ETH’s value and road map.*
-   *The mixed signals from Ethereum leadership could dent ETH’s sentiment.*

The Ethereum \[ETH\] leadership has hit the headlines following its long-term roadmap and ETH’s value accrual views. One of the Ethereum community members, Justin Drake, suggested that ETH was like Nvidia and Apple and could attract multi-trillion valuations based on its fees.

Drake stated,

> “Ethereum is like a very large business like Nvidia, Apple..we can muster multitrillion valuations purely based on the flows \[fees\]. And then you know there’s a whole different topic on top of this base valuation of trillions of dollars for ETH to be money, collateral..for decentralized stablecoins.”

## **Mixed views on ETH’s value**

However, some builders and founders in the Ethereum eco-system disagreed with these perceived leadership views. Sam Kazemian, Founder of DeFi protocol Frax Finance, was one of the critics.

Kazemian felt that comparing ETH to Nvidia or Apple would limit the altcoin’s growth potential compared to Bitcoin. He claimed that this valuation wouldn’t be a win for the altcoin asset.

> ‘ETH currently has $1B annual revenue. If we 385x this revenue to match Apple’s that means ETH would 11x to match Apple’s valuation. Does this seem like a winning roadmap for ETH?”

He believed this was a flawed way for the leadership to gauge ETH’s value and might not compete with BTC.

> “Ethereum as a big business where its ‘base valuation’ is measured as cash flows from fees give it a fighting chance to catch up or ever overtake BTC?”

He added,

> “Apple has $385B annual revenue, it’s worth $3.3T. BTC has 0 annual revenue & never will have a single dollar of revenue. It’s worth $1.1T already.”

Kazemian, like most protocol founders, championed that ETH’s primary value should be based on its ‘store of value’ (SoV) and DeFi ecosystem.

## **ETH leadership says…**

Unlike BTC’s “digital gold” tagline, ETH has struggled to have an impactful and unified pitch deck for potential investors. The leaders’ push for “programmable money” and “digital oil” hasn’t grabbed the expected appeal.

Ethereum’s DeFi vision has also seen divergent visions from leaders. For example, Vitalik Buterin has been skeptical of pure DeFi as the only crypto growth catalyst.

This was opposed to other community members like Kazemian and Uniswap’s Hayden Adams, who believed DeFi was critical to the growth of ETH’s value.

According to Coinbase analysts, this divergent vision for Ethereum’s DeFi has made it hard for new investors to understand the asset and dented its market sentiment.

Besides, ETH’s fees have declined considerably since the Dencun upgrade in March, as low-cost blobs prompted users to migrate to L2s.

Source: Galaxy Research

This has also divided the community on whether to tweak blob fees to help ETH L1 gain value from L2s as ETH’s inflation problem compounds post-Dencun upgrade.

The above community issues have shattered investor sentiment around ETH even further.

That said, ETH has lost ground to BTC. The underperformance was illustrated by a yearly low on the ETH/BTC ratio, which tracks the altcoin’s price performance relative to BTC. ETH’s value has dropped 44% compared to BTC in the past two years.

### Related Stocks

- [ETHE.US - Grayscale Ethereum Staking ETF](https://longbridge.com/en/quote/ETHE.US.md)

## Related News & Research

| Title | Description | URL |
|-------|-------------|-----|
| Coinbase CEO Says Crypto Exchange Is ‘Misunderstood’ | Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong claims the cryptocurrency exchange is "misunderstood" by investors, citing Wall Street's un | [Link](https://longbridge.com/en/news/276453663.md) |
| Aave struggles as BGD Labs plans April exit amid governance crisis | Aave ecosystem service provider BGD Labs plans to exit by early April, citing Aave Labs' aggressive push for centralized | [Link](https://longbridge.com/en/news/276509783.md) |
| IoTeX confirms ‘suspicious activity’ involving token safe, says losses contained | IoTeX is investigating suspicious activity related to its token safe, confirming that losses are contained. The project  | [Link](https://longbridge.com/en/news/276514009.md) |
| IoTeX Bridge Hacked for $8.8M via Private Key Exploit, IOTX Price Dips | IoTeX's cross-chain bridge was hacked on February 21, resulting in over $8 million in crypto assets stolen due to a priv | [Link](https://longbridge.com/en/news/276513543.md) |
| BNP Paribas Joins BlackRock and JPMorgan in the Rush to Tokenize Funds on Ethereum | BNP Paribas has launched a tokenized share class of a French money market fund on the Ethereum blockchain, marking a sig | [Link](https://longbridge.com/en/news/276517699.md) |

---

> **Disclaimer**: This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice.
