A recent critique from within the Ethereum developer community has spotlighted the significant decline of ether against Bitcoin, attributing the staggering 65% drop since the Merge to specific execution failures at the Ethereum Foundation rather than broader market factors. Reid, a veteran participant from the ICO era and an active builder on the Ethereum platform, publicly outlined this indictment, detailing what he views as accumulated execution debt, supported by concrete names, dates, and missed product deadlines.
The central aspect of Reid’s argument aligns with visible market trends. The ETH/BTC ratio, which reached a peak of approximately 0.085 around the Merge in September 2022, has since plummeted to near 0.028 by late May, highlighting ether’s underperformance against Bitcoin. Currently, ether is trading below the $2,000 mark and has experienced a 21% decline over the past year.
Reid contests the viewpoint of certain industry figures, such as Bankless co-founder David Hoffman, who frames ether’s diminished market cap as a “deserved cap.” Instead, Reid argues that the cap is far lower than what bullish investors anticipated, and this situation stems from tangible execution failures rather than mere speculation or coordination issues.
With a background in overseeing credit and real-world assets at firms like Figure and Securitize, Reid still expresses his confidence in ether, indicating he is long on the asset. He critiques the messaging around the Merge, particularly its emphasis on a 99.95% reduction in energy consumption, which he argues addressed concerns that institutional investors never prioritized. In contrast, he points out that these institutions were seeking yield, developers desired finality, and users were looking for more affordable transaction fees. Meanwhile, Solana has successfully marketed raw speed during the same period.
Reid highlights a significant lag in the development timeline, pointing out that proof-of-stake was on the Ethereum roadmap since 2015 but took seven years to materialize. By contrast, Solana managed to launch its mainnet beta in March 2020, quickly rolling out wallets, decentralized exchanges, and money markets, as Ethereum wrestled with its specifications. He notes a shift in Vitalik Buterin’s focus in his writings towards more pluralistic approaches and network states, which Reid perceives as indicative of an entrenched culture rather than an active competitive stance within Ethereum.
A pivotal critique from Reid centers on the absence of a first-party staking application three years post-Merge. Currently, users must manage their own validators with a minimum of 32 ETH, with many relying on Lido, a platform that controls around 24% of staked ETH, despite warnings from developers about potential centralization risks. Reid distilled this dynamic down to a notable quote: “‘We don’t pick winners’ is what an organization says when it does not want to compete.”
Additionally, he pointed to the rollup-centric roadmap as a drain on the Ethereum base layer. Following the implementation of EIP-4844 in March 2024, blob fees dipped significantly through 2024 and 2025, leading to a stark decline in Ethereum’s transaction fee revenue, which has plummeted approximately 95% from a peak of $4.3 billion in Q4 2021. This downturn raises significant questions about Ethereum’s competitive positioning as it navigates a rapidly evolving blockchain landscape.
