Who Can Save ETH? The Network Is Winning. The Token Isn't.

Why Ethereum Started Asking Who Can Save ETH

Ethereum's problem in 2026 is not that the network stopped working. It is that some of Ethereum's own believers have started asking whether ETH still captures enough value from the network it secures.

That question became public in May. On May 21, Dankrad Feist, a former Ethereum Foundation researcher, posted four requirements for what he called "the way to save Ethereum": at least $1 billion in funding, a permanent staking revenue stream, a board that "want ETH to go up," and a leader "who is competent and wants to fight." Five days later, David Hoffman — co-founder of Bankless and one of the loudest voices behind the "ETH is money" thesis — disclosed that he had sold every ETH he held. He argued that Ethereum's network success would now flow primarily to applications and rollups, with relatively little of it reaching ETH itself.

The same week, Bankless co-founder Ryan Sean Adams declared the "end of the first era" of the media brand, amid reports that most of its team had been quietly laid off. One Ethereum-native flagship was demanding a new institution to fight for ETH's price. Another was both losing its star advocate and visibly contracting.

Both pointed at the same problem: Ethereum may still be central infrastructure, while ETH no longer automatically receives the full benefit of that centrality.

This is why "who can save ETH" is not just a meme headline. It is a route conflict. One camp, closer to Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum Foundation's values-first posture, argues that Ethereum should remain credibly neutral infrastructure and that token value should follow from long-term network relevance. The other camp argues that this is no longer enough: ETH now needs explicit price-aligned coordination because network growth has become too weakly connected to ETH demand, fee burn, staking yield, or monetary premium.

CoinEx Research will examine this conflict through market performance, Ethereum fee capture, ETH supply dynamics, L2 growth, and institutional demand. The question is not whether Ethereum is dead. The question is whether Ethereum's growth still matters enough to ETH.

Ethereum's Real Diagnosis: Network Growth Without ETH Value Capture

The market has already been marking down ETH's relative strength. In the chart dataset, ETH/BTC stood at 0.02716 on May 28, 2026. That is roughly 69.1% below the dataset peak of 0.08791 on December 8, 2021. The latest common-window comparison starting May 29, 2025 also shows how capital can reward other stories: HYPE indexed to 160.3 by May 28, 2026, while ETH indexed to 74.4, BTC to 68.1, and SOL to 47.1.

This does not prove that Ethereum is failing. It shows that ETH has lost pricing power against both crypto's reserve asset and newer high-growth narratives. That is the first market expression of the value-capture problem: investors may still believe Ethereum matters, but they are less certain that ETH is the cleanest way to capture that importance.

The second expression is protocol revenue. Dencun and EIP-4844 made Ethereum cheaper to use by moving L2 data availability into blobs. That was a scaling success. But the same shift weakened the L1 fee pressure that previously supported ETH burn. In the chart dataset, average daily protocol revenue fell from about $6.87 million before Dencun to about $1.86 million after Dencun, down roughly 73.0%. Average daily L1 fees fell from about $8.07 million to about $2.69 million, down roughly 66.7%. The latest complete burn row, May 27, 2026, showed only 40.9 ETH burned, with about $81.8K in protocol revenue and $360.4K in L1 fees.

This is the uncomfortable tradeoff. Lower fees are good for users and L2 adoption. But if lower fees also mean lower burn and lower settlement revenue, then Ethereum's network success can look less visible inside ETH's asset economics.

The supply picture is more nuanced than a simple bearish claim. The latest 30D annualized supply growth in the chart dataset was about -0.0270% as of May 28, 2026, so ETH was not in a severe inflationary regime at that point. But the chart's more important message is movement around the zero line: ETH scarcity now depends on whether fee burn remains strong enough to offset issuance.

However, the direction of the thesis has changed. "Ultrasound money" is no longer an automatic story that can stand apart from network demand. It depends on activity that burns ETH in meaningful size. If Ethereum scales mostly by making L1 settlement economically invisible, ETH's scarcity premium becomes conditional rather than structural.

That is why the competition question matters. The pressure is not only internal. In the two weeks leading into Hoffman's exit, BTC and ETH spot ETFs together saw close to $2.7 billion in net outflows, while ETF demand accelerated into HYPE, XRP, and Solana products. Hyperliquid entered the top ten crypto assets by market capitalization. Solana continues to attract on-chain trading volume and consumer flows that Ethereum L1 once owned. Bitcoin retains its position as the cleanest macro story for institutional capital. Ethereum does not need to lose users for ETH to disappoint. ETH only needs Ethereum's growth to become harder to monetize than the alternatives.

Can Ethereum's Saviors Actually Save ETH?

Vitalik and the Ethereum Foundation can defend Ethereum's legitimacy, but they have made clear they are not pursuing the price-promotion role. Vitalik's recent framing of EF as a "smaller ship" that will "sell less ETH," combined with the EF Mandate's emphasis on CROPS — censorship resistance, openness, privacy, and security — points toward restraint rather than price activism. Pushed further, Vitalik said that his own influence inside the Foundation will continue to decrease, "which is honestly what I want."

That restraint is being executed during the deepest talent drain in EF history. At least eight senior contributors departed or announced exits in 2026 — five in May alone — including all three former leads of the Protocol Cluster, the team responsible for core protocol research. Co-executive director Tomasz Stańczak stepped down in February after less than a year in the role; interim co-ED Bastian Aue, in post for roughly three months at time of writing, is executing the transition. The values-first posture is not only a philosophy — it is being articulated by a thinner, newer leadership team during visible internal turbulence.

For long-term credibility, that restraint is valuable. For market competition, it can look like a missing business function. Traders do not only price neutrality. They price cash flow, demand, narrative control, distribution, institutional access, and token-level feedback loops.

Feist's proposed ETH-aligned organization directly challenges that gap. The price-aligned camp is effectively saying that Ethereum needs an entity willing to coordinate capital, narrative, research, and incentives around ETH appreciation. That could make Ethereum more competitive in a market where other ecosystems actively fight for liquidity and attention. It could also violate the very neutrality that gives Ethereum its premium. If an ETH-focused organization becomes too powerful, critics can reasonably ask whether Ethereum is drifting toward a corporate-chain model.

Traditional capital is the third candidate savior. It is already large enough to matter. The CoinGecko treasury snapshot used in the chart dataset shows public ETH treasury companies holding about 7.38 million ETH, worth roughly $14.7 billion. BitMine alone held 5.39 million ETH, or about 4.466% of total ETH supply. SharpLink held 868.7K ETH, or about 0.72% of supply.

That is real demand; but it is not the same as protocol value capture. The chart above also shows concentration: BitMine accounts for most public treasury ETH in the snapshot, while the long tail is much smaller. That makes treasury demand important, but it also underlines why wrappers cannot substitute for protocol-level value capture. Treasury companies and ETFs can absorb ETH supply, create familiar wrappers, and make ETH easier for institutions to hold. They cannot, by themselves, prove that Ethereum activity produces enough ETH-denominated economic value. 

The conclusion from the savior debate is therefore mixed. Vitalik and EF can protect legitimacy. Feist-style organizations can push coordination. Institutions can absorb supply. None of them can single-handedly fix the missing feedback loop between Ethereum usage and ETH value.

The Real Cure For ETH: Make Ethereum Growth Matter Again

The most important chart is not the institutional table. It is the L2 chart. L2 activity has grown dramatically. In the below chart dataset, tracked production L2 TVL/TVS increased from about $6.84 billion on January 1, 2023 to about $41.95 billion on May 27, 2026, up roughly 513.0%. L2 transactions rose from 3.71 million per day to 27.63 million per day, up roughly 645.1%. L2 active addresses rose from 457.8K to 1.65 million, up roughly 259.9%.

This is not bearish for Ethereum. It is proof that Ethereum's scaling roadmap created real usage capacity. The problem is that the direct economic feedback to ETH is thin in the same dataset: the latest 7D average on May 27, 2026 showed blob fees of about $69, and L1 settlement fees paid by tracked L2s of about $1,068. The exact number depends on source methodology, but the directional message is clear: L2 activity is much larger than the ETH value it currently routes back to L1.

That is where the real cure sits. Blob fee floors, including EIP-7918, can make blob demand less economically invisible. Based rollups could route more sequencing, MEV, and settlement value back toward Ethereum. Stronger L2 value alignment could make it harder for L2s to benefit from Ethereum security while externalizing most economics. Restaking and AVS yield could expand ETH's product layer, though they should be treated as risk-bearing extensions rather than guaranteed demand.

The cleanest solution would be application demand that pays for Ethereum-grade security, liquidity, and neutrality in ETH-denominated terms. Ethereum does not need expensive gas for its own sake. It needs valuable activity that pays enough to make ETH scarcity, yield, and settlement relevance visible again.

ETH Does Not Need One Savior. Ethereum Needs Trackable Proof

The values-first camp is right that Ethereum's neutrality is the source of its long-term legitimacy. The price-aligned camp is right that markets do not automatically reward legitimacy if token value capture is weak. This is why the useful question is not which faction wins the debate. The useful question is what evidence would prove that Ethereum growth is starting to matter to ETH again.

For the second half of 2026, CoinEx Research would monitor four signals.

• EIP-7918 and any blob fee floor implementation should be judged by measurable changes in burn or settlement revenue, not only by roadmap language. 
• Based rollups need to move from design discussion to production usage with visible economic routing back to Ethereum. 
• If a price-aligned Ethereum organization forms, the market should evaluate whether it attracts real capital without compromising Ethereum's neutrality premium. 
• ETH ETF flows and treasury demand need to become durable net demand, not only headline balance-sheet accumulation.

ETH does not need one savior. It needs Ethereum's growth to matter to ETH again.

Disclaimer: This content is for reference only and does not constitute investment advice. Information may be incomplete or inaccurate. Please do your own research; the author assumes no responsibility for losses.