“The Ethereum ship is slowly turning around,” claimed David Hoffman from Bankless on April 19.
He added that the process started over six months ago and changes are already observable, highlighting six areas of change Ethereum is undergoing.
The project went through a rough patch earlier this year with leadership issues at the Ethereum Foundation, developers jumping ship, and record levels of FUD being disseminated.
However, despite that, it is still the industry standard network for DeFi, stablecoins, real-world asset tokenization, and decentralized applications.
Evolution of Ethereum
After primarily being research-focused for years, Ethereum is now recognizing the need to adapt in response to competitive pressures that emerged around 2021, argues Hoffman.
He added that the Ethereum community is actively addressing these issues through aggressive layer-1 scaling, with plans to increase gas limits tenfold over two years.
There has also been a shift from protocol-first to product-first thinking, with new leadership roles, and the Ethereum Foundation is taking a more active coordinating role with new co-executive directors.
He also said there is now a more inclusive culture as the doors to the “Ivory Tower” open, enabling a welcoming ecosystem of voices into roadmap conversations.
There is better layer-2 integration and developing interoperability standards, positioning Ethereum layer-1 service provider to L2s. Finally, an increased urgency is embracing shorter roadmap cycles and faster protocol upgrades.
“Ethereum’s Strategic Pivot”
The Ethereum ship is slowly turning around.
In fact, this process started over 6 months ago – changes are already observableI wrote an article on @BanklessHQ doing my best to identify6️⃣arenas of change Ethereum is undergoing
Read! pic.twitter.com/zxDOXOlVdP
— David Hoffman (@TrustlessState) April 19, 2025
In a recent podcast Ethereum Foundation researchers Ansgar Dietrichs and Dankrad Feist said that the organization was stepping up to facilitate these steps.
“Parts of the Ethereum community have been pushing for this shift, while others have been resisting it,” said Hoffman, who added, “Ethereum is a big tent that holds space for many different voices.”
The Scaling Debate
Uniswap founder Hayden Adams weighed in on the Ethereum scaling debate, stating, “I’m all for scaling improvements to L1, the rollup-centric roadmap actually requires it,” but pointing out that if Ethereum ultimately relies on L1 to support DeFi, Solana may have a stronger roadmap, team, and scaling model.
He argued Ethereum should stick to its rollup-centric layer-2 scaling strategy, which it has developed over the past five years.
“People need to pick a lane and attempt to mitigate the risks associated with it vs scrambling to shift narratives and strategy every month.”
He added that he was also against “just do every approach,” which is probably the only thing worse than not picking an approach.
Meanwhile, Ethereum prices remain at March 2023 levels, failing to push much higher than $1,600 so far this weekend.