Foreign media reports that the two co-founders of Bankless recently clashed again over an old question: will the continued expansion of the Ethereum ecosystem necessarily benefit ETH holders? The debate is heating up against the backdrop of the increasing proportion of Layer 2, stablecoins, and tokenized assets within the Ethereum system, while market doubts about ETH's ability to capture value have resurfaced.
Hoffman stated he is bullish on Ethereum but reduced his ETH holdings.
In an article, David Hoffman stated that he remains optimistic about Ethereum's long-term position, but he is no longer as optimistic as he used to be about whether ETH can proportionally absorb the economic value created by the entire ecosystem.
His core assessment is that Ethereum is increasingly resembling a layer of underlying infrastructure. Layer 2 networks, stablecoin issuers, applications, and tokenized asset platforms can all develop on it, but the value that these activities bring back to ETH holders may be relatively limited.
Hoffman argues that Ethereum has long adhered to a more "giver" than "taker" approach, minimizing direct value extraction from ecosystem participants in exchange for wider adoption. This design helps expand the network, but it may not necessarily make ETH the most direct beneficiary asset.
Adams opposes being bullish on Ethereum but not on ETH.
Ryan Adams later publicly countered that if Ethereum continues to grow, but ETH itself cannot form a sufficiently strong value base, it is a failure in the network structure itself.
He defines ETH as currency, collateral, and the economic bandwidth of DeFi, arguing that Ethereum's economic success should not be decoupled from ETH. In his view, a robust Ethereum system must be built on the premise that ETH possesses strong monetary attributes and economic status.
This directly addresses a common saying in the market recently: "Being optimistic about the Ethereum ecosystem doesn't necessarily mean being optimistic about ETH." Adams believes that if this narrative holds true, it actually indicates a problem with Ethereum's economic model.
The debate focuses on value capture
At the heart of this disagreement lies whether Ethereum's current design is sufficient to transfer network value to ETH. Those who support the scaling approach argue that Layer 2 growth, lower transaction costs, and wider adoption are strengthening Ethereum's long-term position, and that even a decline in mainnet transaction fee revenue does not mean the network is weakening.
However, critics worry that lower transaction fees, spillover of application value, and Layer 2 gradually taking over more activity could weaken ETH's long-term currency premium.
As Ethereum further assumes its role as a stablecoin settlement, a tokenization platform for real-world assets, and a broader financial infrastructure, the importance of this issue is rising. Compared to ecosystems like Solana that emphasize on-chain revenue, transaction fees, and native token value capture, how Ethereum can maintain consistency between "infrastructure expansion" and "ETH value absorption" is becoming a focus of ongoing discussion in the market.
