Author: Kathy
In October 1934, the Central Red Army set off from Jiangxi, but no one called that departure the "Long March." It was just a hasty retreat—the fifth counter-encirclement campaign had failed, the base area could not be held, and more than 80,000 people carried their guns and headed west, not knowing where their destination would be.
That was just a hasty retreat—the fifth counter-encirclement campaign was lost, the base area could not be held, and more than 80,000 people carried their guns and headed west, not knowing where their destination would be.
Yesterday, while reading news about @VitalikButerin on ETH CC, I suddenly thought of the Long March.
It's not that Ethereum is "miserable," but rather that the feeling of being in that situation is very similar. It was once the most solid fortress, but suddenly it turns out to be full of vulnerabilities; it was once an unquestionable narrative, but suddenly it turns out that even its own people don't believe it anymore.
So the question is: Has the Ethereum Foundation gotten out of its predicament?
The fifth counter-encirclement campaign failed.
Only by clearly explaining the defeat can we understand everything that followed.
The past two years have been two years of "multi-faceted collapse" for Ethereum.
The ETH/BTC ratio has fallen back to 2021 levels. The price of ETH has been very volatile, barely breaking through the previous high in 2025 before falling all the way down again.
The on-chain data is also disappointing. Solana's DEX trading volume has surpassed Ethereum across the board, with a record-breaking $650 billion in stablecoin trading volume in February 2026. With 98 million monthly active users, it's a number you can hardly ignore.
But these are still external threats. The Ethereum Foundation has dug itself an even deeper hole – the "L2 parasitic effect".
In March 2024, Dencun underwent an upgrade and went live, causing L2 transaction fees to drop by 99% overnight. This was initially good news: it was cheaper, capacity was increased, and the user experience improved. But then one thing became clear: the more prosperous L2 became, the more hollow L1 became.
Coinbase's Base Chain is projected to generate $75 million in revenue in 2025. Ethereum's L1 protocol is projected to generate $39.2 million in revenue during the same period.
Ethereum L1 generates less than half the revenue of an L2 platform built upon it.
The Blob fees paid by L2 to L1 were extremely low, and the burning mechanism of EIP-1559 was almost ineffective. As a result, in the third quarter of 2025, Ethereum's annualized supply growth rate rebounded to +0.22%—the deflationary narrative of "Ultra Sound Money" officially declared bankrupt.
Meanwhile, EF's treasury is also running low. The treasury figures released in October 2024 showed $970.2 million, a 39% decrease from the previous disclosure. In the past six months, EF has sold a total of 16,000 ETH to raise funds.
In short: facing powerful enemies abroad, internal parasites, a shrinking national treasury, and a collapsed narrative.
Doesn't it look a lot like the failed fifth counter-encirclement campaign?
Zunyi Conference: A Change of Commander Was Inevitable
Having failed to this extent, the leadership must be reorganized.
In January 2025, EF Executive Director Aya Miyaguchi (@AyaMiyagotchi ) announced her resignation. Vitalik personally announced , "I am the one who decides on the new EF leadership team." This statement is intriguing—it is both a resignation and an admission of failure: EF's independent governance in the past was merely a formality.
The new co-executive directors were Wang Xiaowei (@hwwonx) and Tomasz Stańczak (@tkstanczak ). The direction seemed clear. But just 11 months later, Stańczak resigned. Three changes in core executives within 13 months.
This isn't even the most offensive part.
In October 2025, a resignation letter written in May 2024 was made public. The author was Péter Szilágyi ( @peter_szilagyi ) – the former head of the Geth client and the creator of the client that once supported more than 60% of Ethereum nodes. He worked at EF for a full nine years.
The contents of the letter shocked the entire community.
Szilágyi stated that his total income over six years was $625,000—pre-tax, averaging approximately $100,000 per year. During the same period, the blockchain he helped build saw its market capitalization rise from zero to $450 billion. Meanwhile, without his knowledge, EF secretly funded a "second Geth team" within Nethermind—essentially setting up a separate operation behind his back. When he discovered this and voiced his opposition, he was fired within 24 hours.
He also pointed out that EF has a small circle of 5 to 10 "ruling elites" centered around Vitalik, supported by 1 to 3 VCs. It appears decentralized but is actually highly centralized. He used the term "useful fool" to describe himself.
There's a shadow of the Long March here. The Zunyi Conference didn't eliminate internal conflicts; rather, at the most critical moment, it made one person's judgment an unshakable compass. The EF reshuffle in early 2025 also carries this implication—Vitalik wasn't "listening to opinions," he was consolidating power and restructuring, using the crisis as an opportunity to re-establish control over the roadmap.
The Long March was able to continue because someone was willing to take the final responsibility for judgment.
Strategic Shift: A Major Turnaround in the Roadmap
With a new leader, the roadmap also needs to be changed.
The old logic was: L1 ensures security, and expansion relies entirely on L2. The problem with this approach has been discussed above—the more successful L2 is, the more hollow L1 becomes, leading to a break in value capture.
In May 2025, Vitalik Buterin published an article proposing the vision of "Lean Ethereum": Ethereum will be as simple as Bitcoin in five years. A more radical proposal: replace the EVM execution architecture with RISC-V, potentially improving performance by 100 times.
https://x.com/VitalikButerin/status/1918562016329162844
Slogans may sound catchy, but actions speak louder than words.
The Fusaka upgrade is the first substantial anchor point. At its core is PeerDAS, which increases Blob data capacity by 2 to 4 times, theoretically reaching 100,000 TPS. But more importantly, it includes EIP-7918: setting a floor price for Blobs, linked to L1 gas, directly reducing Blob costs from 1 wei to 0.01 to 0.5 Gwei.
EIP-7918 is the key move in this shift. It's saying: L2 can no longer freeload off L1's security. If you use my data layer, you have to pay a reasonable fee. The era of "L2 prosperity at the expense of L1" will be forcibly ended.
This is equivalent to the Red Army changing its marching route from a frontal assault to a flanking maneuver during the Long March—not abandoning the battle, but changing its tactics.
EthCC 2026: Has Ethereum arrived in Yan'an?
ETH CC was held in Cannes last week. The conference sent several signals, each worthy of examination in the Long March analogy.
The Disappearance Test: Vitalik Buterin asked – if he disappeared tomorrow, would Ethereum still function? This is precisely the ultimate goal of the Long March – the system's survival after the leader disappears. By publicly asking this question, he is saying: I know I am a centralization risk, and we need to seriously address this. This is maturity, but also pressure.
EEZ Framework: The day before the EthCC launch, Gnosis, Zisk, and EF jointly announced the Ethereum Economic Zone (EEZ). Its goal is to enable contracts on different rollups to call each other within the same transaction through real-time zero-knowledge proofs—solving the "hundred islands problem" of $40 billion in assets being locked on over twenty isolated chains. Yan'an was a base area because it had logistics and infrastructure. EEZ does exactly that. However, it's important to clarify: EEZ is not yet live.
The Agora Institutional Forum featured representatives from JP Morgan and Societe Generale-Forge discussing on-chain finance. The fact that traditional financial institutions proactively sought negotiations doesn't mean Ethereum has compromised; it means Ethereum has matured. Of course, regulatory pressure from MiCA and the continued pursuit of Solana are real variables, and we cannot only focus on the positive aspects.
Key assessment: Have we emerged from this predicament?
Let's make a comparison first:
Judging from a series of signals released by ETH CC, the strategic shift has been completed, but has not yet reached Yan'an.
"The strategic shift is complete" means that the direction has truly changed. Vitalik personally spearheaded the change in leadership, EIP-7918 directly addresses the L2 parasitic problem, and RISC-V replacing EVM opens up possibilities for a 10-year technology roadmap. This is not patching up; it's a complete reshaping of the roadmap.
"Having not yet reached Yan'an" means that the changes are real, but the results have not yet materialized. Can EIP-7918 truly improve L1 fee capture? Can ETH/BTC stabilize and rebound? Can developer retention rates stop declining? There are currently no definitive answers to these three indicators.
There is still a fundamental question hanging over the table: Where is the Yan'an of Ethereum?
Different people offer different answers. "World computer," "global settlement layer," "programmable money," "censorship-resistant infrastructure"—these visions are not contradictory, but they lack a clear consensus narrative. Without consensus, it's difficult to mobilize the entire ecosystem to follow suit.
The lessons of the Long March
The significance of the Long March has never been about the value of the suffering itself.
Suffering is not an asset; suffering is a filter. Its function is to forcibly eliminate wrong paths, wrong commands, and wrong tactics—and then leave behind those judgments that survive.
Ethereum's besiege over the past two years—the rapid rise of Solana, the L2 parasitic effect, and the internal governance crisis of EF—is real, and so are the reactions. EIP-7918 is a surgical intervention to address economic vulnerabilities. Vitalik's question about the "disappearance test" in Cannes is forcing himself and the entire ecosystem to confront the most vulnerable node.
Someone who is about to die wouldn't undergo such a specific surgery.
But the Long March taught us that completing the strategic transfer only meant arriving at a place where we could start anew. Yan'an was the starting point of the base area, not the end. What followed was construction, operation, and the integration of scattered forces into a single direction.
Ethereum's success hinges on two things: the execution of its technology roadmap and the community's acceptance of the new narrative. The former has a verifiable roadmap, while the latter offers no guarantees.
So, what is Ethereum's "Yan'an"?
