On November 20th, at the Argentina Devcon conference, the founder of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, issued a warning. He stated that if the institutional holdings of Ethereum continue to rise, Ethereum will encounter two significant threats. The primary risk is the possibility of alienating those who truly care about decentralization and core developers, which could result in the erosion of the community. The secondary risk is making incorrect technical decisions; institutional pressure may lead to inappropriate technical decisions, such as setting a block time of 150 milliseconds. This benefits high-frequency trading but hinders regular users from running nodes, potentially leading to geographic centralization. Vitalik emphasized that Ethereum should focus on its global, permissionless, and censorship-resistant protocol characteristics. It is necessary to maintain a strong core community and uphold the values that set Ethereum apart from traditional finance. It is reported that currently, nine Wall Street companies hold more than $18 billion worth of ETH, and predictions indicate that institutional holdings may exceed 10% of Ethereum’s total supply.
