Is Ethereum's Slow Innovation Leading to a Shaky Web3 Throne?

Since its inception in 2015, Ethereum has been synonymous with smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps), serving as the core infrastructure of the entire Web3 ecosystem. However, in the past two years, Ethereum's development has gradually revealed issues of 'lack of innovation and slow pace', raising doubts within the community about its future dominance.

Firstly, from a technical perspective, the upgrade to Ethereum 2.0 (i.e., transitioning to a PoS consensus mechanism) is significant, but the implementation process is extremely slow. From 'The Merge' to 'Sharding' and then to the future 'Danksharding', each phase requires several years. This slow iteration pace seems particularly sluggish in the rapidly developing crypto industry, prompting many developers and users to turn to more 'agile' alternatives such as Solana, Avalanche, and Sui.

Secondly, although Layer 2 solutions have greatly alleviated congestion on the mainnet, there is severe ecological fragmentation, complex user experiences, and cross-chain interactions are still not smooth. Projects like Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, and Base are progressing, but they have not achieved a 'unified experience'; instead, they have exacerbated ecological fragmentation. In contrast, some new public chains opting for a 'one chain to solve everything' design are more favored by users.

Moreover, the governance method of the Ethereum community has also been criticized. Due to its overly decentralized and strong consensus culture, any protocol changes require long discussions and testing. While this ensures the robustness of the system, Ethereum's response is often lagging when faced with new narratives (such as AI, DePIN, RWA), missing out on opportunities.

Ethereum is not lacking in innovation, but rather its innovation is too conservative. As infrastructure, this robust strategy is understandable, but in an era where new public chains frequently introduce new technologies and play styles, Ethereum must speed up its pace; otherwise, it will gradually lose its appeal to developers and funds.

In summary, Ethereum remains the 'pillar of stability' in the industry, but if it cannot accelerate innovation in technology, user experience, and ecological integration, its Web3 throne may indeed be shaken. The next few years are a critical window for Ethereum to solidify its dominant position and an excellent opportunity for challengers to overtake.