Ethereum: Unveiling the Crucial Fight for Its Future in a New Documentary

Are you deeply invested in the evolution of the crypto world? Do you wonder about the long-term viability of leading blockchain networks? Then prepare to delve into the very core of one of the most significant digital innovations: Ethereum. A groundbreaking documentary, ‘The Fight for Ethereum’s Soul,’ by Crypto News Insights, now explores the pivotal challenges and promising future of this foundational blockchain protocol. This film offers an essential look into its journey and ongoing transformation.

Unveiling Ethereum’s Enduring Journey and Challenges

Crypto News Insights proudly presents “The Fight for Ethereum’s Soul.” This mini-documentary offers a deep dive into the future of the smart contract blockchain protocol. Gareth Jenkinson, Head of Multimedia at Crypto News Insights, directed and produced the film, with Senior Producer Celine Tan. It captures critical conversations with leading minds in the Ethereum community. These experts discuss Ethereum’s current state and its trajectory amidst rising competition from next-generation layer-1 blockchains. The documentary is a must-watch for anyone tracking the Ethereum future.

Ethereum launched ten years ago. It introduced programmability and composability, building on Bitcoin’s 2009 innovation. However, what truly lies ahead for Ethereum? This question is complex. The decentralized nature of the world’s pioneering smart-contract blockchain protocol makes answers difficult. Crypto News Insights recently visited EthCC in Cannes. There, they spoke with many of the brightest minds in the Ethereum ecosystem. These discussions form the backbone of this compelling new documentary.

The film features prominent figures from the Ethereum ecosystem. These include:

• Tomasz Stańczak: Ethereum Foundation (EF) Co-Executive Director
• Sandeep Nailwal: Polygon Co-Founder
• Jerome de Tychey: Ethereum France President
• Lorien Gabel: Figment Co-founder and CEO
• Fredrik Haga: Dune Analytics Co-founder and CEO
• Marc Boiron: Polygon Labs CEO
• Samantha Yap: YAP Global Co-founder and CEO
• Tom Vieira: Base Head of Product

Their insights provide a comprehensive perspective on the network’s evolution and the ongoing challenges to its core.

A Decade of Dominance Under Threat: The Evolution of Ethereum’s Core

Ethereum has evolved dramatically over the past decade. The blockchain successfully executed a change in its consensus algorithm. This move is often compared to replacing a car’s engine while it drives at full speed on a highway. The shift from proof-of-work (PoW) to proof-of-stake (PoS) fundamentally altered how the protocol functions. Ethereum departed from Bitcoin’s PoW approach, known for its computationally and energy-intensive hashing. It moved to a ‘skin-in-the-game’ system. This system requires validators to stake ETH tokens to maintain the network and earn rewards.

While Ethereum initially provided fantastic functionality, it eventually faced similar problems to Bitcoin. Its base layer chain could not serve the needs of a growing number of users, applications, and services. To enable infinitely scalable transactions, the Ethereum community adopted a layer 2-centric approach to scaling. Execution, whether for transactions or asset creation, shifted to a separate infrastructure layer. These layers use advanced cryptography, such as ZK-proofs. They submit trustless evidence of transactions and activity back to Ethereum’s base layer.

This approach brought significant benefits: scale, speed, and cost reductions to layer 1. However, an inevitable consequence emerged. This was the fragmentation of liquidity and shifting incentives for validators. Fees dropped on the base layer. These fees remain a core incentive for Ethereum validators to maintain the network. Meanwhile, the superior execution environments of layer 2s began to pull liquidity from Ethereum’s base layer. In 2024, grumblings of discontent surfaced. Prominent voices called for the Ethereum Foundation to intervene. They proposed changes to the protocol. These changes would ensure the value of ETH continued to rise while maintaining the user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) advances provided by layer 2s.

The Changing of the Guard: Pectra and the Future of Layer 2 Scaling

In 2025, the Ethereum Foundation (EF) made significant organizational changes. Tomasz Stańczak and Hsiao-Wei Wang took up dual roles at the top of the Foundation. They now report to a braintrust led by Vitalik Buterin. Pectra, Ethereum’s latest network upgrade, hit the mainnet in May. This marked the most significant change to the protocol since the Merge in 2022. Pectra combined the Prague execution layer and Electra consensus layer hard forks. It introduced eleven Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs). These EIPs aimed to improve scalability, user experience, and staking efficiency.

Pectra builds upon improvements made by the 2024 Dencun upgrade. Dencun famously introduced Blobs through EIP 4844, known as proto-danksharding. Blobs provided a new method for L2s to post transaction data on the L1. The impact was dramatic; L2 transaction fees dropped by 90%. This was a major step in advancing Layer 2 scaling. According to Dune co-founder Fredrik Haga, this was a technological boon but an economic drawback for L1 validators. Haga explained, “The L2 situation is interesting because now 85% of transactions are on L2, so there’s only 15% left on Ethereum L1, but 85% of the volume still lives on L1.” He continued, “The L1 has very limited engagement, if you will, in like the absolute number. But the big money is still clearly on L1. Then obviously the L2 used to pay a lot to settle to L1. And since blobs were introduced in March 2024, that has basically gone to zero.”

The combined impact of Dencun in 2024 and Pectra in 2025 has moved the Ethereum ecosystem further along its intricate development roadmap. Stańczak noted that unifying liquidity, interoperability, and improving overall user experience have been top priorities for the Ethereum Foundation over the past 18 months. “I think the big focus now is on the interop, on the tooling and the standards, and accelerating that idea that all the chains around Ethereum should feel very much like a single ecosystem, and it should be very natural for the users to transfer between them to use all the applications that just flow to different chains if they need to,” Stańczak stated. “There are clear challenges on presenting how the fee structure, data availability and interop mechanics all work together. Just a few years ago, it was really hard to predict how the L2s would evolve. Now we see we have much more clarity.”

Balancing Act: Ethereum’s Core Protocol vs. Next-Gen Competitors

Jerome de Tychey, head of Ethereum France and organizer of EthCC, added that the protocol’s future success depends on a delicate balancing act. This involves prioritizing L1 mechanics and maintaining symbiosis with L2s. “We are doing two things right now. First, we are putting some emphasis on the L1, on scalability and on the sustainability of the L2,” De Tychey explained. “We have a lot of consideration about the future performance of the security aspect of things, and also of potentially the token itself, of course, but also upgrading how the user experience is going to be unfolded in the next years. That’s a very, very good signal that Ethereum is going to be more accessible from a usability standpoint.”

Still, this balancing act remains precarious. How does the Ethereum L1 ensure validators remain incentivized to keep the network running? How does it avoid an intense performance arm-wrestle with new-age layer 1s like Solana, SUI, and Aptos? Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron offered a compelling perspective. He suggested that trying to compete directly with these rivals might harm Ethereum’s future. “I’m pretty optimistic about it in the sense that it does look like they’re saying, like, OK, maybe let’s focus on data availability and execution more than personally I would like, but without really giving up this benefit that we have from a settlement perspective,” Boiron observed. “I think it is dangerous, right? If they go down this road of trying to compete on execution too heavily, the likelihood is they will end up getting out-competed by those who are trying to do the exact same thing.” This highlights a crucial strategic decision for the blockchain protocol.

The Next Decade: Ethereum’s Role in Real-World Assets and Beyond

While criticism was significant over the past year, conversations at EthCC generated a sense of optimism about Ethereum’s future. This optimism stems not from fervor but from utility and on-chain metrics. More than 90% of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are being built on Ethereum. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, is tokenizing securities on Ethereum. Robinhood made headlines in Cannes with the launch of its own Ethereum-based layer 2. This new layer 2 is squarely aimed at RWA and securities tokenization. These developments underscore Ethereum’s growing importance in the traditional financial sector.

Stańczak expressed strong conviction about DeFi’s future dominance. “If you think about DeFi versus TradFi, I would say absolutely no chance that DeFi will not dominate all the global markets. It will be there. It will happen on Ethereum,” he asserted. De Tychey echoed this sentiment, stating there is no meaningful alternative. “Everything else is a ghost train and going in the wrong direction, and pushing and lobbying to still be able to exist with a lot of different interests, a lot of vested interests.” Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal summarized the situation succinctly: “Ethereum got dragged into the execution game. Whereas Ethereum’s core value proposition is this highly decentralized, sovereign-resistant, permissionless settlement layer. And if Ethereum plays well to its strengths and focuses on being the best settlement layer, we already have enough network effects and the momentum for the whole Web3 world to be created around Ethereum.” This collective vision reinforces the strong belief in Ethereum’s enduring role as a leading blockchain protocol. The documentary, ‘The Fight for Ethereum’s Soul,’ provides a vital look at these ongoing developments, offering unparalleled insights into the challenges and opportunities ahead for this pivotal network.