- Hoskinson warns Ethereum may not survive 10-15 years.
- Should Ethereum collapse, users may switch to Bitcoin DeFi as an alternative.
Charles Hoskinson, a former co-creator of Ethereum and the founder of Cardano, has once again expressed optimism about Ethereum’s short-term survival.Hoskinson again made a prediction that Ethereum might cease to exist in the next 10 to 15 years because of the fundamental weaknesses in the design and ecosystem.
Hoskinson attacked Ethereum’s consensus process, virtual machine, and accounting model, claiming they are serious flaws that won’t last for ten to fifteen years. He added that if these structural problems were not tackled, the platform could come to its end.
Hoskinson’s remarks arrive as Ethereum continues to work to scale through upgrades such as Pectra and Fusaka, designed to enhance performance and reduce fees. Nevertheless, as Ethereum has had a 9.3% weekly price increase up to $1,743, questions about the coin’s future still exist.
Layer-2 Solutions Draining Ethereum’s Value
Hoskinson criticized Ethereum’s reliance on layer-2 (L2) solutions, calling them “parasitic.” Moreover, he asserted that L2 networks like Arbitrum and Optimism are stealing value from Ethereum’s main chain.
Consequently, with more and more users drawing on L2s to be able to get things done faster and cheaper, the demand for ETH on the main network starts fading away. However, as Hoskinson pointed out, it also threatens Ethereum’s economic model. “L2s are sucking value from the main chain,” he stated, warning of potential long-term damage.
The Ethereum L2 ecosystem has come a long long way with the likes of zk-rollups that tackle the scalability problems. However, with the introduction of L2 native token for the purpose of payment of fees and governance, the utility of ETH has decreased and one has started questioning its role in the ecosystem.
“We are running so much complexity with Ethereum, we continue to talk to the developers that are active in the communities to help alleviate the interfaces across the stack and make sure everyone has the same access to those tools,” Hoskinson said. He likened it to the trajectory of Myspace and Blackberry, other tech giants who did not survive competition and poor internal management.
The Cardano founder also highlighted governance issues, predicting a “hostile governance split” that could fracture the Ethereum community. Cardano’s own scaling solutions, Hydra and Midnight sidechain for example, he pointed to as a more sustainable way forward.
Ethereum Fights Back with Major Upgrades
However, these critiques are not keeping Ethereum from standing still. While the Pectra upgrade has been planned for early Q2 2025, the aim will be to fix the scalability issue with growing the validator set size and transaction efficiency. Later in the year the network will be further enhanced by the Fusaka upgrade.
To ensure that Ethereum continues to maintain its position as the most prominent blockchain platform, these updates are an implementation component of Ethereum’s plan.For example, the recent Scroll upgrade promises up to 90 percent lower fees, which would make it more competitive.
Hoskinson, however, remains skeptical. He urged Ethereum developers to adopt a “telescoping protocol design” similar to Cardano’s Ouroboros-Leios and to consider shifting to the RISC-V instruction set for better efficiency. “You have to solve your technological problems,” he said, criticizing Ethereum’s proof-of-stake implementation.
To this end, Ethereum, despite Hoskinson’s warnings, remains to be the blockchain that’s currently dominating the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. As per data from CoinMarketCap, Ethereum’s market capitalization still is the second largest in crypto market after Bitcoin.
Hoskinson also went on to add that if Ethereum doesn’t come up with a solution to the mentioned issues, it may have a number of its users migrating to Bitcoin DeFi platforms. The applications of DeFi on Bitcoin, like the Lightning Network for faster transactions, are becoming more and more popular.
