Decentralization sounds great. But does anyone actually want it?

1. What Is Linux?

Have you ever heard of Linux? Probably not, unless you work in IT. And even there, it tends to provoke mixed feelings, despite powering a large share of the servers running the internet.

So what does Linux have to do with blockchain?

Well, Linux has seemingly been on the verge of mass adoption for decades. Free, independent, secure, and obviously better than the competition. There is hardly anything Linux cannot do. It powers countless servers, your Android smartphone is based on it, and yet hardly anyone uses it on their laptop.

Why? Because most people just want to use their computer. They don't particularly care whether their operating system is independent.

Which brings us to blockchain.

2. The Never Ending Promise of Mass Adoption

For more than a decade, blockchain has been just around the corner from its big breakthrough.

Bitcoin was supposed to replace money. Ethereum was going to revolutionize finance. Then came NFTs, the metaverse, Web3, and DeFi. Now we even have AI agents that are supposedly going to pay each other using cryptocurrencies.

Why, exactly? We already have banking APIs.

I spent years believing in Ethereum's original vision myself. A shared network for financial products, loans, and securities. No endless intermediaries or proprietary systems.

I still find the idea compelling. I'm just increasingly wondering whether the world actually needs it.

3. Decentralization Was Overrated

The average investor wants to buy securities, manage their wealth, and have someone to call when something goes wrong.

Blockchain offers seed phrases, private keys, and irreversible transactions instead.

At least they're independent.

Of course, there are good reasons to value financial sovereignty. But perhaps most people simply don't want to be their own bank.

They just want a good bank.

Decentralization is a technical property. It is not a business model, and certainly not a universal human need.

4. Ethereum Has Damaged Its Biggest Promise

What disappoints me most is how Ethereum has evolved.

The original strength of DeFi was its shared infrastructure. Applications could interact directly and access the same pools of liquidity.

Then transactions became expensive.

The solution? More networks!

Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, and countless others. Each with its own applications, liquidity pools, and security risks.

Suddenly, we need bridges to move assets between networks. Additional trust assumptions and new attack surfaces included.

We wanted one shared financial system and ended up building a collection of interconnected financial systems.

Ethereum is now working to solve this fragmentation. Technically impressive, no doubt.

Unfortunately, these networks have already developed their own economic interests. And those cannot simply be fixed with an Ethereum upgrade.

5. Cheaper Isn't Always Better

Solana is frequently celebrated for its speed and low transaction fees.

But what exactly is being traded?

A significant share of its activity comes from speculative token trading, including countless memecoins. Of course, legitimate financial applications exist there too.

Still, a million memecoin transactions do not automatically make a global financial infrastructure.

Nor am I convinced that transaction fees should always be as low as possible.

If I'm transferring securities worth 50,000 francs, I'd rather pay five francs for secure settlement than expose myself to bridges and additional risks just to save a few cents.

Fees put a price on scarce resources. They also discourage spam.

And Ethereum now faces another uncomfortable question: If more and more activity takes place on cheap secondary networks, how much economic value actually flows back to ETH?

Ethereum could succeed technologically without ETH investors benefiting much from that success.

6. Blockchain Works. But What For?

There are genuinely useful applications.

Stablecoins enable inexpensive international transfers, particularly in countries with limited banking access. Independent asset custody can also be valuable where trust in government institutions is weak.

That matters. But is it the promised revolution of the global financial system?

I find the tokenization of traditional assets more interesting. Stocks, bonds, and funds could eventually exist on shared infrastructure.

Except traditional finance is already working on exactly that.

Banks and central banks are developing tokenized deposits, shared settlement platforms, and programmable financial instruments.

None of this necessarily requires Ethereum. It doesn't even necessarily require a blockchain.

If my bank eventually offers the same capabilities in a simpler and safer way, why would I still need my own wallet?

Because of decentralization?

And here we are, back where we started.

7. The Linux of Finance

Maybe blockchain will eventually succeed.

Not as a revolution, but as infrastructure running quietly in the background. Just like Linux.

People will continue using their banking apps while banks and financial service providers manage tokenized assets behind the scenes.

Nobody will need to know which technology powers it all.

That would be a perfectly reasonable outcome. Just not necessarily for the countless cryptocurrencies whose valuations depend on the promise of mass adoption.

After all, Linux never needed a native token to become successful.

Perhaps crypto investors correctly anticipated the technological evolution but drew the wrong conclusions for their investments.

I still find Ethereum's original vision fascinating. But after years of DeFi, complicated wallets, and an ever growing number of networks, I've become considerably more skeptical.

Decentralization has value. Just perhaps not as much as we've been led to believe.

And who knows? Maybe Ethereum will eventually achieve its long awaited breakthrough.

Linux is still working on it, after all.