Ethereum Basis Researcher’s Pivot Highlights Rising Cultural Divide in Crypto

On Friday, Ethereum Basis Researcher Dankrad Feist announced he can be becoming a member of the stablecoin-focused blockchain startup Tempo, which was incubated by way of a partnership between fintech large Stripe and crypto funding agency Paradigm. In response, among the crypto purists on social media, most notably and understandably those that construct on Ethereum, shared their disappointment, whereas others merely noticed it as an indication of the occasions when it comes to the place the trade is headed extra typically.

Dankrad leaving Ethereum is a horrible search for open-source vs. company blockchains.

Large L for your complete neighborhood tbh

— Andy (@ayyyeandy) October 17, 2025

The response to this current transfer by Feist is an illustration of the larger cultural divide that has been rising in crypto over the previous few years as extra of this expertise is constructed round more and more centralized vectors of management. Whereas Satoshi Nakamoto’s original Bitcoin whitepaper and other early writings mentioned the necessity for a brand new system constructed on “cryptographic proof as a substitute of belief” and the issues with conventional methods being associated to “all of the belief that’s required to make it work,” a lot of the more moderen exercise in crypto has concerned centrally-issued stablecoins as poker chips in a meme coin casino.

Huge Tech Taking Over Crypto?

A lot of the expansion round crypto networks like Ethereum has been centered round centralized stablecoins, which operated in considerably of a authorized gray space within the U.S. previous to the passage of the GENIUS Act earlier this yr. With larger regulatory readability established round these digital {dollars}, there was a rise in varied developments round so-called “stablechains,” that are centered on these bank-backed greenback tokens slightly than crypto-native, permissionless belongings.

A elementary downside with ETH valuation is that ethereum’s major makes use of circumstances are largely exterior to ETH’s market worth. Ethereum could be very helpful, its apps can garner nice income, and ETH can nonetheless be low value — or vice versa — there’s little hyperlink between them. OTOH,…

— Nick Szabo (@NickSzabo4) October 7, 2025

Circle and Tether are the 2 largest stablecoin issuers by way of their respective USDC and USDT tokens. Earlier this yr, Circle announced the creation of their very own layer-one blockchain referred to as Arc. Moreover, Tether and its associates have supported the event of not less than two blockchains the place USDT is the native gas token, particularly Stable and Plasma.

Extra well-known gamers within the fintech trade are additionally getting concerned, with Coinbase, Stripe (Tempo), PayPal, and Robinhood all both saying or already having launched their very own blockchain platforms or different expansions into the crypto market. Google Cloud and Cloudflare even have their very own blockchain choices at completely different phases of growth which might be centered on funds for synthetic intelligence brokers. A few of these platforms are being constructed as secondary layers on prime of Ethereum, whereas others are fully separate blockchain networks.

Cypherpunk Use Circumstances Aren’t Standard

As huge tech giants and different notable gamers become involved in constructing out their very own blockchain networks the place they’ll have extra management and extract extra worth, the cypherpunk values Satoshi needed to infuse into Bitcoin, comparable to privateness and censorship resistance, have struggled to achieve the hearts and minds of most people. Positive, the bitcoin value not too long ago hit a brand new all-time excessive as soon as once more (before subsequently dropping more than 15%); nevertheless, a lot of the current bull run has been constructed round centralized, regulated monetary merchandise such because the publicly-traded exchange-traded funds (ETFs) from the likes of BlackRock and bitcoin treasury corporations comparable to Technique.

There are nonetheless pockets of exercise in crypto which might be comparatively trustworthy to the Satoshi imaginative and prescient. Not all use circumstances reintroduce trusted third events by constructing all the pieces round centralized stablecoins or throw away privateness by placing an excessive amount of monetary knowledge on public blockchains. That is turning into an more and more smaller share of general exercise, nevertheless, when in comparison with hypothesis on doubtful token choices or additional empowering monetary establishments with new expertise that permits them to keep away from strict anti-money laundering rules so long as they put their clients on a database they name a blockchain.

Bitcoin itself has remained considerably proof against company affect on the protocol stage, as proven by the resolution of its internal block size war again in 2017. Nonetheless, Ethereum’s reliance on stablecoins is turning into an more and more hard-to-ignore subject that’s price watching, because the issuers of those tokens have an incentive to make use of their centralized level of management to extract as a lot worth as attainable from this expertise.

As seen by the current “stablechain” phenomenon, this may increasingly embrace a want to chop the open Ethereum community out of the image totally. Contrastly, Bitcoin’s major problematic level of centralization when it comes to third-party custodians nonetheless requires these custodians to make use of the Bitcoin community.

Whereas persons are nonetheless in a position to make use of these applied sciences within the permissionless, non-custodial method Satoshi initially meant, the crypto trade as an entire is more and more turning right into a method for centralized monetary entities to empower themselves slightly than particular person customers.